2017 January/Winter Meeting Minutes

Council/Directors in attendance: Dean, John D, Brett, George, Scott, Matt, Hutch, Jim Powell, Wick, Jean, Gary, Jon T, Pat Byrne

Membership:
Bill Baker
MeriLou
Tonya Maurer
Miriam Pomilio
John Paulovich
Hutch & John Vanderbuilt
There was a man sitting between John and Dawn but I forgot his name
Dawn Gearheart
Lewis Fields
Chip Shand
Al & Peggy
Amy & Kacey
Ralph
Karen Melnick

3 new faces in the membership crew
3 new faces at the council table
30 people overall

Treasurer (Marie)
1. Deficit of the $4018
2. Note that Tonya owes $325 for the tent
3. The $850 for Jr Reg Support fees – this was for 2014 regionals reimbursement
USA Water Ski (Doug)
1. Membership taskforce
  1. Focus was on the industry engagement, there isn’t a report for the BOD at this time.
2. HQ relocation
  1. Lake Myrtle new location is in process, ground breaking happened
  2. HQ staff is in a temp location
  3. RECOMMENDATION: USA Waterski BOD votes are based on membership. College members have AWSA as their secondary membership; this should be taken into consideration for the AWSA seats on the board.
AWSA (Pat)
1. Tournament Sanctions
  1. Include the latitude/longitude in with the sanctions to allow the new AWSA app to show the site on google-Maps/activate directions
2. Building a tool (Mark Crone) that will allow to email prior and current skiers from your specific site
3. Jeff’s 11 point plan:
  1. Make things fun again
  2. Better Marketing – social media committee; more photos on the websites
  3. Juniors
  4. Open Ski Nights – allow others to come visit our private sites (i.e wed night open ski sites)
    1. Should also get
  5. Mini Course – helps getting entry level folks involved
  6. Better membership package is in the works
  7. Additional Formats for tournaments
    1. By Dec there were 4 bids for Nationals by opening up the options
  8. Start to promote pro skiers – get the pros more involved
  9. Officials Programs – this needs to be a priority for 2017
    1. Senior Clinic in the Las Vegas
  10. Teams – still on the list
    1. Yes this still the expectation for Team at regionals and nationals
4. Bob Caston – ‘on the edge’ – looking to help with adaptive skiing; reached out to Pat to socialize the ideas around getting adaptive immersed into our sport
Officials Program (tonya … notes)
Regionals Tournament
1. Slalom only for the prelim/finals and Women’s cup
2. Need to work through the scheduling for the finals/Women’s cup – when to actually to hold the events
3. Need to be sure we clearly communicate what score lands in the score book for the regional score (s) in the ranking list
4. Can we do handicap approach for the Women’s cup? Or you get into the
5. Side note (Hutch) – we use to be losing non-competitive skiers; now we are losing the competitive skiers. We need to retain the skiers we have now.
6. Revenue opportunity to open up practice on Monday (add to the budget numbers), we will need to staff the practice lakes.
7. Have the tent up the entire week (will this change the cost???)
8. Level 8 – don’t want to win artificially; but also don’t want to take placements away from others
9. 20^th anniversary of the first regionals at Twin Lakes (2007)
10. RECOMMENDATION Twin Lakes objective is to bring a premier site to the region; the model we have come up with might be able to be an approach other sites can take advantage
11. 2007 – we ran 3 days, only one day was used for concurrently.
12. RECOMMENDATION Evaluate if there are other opportunities to rent equipment from other clubs/sites (Brett’s option)
13. RISK Do we need 3 boats from each manufacture? What happens if we have a broken boat, and the sibling is on the other lake running an event?
14. ADD Marie Fields to the drivers, assuming that she / Lewis will camp on site
15. ADD Doug Robbins, Hutch Haines to the volunteer officials
16. AWARDS – Amy Craig will lead the awards
17. Officials are loaded, add the Marie.
Nationals
1. Requesting a total 34 officials that is shared across the regions
2. Judges – need 2 – Gary Noll/Dave Knight
3. Scorer – need 1 – Dave Allen
4. Drivers – need 1 (must be 3 event sr) – Matt Byrne
5. RECOMMENDATION (Doug) – be sure the AWSA President/council is able to continue to rotate through the chiefs through the different regions (one of the 2018 bids indicated that the chiefs were preloaded/assigned by the LOC.
