Before we start looking forward to next season, we need to recognize some great achievements made by two teams in the Region this season. For the first time ever, we had a team win a National Junior Qualifier (and not only one team but TWO)!! Congratulations to CJV-Carolina Reign who won the 16 Club at the Colorado Crossroads Qualifier and CJV-Slam, who won the 17 Club at the Big South Qualifier. Both teams will be representing the Carolina Region at the 2005 Junior Olympic Volleyball Championships in Salt Lake City this summer. We had several other teams do extremely well at other inter-Regional tournaments. Some are mentioned in the Regional Achievements section of this newsletter. In order to get this newsletter out now, we will wait until the next newsletter in August/September to give a complete rundown of results from the 2005 US Open Championships in Denver (Congratulations to International Jammers - National Champions in the Men's A Division!); the 2005 Girls Junior Olympics in Salt Lake City; the 2005 Junior Invitational in Louisville; the 2005 Boy's Junior Olympics in Louisville, and the 2005 High Performance Championships in Austin. I know we'll have some exciting things to report!
The Carolina Region Board of Directors will begin planning for the 2005/2006 season at their annual retreat August 19-21, 2005 in Chapel Hill. If you have any suggestions for next season, please send them in so our board can consider them at the retreat. They will also be voting on the long awaited proposed Bylaw revisions. If approved, the makeup and stucture of the board will be changed considerably. We will still need plenty of volunteers and input to keep the region running smoothly. If you are interested in serving the Region, please contact us!
The preliminary schedules for adults and juniors have been posted to the web site, so you can begin planning your calendar. We'll be updating all the forms for the coming season in the next few months. Please don't beginning using the forms until they say "2006" or "2005/2006" next to it on the Forms section. The registration packets will be posted and mailed in September.
It's hard to say what's new in store for 2005/2006 at this point since the retreat hasn't happened yet. But, I can inform everyone that the registration process will change slightly next season. We will be using USA Volleyball's new online database for our recordkeeping next season. We were one of four beta-testers for the system this season, but we also kept our regular database as backup and to print forms, etc. Next year, we will only use the online system. This means several of the forms (tournament entries, rosters to name a few) will look different and your method of delivery may be different (email and/or club directors print themselves through their own record!). All members from this season are already in the system so to renew your membership requires only to log in to your account and click the renew button. We still need the signature on the waiver/release mailed in and payment, but it should be much simpler to renew each season. USAV is also working on allowing a club director to upload all their club's info into the system. We're still developing the procedures so much more will follow with the registration packet. But, we're excited about this new capability. Bear with us as new procedures are developed, but hopefully this will eventually be easier on all of us.
That's it for now. Thanks, as always, for your support of this great sport. Have a great summer!