Cochrane Minor Ball administration was a flurry after receiving news Tuesday one of their scheduled diamonds was deemed unusable this season.

Corey O'How, President of Cochrane Minor Ball, says although the Town originally gave the association the thumbs up to use the diamonds, an email received Tuesday rescinded the approval.

"We got an email from the Town of Cochrane just stating we couldn't work out a deal with the developer I believe it is LaVita in Fireside to use that baseball daimnod. We were left scrambling a little bit to find new times and diamonds for kids to play at."

With earlier approval, O'How and administration put the diamond in their rotation to host ball Monday through Thursday. "The Fireside diamond was mainly booked for coach pitch and t-ball kids, ages 5 to 8."

Doing their best to rearrange their completed schedule, times and locations had to change; which is not sitting well with some parents. "I talked to the coach pitch and t-ball coordinators last night and there was some grumblings about the move to a 5 o'clock start time which makes it difficult for some parents to get home and get to ball.

Laurie Drukier, Town of Cochrane, Senior Communications Advisor, says while the diamonds will be ready for use next year, the standards are simply not up to snuff yet.

"Before parks, sports fields, pathways, trees, green spaces, sidewalks and roads are turned over to the Town from developers, they must meet the Town’s established standards. These community amenities and features are FACed (Final Acceptance Certificate) once they meet our standards. This is a normal process the Town works through with all developers before the Town takes over maintenance and ownership. The ball diamonds in Fireside are not ready to be FACed from the developer because the standards haven’t been met yet."

O' How says had they known earlier in the season they would have taken a closer look at their numbers. "I don't know if we would have been able to take as many kids because we are limited by ball diamonds or that or we are just going to have to start utilizing earlier times. We were hoping that the Fireside diamond and there's another one at the Mitford School we were hoping to utilize, which we haven't been able to because of the portables that are still there. Those are two diamonds we were hoping to utilize that we just don't have."

With over 30% growth over the last couple of years, and access to only 11 diamonds, O'How says it is critical to find additional playing fields.

"We expect to continue to grow if we have the diamond capacity. For example this year we have three intermediate teams (aged 13) and last year we had no teams in that age category so if that many kids continue to move up, until we get more diamonds, we are probably going to have to send kids to Calgary to play because we only have one diamond that the senior kids can play on so our options are very limited right now with what we can do."