Being League Secretary Sucks
Drew - am curious that when you don’t have a full team don’t you use vacancies? In my women’s bowling league we have several teams without full 4 person rosters, so we use vacancies........some teams have one, some teams still have 2 vacancies. If one or more of the regular “human” bowlers are absent, the vacancies still count for the team so that the team doesn’t forfeit..........Our vacancies count for 120 scores with 64 pin handicap. I was out for 2 months this past fall due to spinal surgery - I will start back again tomorrow. While I was out my team used a vacancy in my place rather than my average minus 20..........
Posted by Pixie
01/06/2009 at 08:56 PM
Pixie - in order to answer your question I have to write a Turtler sized response. Sorry.
I hope I can provide sufficient detail to earn his approval.
Yes, our partially filled teams use vacancies. And that is how we get into the gray area.
My league decided that vacancies count as bowlers when determining a legal lineup. Great, cool. BUT if vacancies count as bowlers when you are looking at the forfeiture situation, then your league may be biased. Bear with me here please. If you have a rule in your bylaws that says “X members of the team must show up to bowl (or pre- or post- bowl if you allow it) or that team forfeits” and X is a number equal to, or less than, the number of vacancies allowed on a team, then that team can’t actually forfeit. Because the Vacant bowler is never absent. But at the same time, a team that has no vacancies, ie a full team, CAN forfeit if “less than X” of their human bowlers don’t show up. In other words, the rules apply more to some teams than they do to others.
This was the situation in our league. We had a very heated discussion at our start up meeting this fall. More like a fight actually. It was decided that vacancies counted towards the legal lineup. The forfeit situation was not addressed or even examined. We have no bylaw about a minimum number of bowlers who must show up. And thus the problem began.
Now, if you go and look at the rulebook, Rule 109 deals with what constitutes a legal lineup: it shall be 3 out of 5, or 2 out of 4, UNLESS your league makes a bylaw that allows a different number. Subs count, UNLESS your league makes a rule that says they don’t. They have to be there by the end of the 1st frame, UNLESS your league makes a rule that says some other frame (3rd frame is common). Rule 109 does not say a word about vacancies.
Look over at Rule 110. That one deals with forfeits. There are known forfeits and unknown forfeits. There are rules concerning paying your alley dues if your team forfeits. There are rules that say that a team or player in significant arrears can be stopped from bowling, and that can lead to a forfeit. No word about vacancies here either. Lots of rules about forfeiting ... which to me strongly implies that forfeits have to be allowed to occur. There is no rule that I have seen that says your league can make a bylaw that says no forfeits will occur. Actually there is a rule that says no bylaws can contravene a USBC rule, so the concept is there even if nothing is written explicitly.
So, if that’s the case, how can a team without vacancies NOT forfeit if the minimum number (good old X again) of people don’t show up, yet at the same time, how can a team with X or more vacancies ever forfeit if their human members don’t show up? In both cases, they can’t. Therefore the rules are unequally applied, and that ain’t fair.
To solve this, I made a decision. Maybe I was wrong, but I made it anyway. I decided that there were 2 kinds of “legal lineup” in a league that didn’t specify a maximum number of vacant positions allowed on a team (eg my league). The first kind, the “legal lineup in regards to team membership”, allowed you to have as many vacancies on a team as you wanted, as long as the definition of a team was met: one man and one woman. In other words, teams will have at least 1 human member for the 4 slots, because a vacancy assumes whatever gender is necessary. By doing this no bowler is ever turned away at the beginning of the season. A bowler who comes in a couple weeks later can join a partial team if one exists. I won’t add a team to let a late bowler join, but I will let one join a partial team. That’s the best I can do.
The second kind of legal lineup says you have to have at least one human being show up to bowl (or pre- or post- bowl if your league allows). I think of this as the “minimum legal lineup” as covered by Rule 109a. That’s my ironclad rule: one human bowler is enough. I’m such a hard ass.
While Rule 105 discusses absentees and vacancies, it is more about scores used for them. It does not deal with a minimum or maximum number of allowable vacancies on a team.
I bent the rules. Heck, maybe I broke them. I think? We are a tiny league struggling to survive. I do not want to turn away a single person willing to show up and pay the weekly dues and bowl.
We’ve got a couple of highly experienced bowlers here at BMEWS, and I welcome their feedback on this. I have already put my “virtual Drew rules” in as proposals for next season’s bylaws. I also had to make this decision without help; our other officers are not familiar with the rules AT ALL and actually have no wish to be so. They duck their duty as well. That sucks, but what can I do about it? And at the time I had to make this decision, the bowling alley had only a bunch of kids working, who also knew nothing. So I did what I felt was both right and fair. Mea culpa!
Now, in your league’s case, I don’t think you are following the rules. Even if your league has a “there will be no forfeits” bylaw which then uses the absentee and vacancy scores, the fact that you are subverting the USBC rules about forfeits makes it wrong. But to be blunt, nobody really cares; it’s your league and you can get away with anything you want, as long as everyone agrees ahead of time.
See? Being Secretary DOES suck. Because I have to be President too sometimes. No fair, I’m a victim!
