Who and What We Are
Albuquerque Soccer League offers men’s and coed competitions. Albuquerque Women’s Soccer League offers women’s competitions. We are separate leagues but share an office and web site. We are affiliated with the New Mexico State Soccer Association, the United States Adult Soccer Association and the United States Soccer Federation. For fall and spring competition, our games are on Sundays and we play at the Arroyo del Oso and St Pius fields in town and at the Farmer’s Insurance Soccer Tournament complex in Bernalillo. Yes, we know it’s a long way to drive, but we also own the fields at Farmer’s and can make sure they’re repaired and maintained, unlike the fields at Bullhead park where other leagues play.
More important is what we’re not. We’re not the English Premier League or La Liga. We’re amateur recreational soccer leagues comprised of people who play for exercise and to have fun and generally have to get up go to work after a weekend game. If you have players who decided to play here instead of joining Kaka at Real Madrid, your player is misguided and needs to play elsewhere. We have a low tolerance for people who show up to fight, riot and abuse and assault refeees or other players.
Dates to Remember
The deadline to have eleven players registered and be included in the fall schedule is August 16.
The first games of the fall season are September 11, which is the Sunday after Labor Day. We spend the time between August 16 and September 13 getting referees trained and scheduled.The office will be closed Saturday and Monday of Labor Day Weekend. the last day to register players for the first game will be September 8. The office will not be open September 10 for player registration for the first game. Registration will begin again on Monday, September 12. We have posted all registration information on Sunday, June 26. The gives you more than two months to get registered.
There will be a mandatory ASL preseason meeting. We will notify you in plenty of time with the date, time and location. We have also added this language to the confirmation e-mail you get when you register your team so you can longer claim no one told you. If your team is not represented, you will be fined $50 regardless of your status as a friend of the guy who runs the league. AWSL will have a preseason meeting at their normal monthly league meeting on September 8.
Office Hours
Office hours are 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 5:30 p.m. to 6:30. p.m. on Thursday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. Please note that the office is staffed on Thursday evening by League officers on a volunteer basis. If the office is not going to be open Thursday evenings because we’re out of people, we will try to get word on the telephone message. The League phone number is 346-0831, the fax number is 266-2734, and the league e-mail address is aslsoc@swcp.com.
Office Etiquette
The office staff is there to help you. They are employed by the leagues. They are not the officers of either league and don’t make policy. If you object to anything about the league, they’ll be happy to arrange a meeting with a league officer for you to air your grievances and volunteer your time as well. Unless you’ve been added to the payroll, stay on the north side of the counter. Do not come behind the counter unless you’re invited to. The staff is not at the office for you to come hug or hit on. If either of them need a hug, they’re perfectly capable of asking for one, and will likely make such requests at home. This act seems to have become a problem in the spring season and won’t be a problem in the fall season.
If someone is at the counter, the staff will take care of those people first before answering the phone. As the registration frenzy and line out the front door increases, the liklihood that they are going to answer the phone to search through 500 passcards to see if yours is ready becomes less and less likely. If your team rep will bring cards in complete in large bundles, it will decrease the registration frenzy and long lines and 45 minute waits.
If you yell at the staff or threaten them, we will remove you from membership permanently. Other than all of that, have a nice day.
Very important item early in your reading: do not call the office to read them your credit card number and do not tell your players to call the office to read them your credit card number. The office isn’t an ESPN.com call center and it’s a violation of our credit card security standards for us to have your credit card number.
Registration Fees for Fall 11 - Spring 12
The player registration fee for AWSL is $100 and each team pays a $100 team fee, due at registration along with a minimum of 11 player fees. In addition there is a $150 per team referee performance bond due at registration. For players who only register in the spring, the fee is reduced accordingly.
