VSA Board Meeting
5/16/2010
Officers in attendance: Dave Milne, Bill Strachan, Shannon Howard, Paul Frascione, Scott Thoden, Allison Guth, Kevin Driscoll, Mir Rezadoost, Dave Fitz, Alice Riley, and DeAnna Lindonnguyen
Others in attendance: Gus Donolo – Technical Director, and John Wagoner - Fundraising
Meeting was called to order at 7:05 pm.
Motion was made to approve minutes from Board meeting held on 4/11/2010. Meeting minutes were approved.
New Business:
- Minutes from the last meeting stated, “All travel team’s VSA fees are in.” This has since changed and noted that the WAGS fees have not yet been given to VSA.
- The final walk-thru with the turf company has been done. It has not yet been done with the Park Authority Engineer, county building inspector, Dave M. and the site contractor.
- VSA can proceed with the fence around the new field. We have received a proposal from Bietzell Fence for $21,930 but have not yet received anything from Long Fence. Once Dave M receives the proposal from Long Fence he will email the board with it to help speed along the approval process.
- The board would like to see a Curlex mat around the field instead of the straw mat that is there now.
- The Park Authority has decided to use the remaining proffer monies to put water and sewer at the park. If any monies are left it will go to the park for lights. Dave M has let the PA know VSA’s disappointment with this decision. The PA has come to VSA with an alternative method to fund the lights at the park. The board needs to keep the light project in front of the Park Authority board to get this done quickly. VSA needs to get an absolute estimate on the lights for the fields.
- The VSA board elections will be held next month for the board officers: President, Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary. Dave M will not stand for reelection this time, Lynn will continue for another year, Scott intends to step up for President and De will continue for another year.
- Nominations need to be made for President and Vice President.
- For President:
Dave M will nominate Bill Strachan
Paul F will nominate Scott Thoden
Kevin D will nominate Mir Rezadoost
- The election of the officers will be held in the June meeting.
- A suggestion was made that a committee be selected to look for Allison’s replacement. The board members that should be on this committee are Bill, Scott, Mir, De, and Kevin. This committee needs to contact the 3 candidates that expressed interest in this position. They are Paul Frascione, Kim Cologne, and Patty Bunner. It needs to be confirmed that Patty Bunner is still interested in the position.
- Registration for the fall season should begin the first or second week of June and close July 10. After July 10 late registration should begin.
- Since SFL already has an end of season tournament, a decision was made that if a SFL team would like to participate in the All-Star tournament they would need to pay for it. With this decision, the SFL fees for the fall season will remain the same.
- A motion was made by Paul Frascione that the VSA fall registration fees remain the same. The motion was seconded by Mir Rezadoost. The motion was approved by unanimous vote.
- VSA needs to have the lightning policy on the website.
- The board decided that the Facebook page should be taken down immediately. It could be a team page but it should not be associated with VSA Heat.
Publicity:
- Mir presented the progress on the new VSA website. To see an example of what the website will look like, visit the Birmingham United Soccer page http://www.birminghamunited.com/index.html
- The website will be a wider screen and centered. There will be different windows on the main page for pictures, YouTube, weather, field closures, etc. Even links to facebook and twitter could be put on later.
- This update will not change any tabs and we will not lose any information that is already there.
- Next Monday he should have the first draft from Demosphere.
Travel Commissioner:
- Dave presented to the board the academy teams proposal.
- A survey was sent out earlier in the year to find out what changes if any parents wanted to see in the program. Some of these changes were included in the new proposal. Communication needs to be better and now the teams will have a beginning and middle meeting with their coach. The academy program will now be a year long program and this means that more will be included in the contract. The contract for the academy program will now be held by VSA. The teams will still collect the monies but they will pay VSA and VSA will pay STBW. There will be a difference between the Blue and Gold teams such as the blue will play in more tournaments
Technical Director:
- Dates for all academy team try-outs have been set and monies have been discussed with Dave Fitz
- Parents are pretty happy with the academy this year. The U9 boys blue academy team has not been defeated this year and is drawing interest.
- Gus has been approached by other VSA travel teams asking how they become an academy team.
- Scott has met with Gus and wanted to know how Gus could be more involved with the teams. They talked about maybe a tip of the week or a blog on the website to allow more members to be able to talk to Gus or maybe even an email link.
- To give the club a second set of eyes and to let us know how the club is doing, STBW trainers and maybe even Gus will be going around to practices.
- Two VSA travel teams are in the final four of the State Cup. They are the U12 boys blue and the U13 girls blue.
Fundraising Director:
- The Papa John fundraiser is going well about $6,800 has been collected. So far about 9% of the travel teams and 25% of the recreational teams have turned in either their money and/or their cards.
- VSA is planning on having a VSA Day at Pizza Margarita on June 12 during the World Cup.
- The VSA golf fundraiser will be held on September 22 at Stonewall Golf Club. The prices will remain the same from last year and hopefully more recreational parents will be involved. Flyers will be put on the website, emailed to travel teams and will be put into the recreational coaches packets for the fall season.
- Most of the sponsors are looking for mass emails. Sponsors that were interested were New SwimKids Swim Club, ADT, UniRoyal, and Jumping Jimmies.
- It was discussed that maybe VSA could do a quarterly newsletter that would advertise these businesses. This would provide updates to VSA members along with advertising for sponsors.
- VSA is looking for any new tournament dates. The best dates we are looking at are around mid-November and maybe looking at a showcase tournament to be held in the fall.
Meeting was adjourned at 9:40pm.