Sanction your tournaments; Julie needs to compile the information by Jan 27^th .
1. Older boats can be used (current year through 2014)
State Discussion – NY
1. Pangaea closing down for 2017 due to cost/limited members and supporters
2. Promo boat arrangements are geared towards sites that have a high volume of skiers/members – can’t afford the $80K
State Discussion – PA
1. Membership is drying up
Promo Boat #s (from the manufactures):
1. 17 boats in the east
2. State in the best shape: VA – 5, 2 cc, 1 mc, 1 cc
3. 6 states across the nation with severe shortage – NY
4. MC 6
5. SN 5
6. CC 4
7. MA 2
8. Can there be a lease program for the promo boats?
9. The manufactures are focusing on premier events, in order to do that they must obtain credits; should there be a mandate that credits come from traveling boats.
10. Tow Boat Committee also looking at weighted draw for nationals.
11. There is no longer an ‘expense’ line in their P&L
12. SN will no longer send boats to tournaments that have less than 17 skiers; they don’t want to pay boat owners to pull boat more 200 hrs
13. SN will be looking to have their promo boat owners to go to ‘swerving Saturdays’ – which will be intro events on public water
14. Clarence is not a promo boat owner any longer
15. Skip is not a promo boat owner any longer
16. RECOMMENDATION promo owners to pull more events than they are today
17. RECOMMENDATION Manufactures should only receive credit based on Promo Boats only, don’t include private/club boats.
18. 20% of the tournaments must be pulled to get credit
19. RECOMMENDATION (Scott) Pull data out of the scoring system, see how many of the tournaments are pulled by promo boats vs. private/club boats
State Discussion – MD
1. 5 ski clubs, 2 on rivers, 2 on private, 1 on public lakes
2. There are no jumps in MD, now we have 3 jumpers
3. PA – there used to be 14, now they are down 1 jump
4. There are 3 jumpers, and it’s too expensive to build a jump
5. Skier Ranking RECOMMENDATION: enable, for state championships, to allow jump to happen at one tournament and slalom/trick at another – then allow; to allow for qualifications for regionals/nationals
State Discussion – VA
1. June 27^th – full junior development event (total of 5 lakes)
2. Family fun day is scheduled at Timber Lake
3. The Tug Off – handicap process with a tug off, add in a competitive and fun (costumes and funny team names)
4. IDEAS: how do we promote the sport? It’s extreme sport – how do you ‘capitalize’ on it?
5. IDEAS: how do we promote the sport? It’s a family sport – where do we marketing to the family’s?
6. What got us involved? Our parents? Friends? TV ….. social media is now the “old” TV.
7. FUND –
Nominating – no new info
Jr Dev Clinic
1. ASK: get your clinic dates out to TG so she can create a calendar; coordinate before the regional tournament guide is published
2. ASK: can we have a Jr take on a video challenge?
3. Several juniors have landed on national teams
TC
1. Need to ensure that we have better end course quality.
2. Jerry Jackson has noted that we need to avoid conflict of interest, because there are sites that have TC in the club; need to have the TC outside the club to inspect the sites; there needs to be a sampling the L/R tournament results (video, specs) for validation.
3. There are two situations in 2015 where there were questionable driving paths; however the video quality was poor, no tape was on the video, the scorers didn’t note what driver was driver was driving an event. This will be discussion at the BOD meeting.
