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Curious about field use. Some HS fields in Fairfax County are used for practices for their affiliated NVTBL or Babe Ruth teams in the off season and also other scheduled NVTBL or Babe Ruth games and some aren't. Who makes this decision - whether or not the HS field is available to home or outside teams during Summer and Fall ball? Can anyone point me to a regulation or bylaws kind of document for governance of FCPS field use?

I'm told that most NVTBL coaches have no access to fields - for tarping or sweeping water, etc to try to help a field get ready after rain. Others with an inside connection to a particular school are afforded access and are out there in full force on a FCPS HS field fixing it up – often preventing rainouts. Seems to me the rules are different at different schools.

Some Rising 7th and 8th grade teams in the HS pyramid have access and some are kicked off fields/batting cages. And then there are the gymnasiums and weight rooms – can the baseball players use those for a weight lifting program?

Anything anyone can add to help me understand who is the approval authority for field/cage/gym/weight room use, how much influence the players and their parents have, and whether or not the HS Coach has any say in this - I would greatly appreciate it.

It seems if the fields are unavailable to the kids who are in Little League and transitional teams that feed into a particular HS - and also unavailable to school's HS players in the off seasons, the players/program are greatly disadvantaged in comparison to other FCPS HS's whose facilities are available year round.

Bottom line - The players/off season coaches want access to their fields/cages and want to know who has the authority to tell them "no". How/to whom do we appeal when we are placed under seemingly unfair restrictions?

We're talking about "public" school - some closed off as if privately owned. I'm scratching my head as to why there are such different rules.

Thanks for any insight.
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I scheduled Babe Ruth games for a few years. bbwatcher22 is correct about the committee. They have input. The high schools do have some influence -- they can say they don't want the field to be used until their season wraps up. That is common at schools where the teams often play deep in the post-season. Other schools are very relaxed about allowing games to start taking place even when their season hasn't finished. Until the high school season is over, the school really has alot of control over the field.

In the off season (when community teams begin play), the school can still request to pull a field for maintenance. That can get ugly if the request comes after scheduling has already taken place. On one occasion a school was told to reopen it's field for use for the fall season.

Basically "tread carefully" is good advice. You definitely don't want to anger the AD at any high school. Yet the community does have a right to play on these fields. But the park authority allocations are the final say and no one should be on a high school field without permission.

The Babe Ruth league I was involved with did contribute money to the high school programs where it was scheduled to play. Kind of sweetens the road I guess.

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