For ASL, there is no team fee. The $50 application fee you paid is applied to player registation fees to encourage you to actually come register a team after you submitted your online application. For individual players, you have the choice of paying $120 in the fall for fall and spring registration. We will place stickers on your passcard indicating you have paid for both seasons. If you elect that option, you are paid for the fall and spring and use the same passcard for both. In the alternative, you can pay $70 in the fall and $60 in the spring. Hence, if you play the fall and do not play the spring, you will have only paid $70. We realize that you are paying $10 more by splitting your fee. That’s because we have significant revenue erosion from the previous practice because of the number of people who paid for both seasons and then never showed up after the third game. We lose those dollars and don’t have a printing press for new money. We get it all from registration fees. Hence, a player who pays $70 in the fall must go through the registration process in the spring to obtain a new passcard with a spring sticker on it, which also increases our registration efforts. On the bright side, you pay us $70 and get an office, insurance, a soccer complex, a web site and trained referees. You pay our competition the same $70 and get a guy who has a cell phone and lies to you about having insurance for you when he only has it for him. Since the officers of ASL aren’t doing this to pay themselves, the money actually goes to running the league.
ASL and AWSL now employ the same policy for posting of a referee performance bond.
General Registration Information
Registration is now done online. On the left is the information on how to sign your team up and how to complete individual player registration. Like any computer software, it screws up some time. If you have a problem, the best bet is to e-mail us at aslsoc@swcp.com. We can usually fix your glitch fairly quickly. Sometimes the machine just coughs and won’t let you add a player. E-mail us the player name and we can usually fix that with our administrative rights and get the player started in your folder. We don’t know why that happens.
The office staff will begin contacting teams this week to see if your team rep intends to register a team and to try to get the process going. The team application process consists of completing an online application form and submitting a $50 application fee if you are an ASL team. Payment can be made online by credit card or by paying within 5 days at the office. That’s it. That’s all it takes. The $50 application fee will be applied to your player or team fees when you register your team. If you ultimately do not register a team, we keep your $50 to cover the hassle of removing you from the system. The link for new teams is on the front page and returning teams can apply through their team folder. Directions are in the Team Registration Instructions folder on the left.
If your team rep cannot find someone to handle the player registration, you can do a manual process whereby you pay the office staff $50 (in advance) and they will collect your player’s pictures and personal information and enter it in the computer. This gets you one meeting with your players to take their pictures and obtain their names, address, phone, date of birth. Since your players can manage to get together for a game, they can get together for pictures once. Because they’re doing this on their own time rather than office hours, you get to pay them for assuming your burden. Call the office or e-mail to aslsoccerstaff@gmail to make arrangments. Once we have a player’s picture and personal information loaded, they don’t have to do this again. If you have a sponsor paying your registration, please let us know. Otherwise, you pay when you register or you don’t register.
If you pay for someone else to register and they don’t pay you back, you have a business problem, not us. Do not pay to register someone else unless you intend it to be a gift.
Do not shove cash pictures or 5 year old forms through the door!!!!! If you are paying cash, bring it in person and hand it to the person working in the office. If you shove cash through the mail slot and it disappears, we are not letting your players play for free. Either put the cash in your checking account and write another check, or go to a convenience store and get a money order.
A player may play on one men’s team and one coed team. A player may play on one women’s team and one coed team. No one can play on more than one men’s team. No one can play on more than one coed team. No one can play on more than one women’s team.
If you are active military, you can reduce your first registration by $8, as our insurance plan now allows us to waive coverage for active military personnel only. You MUST attach a legible photocopy of your military ID card to your form. The name on the active military ID card must be the same name as the person on the passcard. This only applies to active duty military. You do not get a discount or refund if you bring it in later. If you play on a men’s/women’s team and a coed team, it only applies to your first player registration you complete.
If you are playing on a men’s or women’s team and also play on a coed team, we discount your second registration by $8 as you only have to pay insurance for one team per year. The discount will be applied in ASL only to avoid giving you the discount twice in both leagues. Hence, all AWSL player registration is at full freight.
Please be aware of the following regarding individual player registration. If your team uses a player who is not currently registered on your team, using someone else’s passcard, the person running the team at that game and the person using the phony passcard will be suspended for a year. We will also remove your team from the league for the remainder of the year and your money is gone. Having people participate who are not registered creates legal exposures for all parties concerned. If you get caught doing this, you and the others involved are suspended from ASL and/or AWSL for the next full year. That includes men’s league, women’s league, coed, tournaments and everything else.
