The information below was emailed to CT town program contacts on Friday, January 2nd, 2015 by Larry Stowe, CWLOA Youth Coordinator

**************************************************************************************************************************************************

Happy New Year everyone,

My name is Larry Stowe and on behalf of the CWLOA, I am reaching out to you as the Youth Officials Coordinator for the upcoming season.

It is time to put the final touches on planning, so that we can assure appropriate training sites, dates and trainers availability. If you are not the correct person to contact, kindly forward this to the person or persons who have taken over for you. If this was forwarded to you, please let me know so I can correct the email information.

All towns will be asked to provide both their classroom training and field certification dates and location to me no later then Jan 10th to ensure our ability to cover your venue. Please begin to contact your town representatives now to begin planning classroom and field scheduling.

Training requirements:

New officials – total of six hours of classroom training, plus field certification training/rating.

Returning officials – total of six hours of classroom training, plus field certification training/rating.

** Membership is USL. Remind your officials that they need to do this before registering for a class.

Completion of the online 2015 USL rules test.

Please note: Recertification has been changed to a six hour classroom training per USL. This is actually a good thing because I believe there is no such thing as too much training.

Field certification training/rating requires a 3 hour session per official.

All towns are encouraged to host their classroom training ASAP. Refresher Clinic for returning officials, should take place as soon as the new rules for the 2015 season are available. For towns that use college students for late spring, you may want to consider a training session during the time they are home for the upcoming holiday break.

If you will be hosting a joint town classroom, but not a joint field certification, please make sure that the towns joining you in the classroom section know they need to have their own field certification. Field certification continues to be hurdle for us, as we have so many officials to train, during a short, few hour event. Please ensure that your field certification take this into account when scheduling the number of officials needed for the season.

Like last year, the USL rules tests will not be included in the classroom training. While we will definitely go over questions on rules, the onus will be on the official to take and pass the rules test online. This will allow for more training time during the classroom session. We have the ability to monitor who take and passes the test.

Dates to stay away from: March 21st & 28th, 2015. We will not have trainers available for field certification on these Saturdays.

For those of you that would like a particular official to be your trainer, please indicate that in your response. While you may talk with them directly about training, I ask that you schedule the training through me centrally, so that we can make sure we know where everyone is going. I will honor your request unless the trainer is already committed elsewhere.

When responding, please indicate the following: (You can copy and paste)

  1.  Town name

  2.  Other towns invited if applicable and their zip codes

  3.  Type of training: Classroom Training or field certification

  4.  Dates; times; location; building/room#; field name/location

  5.  Number limit  of attendees, if applicable

  6.  If you are allowing adults to attend your training, please list this as a separate event for registration purposes

  7.  Cost for the training, if you are charging the umpires

  8.  A contact name, email and cell phone # for the person responsible for the training event

  9.  Name of a requested trainer

  10. Other information that may be necessary

  11. Please be sure to put "Youth Lacrosse Officials" in the subject line

THESE ARE THE TOWNS I HAVE HEARD FROM:

            New Milford - Both Classroom and Field Training - Not sure if Open to other towns

            Westport - Both Classroom and Field Training - Not Sure if open to other towns

            Stratford - Both Classroom and Field Training - Open to Trumbull, Monroe, and Shelton as well

            New Canaan - Both Classroom and Field Training - Classroom open to Weston and Wilton, Field limited to New Canaan

            Wilton - Field Training only - Believe it is also open to Weston

            Farmington - Field Training only - Possibly open to Simsbury as well

            Avon - In Planning Stage

            Wallingford - In Planning Stage

            Cheshire - In Planning Stage

If your town is not listed, I have not heard from you. If you have contacted a trainer directly, please email me ASAP so I can coordinate. You will still get the trainer you want, I need the information so I can get it posted on line for the officials to register. At this time, no one has requested adult youth official training.

Towns will be responsible for the cost of a CWLOA certified trainer of $300.00 per 6 hours of classroom training and $25.00 per hour per field certification instructor (1 instructor per 6 officials). Towns that had field certifications after April 1st, 2014, please contact me directly to discuss your options for this season rating event.

Online registration will happen again this year at cwloa.org.usl.la. We will let everyone know when your event is posted. I hope to start posting events within a few days. Please communicate to parents that USL membership must be valid through 6/30/15 to complete the registration process.

Any questions please let me know. I am sure I might have missed something, so let me know what you are thinking.

Thank-you,

Larry Stowe

CWLOA Youth Coordinator

Email - [email protected]