A rainout is not a weather problem. It is a policy problem you either solved in January or are solving at 6am on Saturday with sixty coaches texting you. The directors who handle it well are not better at forecasting — they wrote down what happens, published it before entries opened, and can reach every head coach in one action.
Here is what to write down, when to make the call, and how to compress a schedule that has lost half a day.
What has to be in the policy before entries open?
Five things. Publish them on the event page and do not change them mid-season.
- Who makes the call and when. A named role and a time. "The tournament director, by 6:30am, posted on the event page."
- Where the call is posted. One place, always the same. Not a text, not a Facebook comment — a page that is authoritative.
- What happens to the fee at each stage of play. This is the money question and it needs a table, below.
- What "complete" means. How many innings makes a game official, and what counts as a completed event for refund purposes.
- The compressed format you will switch to. Named in advance so it is not a negotiation on the day.
The reason all five go in before entries open is not fairness, though it is that too. It is that a policy you publish in advance is a policy you can point at when you are tired, wet, and being argued with by somebody who drove four hours.
What does the money table look like?
Fill in your own figures — this is the shape, not the answer.
| Stage reached | What the team gets | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled before first pitch | Full refund, or full credit | You have spent prep but played nothing |
| Cancelled after pool play begins, before any team completes a game | Partial refund or credit | Some costs are sunk; umpires are partly owed |
| Each team completed at least one game | Smaller credit, or none | You have delivered part of the guarantee |
| Guarantee met, bracket cancelled | Usually none | The advertised product was delivered |
| Event completed | None | — |
Credit versus refund is the decision worth thinking hardest about. A credit to a future event keeps the money in your ecosystem, protects your cash flow when your fixed costs are already spent, and most teams accept it readily. A refund is cleaner and buys goodwill you may need. Many events offer a credit as the default and a refund on request — which is defensible as long as you say so in advance rather than discovering it as a policy on the day.
Whatever you choose, it has to be consistent with how you priced the event. An entry fee with no contingency line and a full-refund rainout policy is an event that loses money every wet year.
When do you actually call it?
Early enough that a team four hours away has not left, and not so early that you cancel a playable day.
The practical decision points:
- The night before, by 8pm. Only for a forecast severe enough that play is clearly impossible. This is the call that saves teams a drive.
- 6:00–6:30am. The main decision window. Fields are inspectable, the radar is meaningful, and most teams have not travelled yet.
- Rolling, during the day. Delay rather than cancel. Announce a specific re-inspection time — "next update at 10:30" — so nobody has to keep refreshing.
Never leave a delay open-ended. "We'll keep an eye on it" produces sixty individual texts asking the same question. A named next-update time produces none.
What are the compression options?
Decide which of these you will use before the season, so on the day you pick from a list instead of inventing.
Shorten the games. Drop the time limit or the innings cap — six innings to five, 1h45m slots to 1h25m. This is the least disruptive option and usually recovers a slot or two per field.
Cut pool play, go straight to bracket. If you have enough pool results to seed, stop pool play and run the bracket. You lose the guarantee for some teams; check your refund table.
Pool-only, no bracket. Declare the pool winner the champion. Cheap to execute, unpopular with teams who came for Sunday, but it delivers the game guarantee.
One-and-done. Single elimination from a seed you already have, or from a coin flip. Fastest recovery, least satisfying.
Add fields or hours. Start earlier Sunday, add a field if the complex has one free, or extend into the evening if there are lights. The expensive option, but it preserves the advertised format.
Play through it. Worth naming explicitly as an option with a limit: light rain on a well-drained field is playable, and calling a game that could have been played costs you as much credibility as playing one that should have been called. Standing water on the infield or lightning is not a judgement call.
The rainout decision tree
Checklist — work top to bottom
- Is there lightning within striking distance? → Stop play immediately. This is not a scheduling decision. Follow your sanctioning body's clock before resuming.
- Is the field playable? Inspect, don't forecast. Standing water on the infield or an unsafe mound is a no.
- Will it be playable within two hours? → Delay with a named re-inspection time. Announce the time, not the uncertainty.
- Can the day be saved by compressing? → Pick your compression option from the list above and publish the new schedule as a whole, not as a series of edits.
- Has every team met the game guarantee? → If yes, you can cancel the remainder with your refund table intact.
- If cancelling, what does the money table say? → Apply it as written. Do not improvise a better deal for whoever asks loudest.
- Has every affected head coach been told, in one action? → Not a group text. One outbound message to every head coach, plus the event page updated.
- Is the event page now the truth? → If a coach refreshes it, they should see the current state without asking you.
How do you tell 60 teams in ten minutes?
One outbound channel that reaches every head coach at once, plus one page that is always current. That is the whole requirement, and it is the thing a group text cannot do.
What goes wrong with a group text at this size: half the coaches have it muted, somebody replies-all, there is no way to message only the 12U division, and there is no history a coach can scroll back to at 7am. You end up answering the same question sixty times individually, which is exactly when you should be inspecting fields.
What works:
- Update the event page first. It is the authoritative version and everything else points at it.
- Send one message to every head coach with the decision, the new schedule if there is one, and what happens to their fee.
- Say when the next update is if the situation is still live.
- Do not answer the same question individually. Update the page and point at it.
The ability to send one message to every affected coach — and only the affected ones — is one of the two or three things that separate an event that handles weather well from one that does not.
Questions directors ask
How much notice do teams expect?
As much as you can honestly give. The night-before call is the one teams remember gratefully, because it saves a hotel and a drive — but only make it when the forecast genuinely justifies it. A cancelled playable day costs you more credibility than a late call.
Should we refund or credit?
Credit protects your cash flow when your fixed costs are already spent, and most teams take it. Refund buys goodwill. Whichever you choose, publish it before entries open and apply it consistently — improvising a better deal for the coach who argues hardest is how a policy stops being one.
What if only some divisions get played?
This is why the money table is by stage reached rather than by event. Apply it per team, based on what that team actually got, not on whether the event as a whole finished.
Do we owe the umpires?
Depends entirely on your arrangement, which is why it should be written into it. Many assignors bill a partial fee for a crew that reported and did not work. Find out before the season and put it in your contingency line.
How do we stop this from being a spreadsheet rebuild?
By having the published schedule be the schedule, rather than a copy of one. If your schedule lives in a file and gets exported to a page, a rainout means rebuilding both under time pressure. That is the specific problem the back office we build for tournament organisations exists to solve.
Related: building the weekend schedule for the grid you will be compressing, and collecting entry fees for the refund and credit mechanics. See our pricing — every figure is the start of a published range.