Independent Travel Team Insurance?

[UVBaseball]

Hi,

Our local organization is considering breaking away from Babe Ruth and having our teams be independent to give us more flexibility in our scheduling. (We've looked at other organizations –*e.g., Legion, AAU, USSSA – but they are either not viable in our area and/or are even more restrictive with scheduling than our Babe Ruth league, so being an independent team seems to be the best option for us.)

Obviously, in this day and age, teams need good insurance. So:

1. Does anyone out there know of companies offering insurance plans for independent amateur baseball teams?

2. Are there any other national organizations that would charter/register & insure a team without requirements to be part of a local league?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[rodk]

Hi,

Our local organization is considering breaking away from Babe Ruth and having our teams be independent to give us more flexibility in our scheduling. (We've looked at other organizations –*e.g., Legion, AAU, USSSA – but they are either not viable in our area and/or are even more restrictive with scheduling than our Babe Ruth league, so being an independent team seems to be the best option for us.)

Obviously, in this day and age, teams need good insurance. So:

1. Does anyone out there know of companies offering insurance plans for independent amateur baseball teams?

2. Are there any other national organizations that would charter/register & insure a team without requirements to be part of a local league?

Thanks in advance for any help!

>>>>companies offering insurance plans for independent amateur baseball teams?

I Googled "team insurance" or "sports insurance," something like that and had a lot of hits. Note that I had very bad luck with brokers responding to online requests for quotes, even using dedicated contact pages. Like they don't want your business. So call. At one point I had a price of $300 for the team for the year from an independent policy.

I also only heard this second hand, but the team insurance is quite good and useful, or at least our team's is, and I understand it came through the AAU's program. A boy on our team had a broken bone during practice, and the claim was settled very quickly. What I was told is that the insurance is basically secondary medical insurance, ie, coverage above and beyond the player's parents' medical coverage, not liability insurance, so there's not really an issue of whose fault the injury is before there's a settlement. In our situtation, the boy's dad had excellent health coverage and the carrier picked up the deductible.

What would be a great idea is if someone like a broker or lawyer on this site who really had all the ins and outs of this would post his information and make it a sticky on this thread. Maybe someday Obamacare is for real and the need for this kind of insurance that supplements supplemental insurance disappears.

>>>>other national organizations that would charter/register & insure a team without requirements to be part of a local league?

Our team is in and out of local leagues, and at the moment we don't have any playing affiliation with anyone. We are members of the AAU for the insurance and so we can enter some tournaments (we played in two AAU weekend tournaments last year), but other than that we are free agents, and most of the better teams follow suit, with or without being members of any national organization. As it happens, one of the dads is a former ballplayer and he owns a baseball complex and he coaches the team and gets paid for use of the facilities by the boys. That is almost typical for the way we play on Long Island, at least among the better teams. The teams attach themselves to some baseball house and winter train there and scour the region looking for playing opportunities.

[UVBaseball]

Thanks for the response. My much bigger concern is the liability insurance more so than the medical. All of our players have full medical insurance, so they would be covered no matter what. But, I really don't want to be uncovered in the unlikely but scary event I ever get sued.

How did you manage to join AAU without having to be affiliated with one of their leagues? Either I have this wrong or this is just a New England AAU thing, but you can't be an "independent" AAU team here. Maybe I need to go straight to AAU national and bypass AAU New England? If you can provide me with any details on how you chartered with AAU, that would be great. Thanks...

[rodk]

Thanks for the response. My much bigger concern is the liability insurance more so than the medical. All of our players have full medical insurance, so they would be covered no matter what. But, I really don't want to be uncovered in the unlikely but scary event I ever get sued. ...

Find yourself a broker and review the policy. Once the medical is picked up though, what other liability issues exist? I don't think the family medical plans or the team insurance looks to recover from a tortfeasor. Your homeowner's or renter's policy and/or their umbrellas may also have coverage for anything really out of the ordinary, but that all has to be double checked.

How did you manage to join AAU without having to be affiliated with one of their leagues? Either I have this wrong or this is just a New England AAU thing, but you can't be an "independent" AAU team here. Maybe I need to go straight to AAU national and bypass AAU New England? If you can provide me with any details on how you chartered with AAU, that would be great. Thanks...

I don't think there's a requirement like that. Check the website for a registration page. Organizations like USA Track and Field and USA Wrestling don't require an athlete or a team to be attached to any of their leagues, and I don't think AAU does either. We are in without being a part of an AAU baseball league; there aren't any of their leagues around here.

I'm pretty sure the affiliation fee is nominal and that entitles you to buy the insurance that you want, but I don't know if it is cheaper to get it from them or independently.

[tg643]

Thanks for the response. My much bigger concern is the liability insurance more so than the medical. All of our players have full medical insurance, so they would be covered no matter what. But, I really don't want to be uncovered in the unlikely but scary event I ever get sued.

How did you manage to join AAU without having to be affiliated with one of their leagues? Either I have this wrong or this is just a New England AAU thing, but you can't be an "independent" AAU team here. Maybe I need to go straight to AAU national and bypass AAU New England? If you can provide me with any details on how you chartered with AAU, that would be great. Thanks...

I registered my travel teams as a 501c and obtained insurance through AAU for five years without ever playing in an AAU event. I hope you understand the value of incorporating your team as a NFP. If you get sued it's better to lose the team's assets than yours (your house).

[UVBaseball]

OK, thanks guys. I called AAU National today and got the scoop that you can (as you guys know and correctly pointed out) register with them without being part of a league. It seems the New England branch had given me bum information, obviously to try to absorb us into one of their leagues.

Related to the NFP, I also found out that if you register as a "Level 3" club with AAU, they set you up as a tax-exempt organization and you can accept tax deductible donations. Sounds like a great deal. Thanks for steering me toward AAU.

[tg643]

OK, thanks guys. I called AAU National today and got the scoop that you can (as you guys know and correctly pointed out) register with them without being part of a league. It seems the New England branch had given me bum information, obviously to try to absorb us into one of their leagues.

Related to the NFP, I also found out that if you register as a "Level 3" club with AAU, they set you up as a tax-exempt organization and you can accept tax deductible donations. Sounds like a great deal. Thanks for steering me toward AAU.

Corporations may ask for your Tax ID# before donating. Local businesses usually don't care. One of my assistants worked for a company that donated money for every hour he volunteered coaching the team. We played 60 games and had two practices per week.