Referee Performance Bond
Every ASL and AWSL team must post a $150 referee performance bond. The full referee performance bond policy is included in the folder titled ASL policies and is also included in the ASL Team Representative Notebook folder. In short, each team posts a $150 bond when they enter the League. If the team recruits a person who becomes a trained referee and officiates ten assignments in ASL or AWSL during the Sunday league play in the fall and spring of that competition (meaning Fall 2011 and Spring 2012), you can roll your bond over to the next year. If your team does not, then your bond is forfeit and must be posted again in the fall 2012 team application. In the alternative, if you have a qualified referee registered for the full year on your team and that person meets the ten game standard, that person will qualify for the rollover. It does not count if that person is only on your roster for one season. ASL queried all of its teams in May for the names of the referees who actually qualified and has posted them in the Fall 2011 Team Registration folder. If your team is not listed as having a qualifying referee to roll over your bond, there is no debate with the office staff when you come in to register. You get to pay the bond. Simply providing the office staff a name when you come in doesn’t work. More often than not, those spontaneous names did not officiate and have nothing to do with your team.
The point of the bond is to generate ASL and AWSL people who officiate ASL or AWSL games. If your team’s referee(s) complete 10 game assignments during the course of the fall and spring season on ASL or AWSL games, your bond is safe and can either be carried over to the spring or refunded to you. If not, you forfeit your bond so we can do the work ourselves to find more referees. The point of the bond is to generate real people to help cover the games. We would prefer to not forfeit anyone’s bond and have 300 new referees. If you are a new team and are thinking you’re going to claim the bond of an old team, think again. We’ll mediate arguments, but not for long. You pay the bond first, then you referee games. We do not operate on an honor system for this.
Bounced Checks
If your check bounces, we contact you and your team rep. If we haven’t gotten the issue resolved within 3 days, we suspend you from play and notify the referee you are not eligible to play. We are generally told that it is the bank’s fault. We charge $10 for each bounced check. Since it is the bank’s fault, we assume they’ll reimburse you your $10.
Refunds
Both ASL and AWSL will refund money, less $25 that we pass on for national affiliation fees, our time to register the player, and player insurance fees. The $25 comes out as soon as we have completed your registration because that is when the player is insured and is a member of USSF, USASA, and NMSSA.
That means we will not trade passcards out before the season. If a player decides not to play prior to the season, that player can apply for a refund. We will not apply player A’s money to player B’s registration form. We will not refund money until the passcard is returned and the refund and player drop forms completed. This includes players who are injured. Refunds will be mailed to the person whose name is on the passcard. Refunds will not be given to anyone other than that person. After the season starts, refunds are based on your registration fee, less $ 25, divided by the number of games remaining. The longer your player doesn’t return the passcard, the lower the refund. As long as the player has the passcard, the player is eligible to play and playing games costs us money.
For ASL, a player must return the player passcard and complete a refund form and a drop form. A check will be mailed to the address provided on the refund form.
For AWSL, refunds are granted for these reasons: (i) Pregnancy, (ii) Medical, (iii) Moving out of town, or (iv) Team disbands. All four reasons require written proof. The player passcard must be returned and the refund and drop forms completed. AWSL processes all refunds following the completion of the season.
Scheduling Requests
If you have a need for a particular time and day in the schedule, ASL needs to know that by August 1. We will not schedule your team at the same time on the same field for the entire season. We will also not coordinate the entire ASL schedule so you can see your girlfriend play her AWSL games. Special note to coed teams: Yes, people can play on a men’s team and a coed team or a women’s team and coed team. However, the schedule is not coordinated to provide for them to be sure they make every game. Please be aware of this when you assemble your team.
Pending Fines and Suspensions
At the end of July, when summer season is finished, we will post in this folder a list of people who are suspended from ASL, AWSL or NMSSA. Also, we have a list of people who are still due suspensions and who owe fines from the summer, spring or fall season. We will distribute an updated list of fines and suspensions pending from the summer season, as well as from the spring of 2011, fall 2010, and as far back as necessary to catch everyone. The fines are pretty simple, as we still have their passcards. In addition, players owing fines from summer coed and over-30 play get to pay their fines prior to registering for the fall season.
