League Says Scheduling Isn't A Level Playing Field

All Michael DiLizia wants, quite literally, is a level playing field for the Toms River Tornadoes Girls Fast Pitch Softball League.

DiLizia, the league’s president, said the league is struggling to find practice space for its teams for its spring season and “is at a standstill” trying to find solutions.

“We can’t get cooperation here in town,” DiLizia said. “The use of fields is becoming a serious issue.”

About a dozen of Toms River Tornadoes’ parents and league coaches came to the Toms River Recreation Commission meeting this week to bring their concerns forward for the first time.

While softball fields are a limited resource in town, it’s an unfair fight trying to carve out practice and game space for its six spring teams, DiLizia said. The league practices year round and grows to 30 teams in the fall season.

DiLizia said the problem is a lack of cooperation in sharing fields in the spring, summer and early fall with Toms River Girls Softball League, which uses the fields for their age brackets of softball and t-ball, plus their travel teams. There’s practices, games and tournaments both organizations are trying to schedule between the YMCA , Shelter Cove and school fields, and the Tornadoes are getting the short end of the stick, DiLizia said.

“Ever year we request the fields we need, and only get a few of our requests granted,” DiLizia said.

As a result, Toms River Tornadoes girls softball league is often forced to play home games as far away as Colts Neck and Freehold, the league president said to the Recreation Commission Tuesday.

“Do you know how embarrassing it is to have to go to another town for our own championship games?” DiLizia said.

He told the commission that during the summer he gets multiple calls from coaches who see a field they requested is empty.

“There is nothing more frustrating than when a coach drives by a field and sees it empty, and is asking me ‘Why can’t we use it? No one is there.’ And this is week after week, and I tell them, we can’t, we don’t have a permit for it,” DiLizia said.

Eric J. Schubiger, director of the town's Recreation Department, said the town employs one security guard for the fields at night, and among the duties is to make sure permitted teams are using the fields.

“We have one person on to cover the whole town,” Schubiger said. “If you are seeing consistently, 5 p.m. Tuesday for weeks no one is using it, and there’s a permit out, we want to know.”

In a phone interview Wednesday, Toms River Girls Softball League President Rob Hussey said the league is absolutely not overscheduling its field use to block out others.

“No, that is not the case,” Hussey said. “You have a rain out, maybe that will happen and the weather affects your schedule now.”

Hussey said that during the summer, Toms River Girls Softball schedules double headers for fields in Shelter Cove and the YMCA fields, blocking out weekday evenings from 5 to 10 p.m.

“There is time on the weekends that is wide open,” Hussey said. “The afternoon hours in the summer, also free.”

DiLizia said prime times are immediately taken, and even advertised before permits are issued, for the Toms River Girls Softball League tournaments. The Tornadoes would like to host a tournament in Toms River of their own, but can’t due to scheduling, he said.

“A tournament would be good for our league, and it would bring visitors to Toms River, who will spend their money in town; it would be good for the town. But we can’t get it to happen and it’s at the point where we wanted to bring it to your attention to get some help,” DiLizia said to the recreation commission.

Councilman John Sevastakis said the demands on the current fields could be alleviated by the new complex to be built on North Bay Avenue, allowing for more opportunities for Toms River to host tournaments, but also for additional ways for the community to use municipal facilities.

“The softball complex is for Toms River girls, not just the league, but it’s for all girls softball,” said the councilman. “There is going to be a schedule were everyone gets their fair share. Just to go and book fields and not use them, is not right,” Sevastakis said.

Hussey said that is not the case, and that his organization has had practice time bumped too, when it has a school field scheduled and the schools need to use them.

“We do apply for certain fields… YMCA we play most of our games there and think of it as home,” Hussey said. “But they (Tornadoes) have open times, could ask for Winding River fields.”

Hussey said that the two organizations are different, saying the Tornadoes are league of travel teams, whereas Toms River Girls Softball has its travel teams plus its age brackets and t-ball.

Both DiLizia and Hussey said their respective group is willing to cooperate, but that the Tornadoes were formed five years ago out of the Toms River Girls Softball League.

“There’s been one softball league in Toms River for 20 years. Five years ago, we wanted to give them something different,” DiLizia said. “We’re not here to compete, not here to bash anybody. We’re a nonprofit. We’re volunteers. We just want to give the girls what they deserve.”

Schubiger said scheduling fields is often like juggling multiple puzzles at once, but that a new system launched this week could help solve the softball issues.

“We need to accommodate all the great organizations we have in town. We’ve been behind, and now we are getting caught up,” Schubiger said. “It’s not going to happen today.”

In the new system, fields can be reserved online, and approval may take two weeks.

DiLizia said it sounds promising and he’s willing to give it a chance, but that the Tornadoes practice starts this month and he’s trying to find out now where things stand.

“You need to tell me what you need to run a successful organization,” Schubiger said to DiLizia on Tuesday. “We’re trying to get all these kids and people on the fields. I think there are some people who are taking advantage of the system. We need to address the people like you who said you aren’t getting a fair share.”

Councilwoman Maria Maruca said the township has had issues like this in the past with field scheduling for other sports. She thanked the Tornadoes for bringing it to the commission’s attention and pledged with patience the issue could be resolved.

“We’ve had these challenges before trying to come up with enough fields — soccer, little league, “ Maruca said. “Give us a little time. We hear you. We can’t guarantee you’ll get everything you want but we have an opportunity now to work this out and be sure to come up with something.”

DiLizia said after the meeting that he just wants the battle to end.

“We all want it, and all want it to work,” DiLizia said. “We just want it to be fair.”