Winning for Losing
The Play Forever League is unique in many ways but in one respect it is very familiar: it is a place where people unintentionally leave things. Players temporarily lose something. What did I do with my favorite water bottle? Where is my PFL jersey? Alice? Have you seen my sneakers? Lost.
Not lost. The PFL staff, usually the last to leave the gym, pack up all the PFL stuff and in gathering that stuff discover what is temporarily lost. There’s a water bottle, there a jersey. A forlorn pair of sneakers. Found.
We don’t really like picking this stuff up. Jerseys are sweaty. Sneakers stink. Most of the other things have cooties. And then they have to be stored somewhere till claimed. How to turn a negative into a positive? We created the Lost But Found Policy.
To reclaim the lost item, the aggrieved player ponies up $3. That $3 goes into a fund and accumulates. At the end of the PFL Winter/Spring season, every year, we ask players for nominations of non-profits and we choose one and invite a representative of that organization to our PFL Banquet and present the check. Last spring, PFL and the Lost But Found donated $266 to the Charles River Conservancy.
