Assessments, Drafts, Teams!

When you register for RPLL and pick a division, you're indicating eligibility and interest, not locking in placement.

Registration puts your player in the pool to be considered. That's it.

We do our best to communicate this during the registration process, but I'll be honest — our registration system (SportsConnect) has real limitations in how much detail and nuance we can convey.

That's a big part of why this newsletter and our all-hands emails exist.

From Minor B through Juniors, we use a true draft in a snake-order format.

The league doesn't assign players to teams — managers do.

They build rosters using assessment data, league age requirements, and division capacity rules.

Assessments give managers shared information: hitting, fielding, throwing, running scores from both volunteer managers AND independent assessors.

We normalize the data across ages, which allows managers to create rankings if they choose.

Note: This is one key input, but not the only one. Managers also bring their own observations and instincts to the process.

Tee Ball, Farm, and MAPS work differently. Those are developmental divisions — focused on instruction, fundamentals, and building a foundation before players move into the assessments-based divisions.

The age ranges for those divisions are: Tee Ball (League Age 5–6), Farm (League Age 6–7), and MAPS (League Age 7–8).

In these divisions, we do hold a draft — managers select players in a snake-order format — but there's no assessment data guiding it.

Instead, managers use qualitative factors: kids they know, families they've worked with, and yes, friend and carpool requests.

In fact, Tee Ball, Farm, and MAPS are the only divisions where requests like these are considered for the Spring season.

They're not guaranteed, but they are taken into account.

But…MAPS also catches league-age 8 players who aren't drafted to Minor B once the 9s and 10s are placed.

So while it's a developmental division, it's still connected to the same capacity system we're about to walk through.

Little League International uses “league age”, which is how old your player will be on August 31st of the current year. Not birthday. Not grade.

Two kids in the same 4th grade class might have different league ages, which could mean different eligibility:

That overlap is by design. It creates room for players to land where they fit developmentally, not just where their age puts them on a chart.

We draft from the top down, starting with Juniors. Each division has mandatory ages that must be placed first.

In Juniors, we must carry every league-age 15 and 14 who registered.

Once we know how many 15s and 14s we have, that tells us total roster capacity — because teams max out between 11–14 players, and we can only build as many teams as we have managers.

If most Juniors spots are filled by 15s and 14s, there might only be a few slots for 13s. If there are more 13s than spots? They waterfall down to Intermediate.

Then it repeats.

Intermediate must carry all 13s (including the overflow from Juniors), which determines spots for 12s. And so on.

Same thing happens at the younger end: Minor B must place all 9s and 10s first. If there are more 8s than remaining spots, those 8s move to MAPS.

And here's where it gets real for some families: a league-age 8 who attends assessments and wants to be considered for Minor B is doing exactly the right thing. Attending assessments puts them in the pool — it doesn't guarantee a spot.

If Minor B fills up before their name is called in the draft, they flow into MAPS. It's not a reflection of their player. It's capacity.

Think of it like pouring water into stacked containers. You fill the top one first. What overflows, falls into the next. The size of each container — determined by registration numbers, roster limits, and manager availability — controls how much spills over.

This is why a league-age 9 who assessed for Minor A might end up in Minor B. Minor A filled with 11s and 10s, and there weren't enough spots.

It's capacity and math — not a mistake.

League-age 12 players who register for the Majors division can register and select “Majors Only” as an option, and lock in placement in this division. Full stop.

This is a Little League International rule, and this hard requirement can make the waterfall impact especially challenging in Majors and Minor A, as we don’t control the population of 12s who select this option each season.

You want to play Majors as a League-age 12yr old? You get Majors.

For every other division, placement is determined by the draft and capacity.

When kids play with the same group for years and suddenly end up apart, that's hard. I get it.

It's worth noting: in our younger divisions — Tee Ball, Farm, and MAPS — friend requests are part of the process. We take them into account when we can.

But once we get to Minor B and above, the draft has to work differently.

If managers could coordinate picks to keep friend groups together, the draft becomes a negotiation.

Within a season or two, you'd have stacked teams and lopsided rosters. The kids on the wrong end pay the price.

So we protect the process.

Managers pick independently. Prior teams don't carry over. Sometimes best friends end up apart.

It's a trade-off — because the alternative hurts more kids long-term.

This spring: 56 teams, nearly 620 players, across Tee Ball to Juniors plus our Challenger Division.

We're the largest league in District 32.

Every season, some players land in a different division than they registered for — not because something went wrong, but because the waterfall played out. That's the system working.

We're solving for capacity, roster balance, manager availability, and age requirements simultaneously — all through unpaid parent volunteers.

We don't always nail the communication. We're working on that.

But the structure itself is designed to give every kid a fair shot, regardless of division.

CLICK HERE to sign up for the players clinics

CLICK HERE to sign up for the coaches clinics

(REGISTRATION DEADLINE - Saturday, February 7, 2026)