Friday, June 12, 1998:

Attending: Chuck McCracken, John Boger, Dan Pickett, Kevin Wendelboe, Jeff Hoppen, Dee Yoe, Wade Brence, Fred Wendelboe, Cathy Edwards, Ray Wiley, Bill Shook, Amber Fulk

Meeting Started - 8:40 pm

1. Approval of Minutes:

Motion by Dan, second by Wade to:

Motion 1: MSA Accept the minutes from the May 3 BOD meeting

2. Treasurers Report:

Dan handed out current Financial reports. Discussed how each divisions share of overhead is calculated and whether it should be changed slightly to use this year's data instead of last year's. Question raised as to whether adults registered with Junior teams should be in with Junior side of budget. Most felt that tracking that would be a problem and that it seems to even out over the season. Question as to what the money allocated for Boys Development is doing in budget if not being utilized. Motion by John Boger, second by Wade to:

Motion 2: MSA Accept the Treasurer's Report as submitted by Dan.

3. Weekend Topics:

Chuck wanted to discuss what each division will be covering this weekend.

Topics for the Adult Division - possible changes in Points System, Zonal Championships, Regional Championship format, prizes at regular season tournaments, email proxies, BOD attendance policy, roster freeze by Regionals, and Marketing solutions (leagues, weeknight tournaments).

Topics for the Juniors Division - differing tournament structures, developing new teams (boys and 12 and under), more advanced team opportunities, moving Junior Regionals up.

Topics for Officials Division - improving rating system, getting cards and patches to members, setting clinic dates and structure, establishing officiating awards within Region (adults & Juniors)

Meeting adjourned - 10:00 pm

Saturday, June 13, 1998:

Attending: Chuck McCracken, John Boger, Dan Pickett, Kevin Wendelboe, Jeff Hoppen, Dee Yoe, Wade Brence, Fred Wendelboe, Cathy Edwards, Ray Wiley, Bill Shook, Amber Fulk, Karl Owen, Mike Yoe, Marilyn Thompson

Registered Proxy - Regina Brown to Karl Owen

Meeting Started - 9:40 am

Meeting began with Board breaking up into Adult & Junior Division groups:

Adult Division Report:

1. Points:

• We should normalize playoff victories to 2 points per round to account for different tournaments playing playoff rounds 1 game vs. 2 out of 3 games.
• We still would give 1 point for loser of 2-1 playoff
• Byes would receive 2 points
• No participation points for out of region play
• We will test weighting average per tournament twice on last season's results and consider implementing this for next season to give a little more weight for doing well.

2. Prizes (P 5-7 in handbook):

• Provide prizes equal in value to 10% of entry fees received by tournament host
• Require individual prizes for 1st place
• Require prize for second place in multi-court tournaments with individual prizes encouraged, especially for larger divisions

3. Zonals:

• No interest in pursuing zonal championships
• We will pursue reciprocity with nearby regions for AA and age group play

4. Regionals:

• Schedule - Qualifier on Sunday, March 28 (if necessary); Regionals on April 10 & 11
• Need Jr. National or Regional officials in gyms and officiating finals
• Decided all rosters will freeze two weeks before the Qualifier weekend

5. Divisions:

• Minimum size of 10 teams (2 pools)
• Maintain policy that teams play in same divisions at Nationals and Hi Neighbor as they do in Region. (advertise in registration packet and newsletter)
• Use three seeding division instead of two (B/BB, A, HiA/AA); consider calling them Gold, Silver, Bronze. For registration packet: ask teams to sign up for gold/silver/bronze and Hi Neighbor/Nationals divisions
• Be prepared for combined playing divisions (split playoffs)

6. Action Items:

Motion from Division to:

Motion 3: MSA Add to BOD attendance policy "Directors are required to attend scheduled meetings or notify the Office Manager, Commissioner, or Board Chair and submit a proxy." 13-1-1

Motion from Karl, second by Dan to:

Motion 4: MSA allow email proxies for meetings from now on. 13-1-1

Should there be a minimum number of people present (as opposed to proxies) to conduct business? No action taken.

Junior Division Report:

1. All-Region:

• We need a check out procedure so teams turn in ballots before leaving tournament. Tournament Director must turn in within 2 weeks with other reporting requirements. Discussed merit of existing policy. Saw improvement this year.
• Final Ballots will be broken down with name, uniform number, position next season.
• We won't penalize people for not turning in forms but will keep track of who's not turning it in. Decided to poll coaches at the Coaches Meeting as to their feelings on penalizing teams/players for failure to turn in All-Region ballots and their feelings on process overall.

2. Officiating:

• Want to recognize Good Officiating Teams - have a space on one of Report forms to recognize the better officials and work teams. Awards will be given for best at end of year
• Junior Division wants the Officials division to better train the adult officials that work with the junior officials on the stand. Standards need to be set so all adult officials are training the same way and will know how to stop play to make correct calls. Will offer a training tournament for both Adult refs working juniors and junior refs on January 2, 1999.
• Clinics - will limit junior teams to sending 5 players to the Region-sponsored clinics. Cards need to be designed to track clinics, tests, ratings and given out this season.

