Please find the link to the new BWA Board policy that was signed off at last month's Board meeting.

The issue of movement of clubs between charters has been a discussion point in recent years, perhaps more so in WA than any other state.

The new policy document seeks to provide clarity to the issue of catchment areas and what happens when a catchment area grows to where one charter has an unfair competitive advantage over the other seven catchment areas. It also seeks to clearly define the accepted model for estimating catchment area size.

Importantly, it also makes a clear statement that charters are about growing participation at grass roots level and that success of our representative teams is nice although not an objective. It is important that this is understood.

It must be clearly understood in this regard, that Little League International expects that District Administrators have a procedure by which all charters in their district (ie WA), have, as much as possible, an equal catchment size. This does not mean equal player numbers nor does it mean that the size is the same as other districts.

With this in mind, the new policy will take care of equalisation of catchment areas on its own over time.

In regards to what people call "charter realignment", the District Administrator will only look at manually moving clubs between charters if:

1. an existing junior club folds,
2. an existing junior club relocates,
3. a new junior club is established, or;
4. irreconcilable differences occur within the existing charter alignment. 

When it comes to what this means for fielding tournament teams. for each age group our current situation is as follows:

• Little League - each charter operating in its own right
• Intermediate League - buddy pairs except for Southern Hills & Perth Metro Central who have already agreed to split.
• Junior League - each charter operating in its own right - however we know that LLI will consider buddy pairs on a year-by-year basis where the number of JL club teams is low - we can apply for pairings if needed.
• Senior League - buddy pairs

We trust this provides some clarity and certainty to the way charter catchments will be handled at a district level moving forward and this will be discussed with each charter committee once your upcoming election processes have been completed.