2011 Colorado Division Annual Meeting

Colorado Division Annual Meeting
July 24, 2011

The current Executive Committee was present:
Chairman – Al Axford
Vice-chairman – Gregg Bramblett
Treasurer – Karen Boudreau
Corresponding Secretary – Keith Amann
Recording Secretary – Wendy Amann

Old Business

Last year’s meeting minutes were reviewed and approved as written.

Treasurer’s report:
2009-2010 financials and 2010-2011 financials were reviewed to see a history of the division. For this past year, the division had an income of $8852 and expenses of $6724.20 for a $2128 profit.
There is $15,100 in the checking account and the current assets come to $15126.25 including $118.51 in a referee training fund.
The report was accepted and approved.

Prepayment:

The qualifiers were required to use prepayment and the other tournaments could use prepayment at the host club’s discretion. The financial results of this are as follows: $3240 was paid into askfred; $3139 was paid to the division from askfred; $106 fee was kept by askfred as well as an additional $87 in “fees per fencer”; the division issued $646 in refunds to auto-qualified fencers (and/or those whose event wasn’t held) which amounted to 35 checks.
Discussion of the pros and cons ensued. Jill likes it; Jack sees a separate issue from pre-registration; Tom wants consistency. Karen noted that the difficulty is the amount of time for the treasurer. She recommends prepaying the registration fee only since that is not refunded in any case. Gregg noted that we need to be careful between being punitive and productive. Al noted that the prepayment option filters out those who go to the local event but not on to the national event. Salem wants to avoid more work for the division. Keith likes Karen’s recommendation. Tom wants to allow last minute/day of registration for fencers but with a severe penalty attached. Jack and Sharol both agree with this.
Nathan made a motion to use askfred for registration and prepayment for qualifiers and we collect the non-refundable $15 registration fee ahead of time only, the event fees will be paid on the day of the event. The motion was seconded and approved. Kathryn asked if the event could be opened on askfred the day of the event so that fencers or families that forget their cash or checkbooks could pay on-line right there – it was noted that askfred does not allow this feature at this time.

Website update:

Keith gave an update on the status of the website and what its usage is to date. Previous to our current working website, we had about 400 people on an email distribution list but to date, we only have about 100 people registered on the website. We do not get very many hits in general and this is disturbing since the original intent was to communicate information to the membership. Keith would also like some feedback on type of content.
Discussion ensured: Kathryn feels that the email feature is very useful; Jack would like to see national event summaries and Keith noted that this does happen. Aaron didn’t even know the website existed until recently but thought is was meeting the objectives Keith just noted. Tom suggested having regular emails from the website to the club owners to remind them to spread the word about the website. It was suggested to add something to each tournament posting about the website. Kathryn would like to see the website be more kid friendly with pictures and icons that kids see on facebook, etc. Al noted that he believes this is the best website in all of the USFA divisions but it doesn’t have the USFA logo. Keith mentioned that the cost is about $75 - $80 per year and we are about to renew it. All of the club owners have ability to upload content.

Referee Development:

Gregg Bramblett updated the list of referees and will send it to Keith to get it uploaded on the website. Gregg needs help from the club owners and the membership to validate and correct this list. There were two clinics hosted by Tom and Jill and they covered all of the costs.

There was a lot of discussion on this topic: We really need to get those south of the metro area interested in taking clinics/becoming referees. Tom had a good turn-out at his clinic. Jack wants a practical clinic rather than a rules clinic. He believes mentoring is a way to further improve our referees, i.e. hire a referee to watch and talk with referees rather than work themselves. Karen mentioned that maybe the division can fund something to increase referee development. Jill hosted a referee development tournament where the fencers understood that newer referees were working. Gerri observed and talked to the referees and they all got their ratings increased. Tom likes the idea of more division support – maybe a type of scholarship to each club to be used for referee development. Karen asked the membership if they wanted division support and those in attendance at the meeting said yes. Karen also asked if the division should plan and run some of their own and not leave them up to clubs. Tom prefers that the clubs have flexibility. Gregg is going to continue to coordinate this effort and he’d like to see it move around. Jack would like an effort made to have rated referees get together and discuss rule changes so they keep up to date. Kathryn suggested adding a forum to the website for discussing the referee issues that come up, specific calls that are made and questioned and should have further discussion (off the strip), etc. It can also get the kids excited about refereeing.

New Business

Proxies collected – Keith has 5
Wendy has 1
Kathryn has 21
Nathan has 13
Jack has 10
Jill has 6
Tom has 3

For the new executive committee –
Chairman: Wendy and Al were nominated, Wendy was voted in
Vice-Chairman: Gregg was nominated and reelected
Treasurer: Karen was nominated and reelected
Corresponding Secretary: Keith was nominated and reelected
Recording Secretary: Al was nominated and elected

Colorado Cup Tournaments:

Regarding Men’s and Women’s events –
Nathan is the RYC Coordinator for our region.
USFA has asked that RYC’s divide the events whenever possible. For the Colorado Cup awards, Nathan thinks there should be separate men’s and women’s events as well. He would like to see a separate women’s event no matter what. He is OK with other youth events being mixed.
Nathan thinks the Colorado Cup Awards should be divided as well.
Nathan would like to pull the RYC away from the Cup tournaments. He is frustrated that he has to pay USFA and the Colorado Division
Nathan had tried to get an SYC here but was turned down. We need to prove to USFA that we can hold an SYC.
Jack mentioned that the coordinator does not sanction events – it is done by the EC of each division.
Jill is concerned that if we don’t have mixed events, girls won’t have good competition.
It was decided that the RYC will have Men’s and Women’s events if there are 4 or more women. If not, the events will be combined except Y14. Jill thinks this is fine as long as it is published up front.
For the cup events, there will not be mixed event awards. It was suggested to pull the top women out of the mixed events but askfred can’t do this – it would have to be done manually and posted on the division website. Jill volunteered to do this.

Nathan made a motion to have 5 youth tournaments, 2 RYC’s that Nathan will host, each to have separate Men’s and Women’s events if there are more than 4 women; otherwise they will be combined except for Y14 where there will not be a mixed nor a minimum number of women to fence. The division will get extra plaques for the top 4 women in Y10, Y12, and Y14 and there will be no mixed awards in these youth groups. The motion was seconded and approved.