Executive Board Members Present: Kevin Chapman, Ron Russell, Jackie Stein, Shawn Panson

 

Others in attendance: Steve Lichtenstein, Linda DeMilt, Larry Charlip, Jeff Weinberg, Sean Bluni, Chris Smith, Peter Swaneurder, Theresa Chao-Bergman, Chris Pirrery, Suresh Jaswal, Brian O’Leary, Bill Kramer.

 

 

Minutes from January Meeting. Approved.

 

Treasurer’s Report (Shawn): Finances are fine for now – registration fees are coming in, and expenses are not yet ramping up. But, we are behind on sponsorships (economy) and we need to have a game plan for ramping up for more sponsors for this year. Question about sponsor levels. Info is on the web site. Andy will be able to report more at next meeting.  Shawn has financial records for anyone who wants a copy.

 

Registration (Linda). We are doing OK – relative to last year, we are actually down only about 12 kids from last year, and that is measured from end of the month. T-ball is up. Softball has come in with a lot lately and we have multiple teams at all levels. Baseball Majors are done. (Managers need to send in manager and two coaches designated for each team. Linda needs to have all the data entered by two weeks after the start of the season. Sean B and Jackie will send in consolidated data for majors. Coordinators should send in the rosters and manager/coach designated as soon as possible after the draft.) Note that report on registration includes some “pending” players who have not yet paid. Note – any coaches who happen to get birth certificates by mistake should forward to Linda.

 

Player Agent (Jackie) Nothing to report. (which is a good thing.)

 

Softball report (Ron). Making good progress. Recruiting coordinators (Chris Smith) along with two asst. coordinators for Rookies with John Radey. Nick Schiara and Jeff (minors). Still looking for a coordinator for Majors. May have to relax the general rule that coordinators can’t have children in the division in order to find a majors coordinator. There are a few girls who are playing up to higher league. May need to adjust fees. Looks like we’ll have 3 majors teams, 5 minors teams, and 6-7 rookie teams. Majors and minors teams will be playing interleague games and playing with CP as part of our league. May need to rotate intra-league games with minors in order to balance schedule.  Note rules changes from Williamsport for this season. Includes allowing in-season tournaments with other leagues and also amended pitching rules so that we can have in-season tournaments that don’t impact regular season pitching rules. Ron will be discussing this at the District 12 level and including the possibility of hosting an in-season tournament. Can combine teams to form tournament teams. Might play over Memorial Day. Good experience for some players who might not otherwise play post-season.  Softball clinics are continuing. Fielding and batting clinics are continuing. Seems to be well attended.

 

Baseball Report (Chris absent. Kevin & league coordinators report)

 

Majors (Sean) draft done and teams formed. Need to call up 2 players. 8 teams are already practicing at the indoor. (had a conflict with clinics already). Will need to assign team names and work on schedule.

 

Minors (Steve). Had tryouts on Saturday. Draft is next Tuesday. Scott & Randy are working on number of teams and how many 9s to call up to play Minors. Want to have 8 teams and have already designated 8 managers. Minors numbers are 81 plus 15 who dropped down from Majors for total of 96. May not need that many 9s. 

 

AAA (Shawn P) Have enough kids for 6 teams. Will call up enough 8s to replace the 9s who go up to Minors. Workouts Feb. 28^th (Saturday) at the indoor.

 

Rookies (     ) Have about 50 boys registered for A. Looks like about 6 teams. Team selection mid-March. Looks like we have 6 managers. Plenty.

 

T-ball – lots of registrations. 

 

Clinics. Winding down. 2 weeks left. Clincs were highly registered, even some that are over-subscribed. Some conflict with majors teams. Will attempt to work around the majors teams who are trying to have practice time. After next week, clincs are done. Larry suggests that we have a parents meeting for T-ball some time in March – to recruit parents as volunteers and to explain program to parents. At the indoor.

 

Note district coach clinic on March 1.

 

Note also Safety clinics on March 8, March 11, or March 12. Coaches are encouraged to attend.

 

Umpires:  clinics start next week. Will attempt to have Youth umps do minors games this year. Returning umps must attend on-field clinic. Payment will be made via Shawn/Treasurer. Shawn wants to have the master list of umpire schedules from coordinators so that he can cross check against chits.

 

Big Brother/Sister: -- Larry – early in registration. Have 17 so far. Had total of 40 last year. Expect about the same this year. Will make assignments later in the spring. Kids seem excited. Larry will work with coordinators.

 

Sponsorships: Shawn is worried about not having as many sponsors as last year, which will affect revenue for the league. Andy will report at next meeting.

 

Merch. Ellen (absent). Shawn shows some revenue coming in. Lisa Berger is volunteering to help Ellen. Selling a lot of helmets. Have a good inventory at the moment and good control over it. ($702 in merch since October)

 

Website (Bill) Some new features are up and running. Registration system is working well. Need to work on getting the league coordinators to update the league rules statements that are posted on the web site. Need to try to format them similarly, put all safety statements in one place, etc. Make the site easier to navigate as far as finding rules and procedures. Need to post information on tryouts on the web site (or not). Any articles about the upcoming spring season can be posted at the discretion of the league coordinators. Bill says that he needs (please!) to send in complete articles to post on the site. Don’t send him instructions – send him complete chunks of text and full articles and post as is. Bill will read it, but don’t expect him to compose for you! 

 

 

Indoor. Sharon Davis is coordinating. All coordinators need to make sure that Sharon knows what you want and get the time slots from her. Coordinators need to make sure that Sharon knows all schedules, including cancellations.

 

 

Comments/additional issues. 

 

Schedule for Sunburst tournament day in May 30-31. Jackie has a proposal. She will work on scheduling soccer games so that they don’t conflict with baseball based on individual players on Majors/minors teams. In order to handle this, Sunburst needs to have Conover in the a.m. Would require T-ball and rookies to play early at Ward and have Majors/Minors play later in the day. Would work – may have to push back the Majors/minors games to slightly later in the day than on a normal Saturday. Thinks that it will be possible to schedule around the conflicts.  

 

Brian – in Majors, can have games even if soccer players can’t make it. Minors may also present some problems. Brian will schedule around and will work with Jackie. Everyone says they will work together to make it happen.

 

Consensus to adopt this plan and make it work for everyone.

 

Bill suggests that we should put the overall schedule (end dates, playoffs) on the web site to tell people when the dates are!

 

[end 8:33]