3. Rule books:

• Would like to give 1 rule book per junior member this season. Will still distribute at Coaches Meeting/tournaments and will mail to late registrants. May impact membership fee. Coaches Meeting/Impact Clinic will be November 21 in Greensboro.

4. Points System:

• Like idea of weighting the Average per tournament twice in final rank. Will add provision that finalists from previous tournament cannot be in same pool for next tournament.

5. Regional Championships:

• Will raise entry fee for Regional Championships to $100 this season. This reflects increased facility costs and desire to upgrade the individual Champions' awards.
• Noted that option 2 of potential Adult & Junior schedules has been agreed upon as best by both Adults & Juniors. Thus, juniors will hold Championships for Power & Club on April 24. Will hold Championships for Open and 17's/15's on May 1 this year. May 8 will be used as possible National tournament preparation by inviting other Regions to send teams.

6. Discussed several of the development/marketing ideas that are further outlined below.

Took a break and then came back to divide into two groups - Marketing/Development and Officials:

Marketing/Development:

How can we increase membership, service, options?

• USSSA approaches city leagues and offers a sanction for $20 per team, provides certified, uniformed officials - As a benefit, we can invite league champions to a B tournament
• Services we can offer to get in the door
• Train officials for leagues - become a booking official for city leagues, etc
• Run tournaments
• Run leagues - run leagues for YMCAs, Boys Clubs, etc to get access to junior members
• Send letter to graduating high school players giving them team rep phone numbers, etc
• Get phone number (800 number?) in phone books
• Get NCNeighbors.com, Park & Rec web sites, etc to link to CR site
• Approach graduating college players
• Approach retiring adult players to coach juniors
• Survey non returning adults
• explore our demographics - how old is our adult population? Where do our populations live? Where don't we live?
• Offer One event memberships into regularly scheduled tournaments, special tournaments

Action plan:

• Pilot programs for Juniors and Adults
• Juniors work with Girl Scouts
• Adults pick an under-served area, identify leads, pilot growth project
• Outdoor boys league as introduction - pair Mike Freeman (interested volunteer) with outdoor rep
• Grab the "little brothers" at a Junior tournament and hold a mini-clinic on an open court
• Getting started
• Can we produce a simple "how to start a club or team" manual
• Reduce the complexity of starting a club or team
• One event registration package
• perhaps offer other teams a discount to cover officiating
• simple entry process
• reduced uniform requirements
• reduced number of signatures
• Bill's goal: get 5 under-served areas to participate in at least one tournament

Officials Division:

Dates for clinics set. Ray will work on a card to have produced to give to clinic attendees.

Adult Clinic Dates: August 8-9, NTT; November 8 - Raleigh; November 15 - Kernersville; November 22 - Charlotte

Junior Clinic Dates: December 5 - Chapel Hill; December 12 - Charlotte

Meeting adjourned at 6:15 pm

Sunday, June 14, 1998:

Attending: Chuck McCracken, John Boger, Dan Pickett, Kevin Wendelboe, Jeff Hoppen, Dee Yoe, Wade Brence, Fred Wendelboe, Cathy Edwards, Bill Shook, Amber Fulk, Karl Owen, Charlie Yang

Registered Proxy - Regina Brown to Karl Owen
Registered Proxy - Marilyn Thompson to Dan Pickett

Meeting Started - 9:15 am

1. Divisions broke up to discuss their budgets for the next year.

• Juniors would like to offer a $5 discount membership fee for 12 & unders and Boys 14's teams. Also want to develop 5 one event packets for 5 groups to try us out for 1 tournament. They will pay the one event fees and the Region will pay the tournament entry.
• The preliminary budget numbers were given to Dan by each group. As stated, Region would operate at a significant deficit next season. We need to revise budget between now and August both by cutting costs and look at raising fees. We do know that USAV registration fee has been raised by $1 per member and probably will go up another $1 after next year. Should keep that in mind. Dan, Boger, Charlie, and Kevin will form Budget Committee to work on before August.

2. Facility Grant Applications:

• We will tell the late application that we received it after the deadline and would consider next year.
• The Facility Grant Committee likes both of the remaining two applications (Rutherfordton and Mars Hill) but wanted to give priority to Mars Hill based on more benefit to members. Motion by Fred, second by John to:

Motion 5: MSA Grant $2400 to Mars Hill for their facility development and encourage them to contribute back into the fund when they can; We will defer the Rutherfordton application until August when we know our budget situation a little better. 8-1

3. Reimbursement of National Entry fees:

Motion by Fred, second by Dan to:

Motion 6: FAILED Not offer any entry fee reimbursement to any of the adult or junior teams that attended the National Championships. 2-4-3

Motion by Karl, second by Boger to:

Motion 7: MSA Table the discussion on offering entry fee reimbursement to our teams attending Nationals until august when our budget is clearer. 7-2

4. Future BOD Meeting Schedule:

BOD set the meeting schedule for 1998/99. Schedule will be available online and is attached for those offline.

Next Meeting - August 23, 1998 at Guilford College YMCA at 9:00 am

Meeting Adjourned at 1:21 pm

Back to Carolina Region's Home Page

Maintained by Kevin M. Wendelboe crvb@ix.netcom.com

Last Updated: Saturday, 18-Dec-1999 12:10 pm EDT