4. Boat Guides – there will be a choice of the site owners to widen the boat guides. This will be optional.
Regional Site Committee
1. We do not have a bid for 2018
Announcers – no new news
By Laws
1. Changes as presented by Steve Vincent need to be approved:
2. Motion – Matt, Second – Gary, all approved: Dean, John D, Brett, George, Scott, Matt, Hutch, Jim Powell, Wick, Jean, Gary, Jon T
IAC
1. Quinn / Blake on the national junior team
2. It is a good group
National level
1. Jim Grew stepping down after this year, Show Ski rep will take USA Water Ski pres
Judge / Scorer
1. Working to get the numbers up to run the tournament
2. Ensure that the officials have the skills to run tournaments
3. Updated the reg/sr judge & scorers test
4. Changes to the policy manual
5. Linked videos for trick calling process (up to 6000 points)
6. Working to try and adapt differently to retain the ratings
7. One clinic a year will count towards on tournament credit
8. There are online clinic options
9. Reg Judge can be 17 yrs old
10. Sr Judge can be 18yrs old
11. Ast can start at 13, but official at 14
12. Level 9 – an fast track to senior
13. Top Half of level 8 – you can fast track to reg …. Can help the C tournaments since you need 3 reg judges for a Class C.
14. Once someone has an open rating they can fast track
15. Move the act of becoming an Ast rating to something that can be more automated.
16. RECOMMENDATION – Able to track the aspiring officials in the scorers system so that it’s easier accumulate credits that can be used to move to a Ast official (Judge/Scorers/Drivers/Safety). Digitize the process for becoming Ast officials.
17. RECOMMENDATION – how can we distinguish between the administrative roles (Chief Judge) vs. the ability to / or have senior rating (meaning fast tracked skiers to senior … can they really be CJ).
18. ACTION – need metric reports that illustrate the increased numbers for the officials; basically how many officials do we have in the east and how many are new and how many have lost?
Jr Dev Nationals
1. Working on an event at nationals and when the awards will occur.
Rules
1. Dave Clark will be stepping down
2. Discussion was focused on the aiming for those rules that are contributing people leaving the sport.
3. Proposal 1:
  1. Change rule 3.02
  2. Change age divisions from M5/W5 and older back to 10 year age increments to align with IWWF age divisions.
  3. Reason behind Rule Change: Those age divisions in AWSA were previously at 10 year increments, and the IWWF matched AWSA age divisions when it set up its senior divisions. The discrepancies cause AWSA disadvantages in the “transition years” which do not align with IWWF. Additionally, the lack of skiers in a local tournament, or even a regional tournament does not promote the idea of competition.
  4. Pros: Better alignment with IWWF, and more skiers on the dock.
  5. THE CHANGE: the title / name of the division
  6. THE CHANGE: you can remain in a division where you are comfortable; example if you are 35 you can still ski in Men 25+ …. You can flux between the divisions. You can have multiple ranking scores.
  7. AO can only be 100% in one division.
  8. Kids can go up, Adults can go down
  9. Approval – Dean, John D, Brett, George, Scott, Matt, Hutch, Jim Powell, Wick, Jean, Gary, Jon T
  10. Rejected – None
4. Proposal 2 – ELITE DIVISION COMPETITION
  1. Objective was to create a level 10, and address the overall force
  2. The top 5 in a division at regionals, if any are a level 9 they will be removed from the equation to allow for non-level 9 skiers qualify for regionals.
  3. Level 10 – rating / fixed score – it will not be a floating score like the regular rankings.
  4. You only need to qualify for level 9 once dujring the year (nationals to nationals ) you have the option to ski in level 9
  5. Level 10 is not optional.
  6. Regional / National – need to ski all events in one division for their AO. And can also ski in an elite division that they qualify for. They will be able to ski twice ( LOC will need to figure out the entry fees )
  7. All other tournaments – all level 9 / 10 – can use their elite event and drag down to their regular division for an OA.
  8. The level 10 will be setting the rating once a year only if there are 5 skiers in that
  9. Approval – – Dean, John D, Brett, George, Scott, Matt, Hutch, Jim Powell, Wick, Jean, Gary, Jon T
  10. Abstained: George, Jean, Jon
  11. Not in the room: Chris
5. Proposal 12 – Zero Based Scoring
  1. This was the rule that was created last year for the kids to help the kids transition from B2/G2 to G3/B3.
  2. C, E, L (AWSA)
  3. Yes for Nationals & Regionals (really???)
  4. Ties – go to the max speed. Rule 10.13C
  5. Tonya (age 49) can ski Women 35+ on June 6^th and max speed at 32 mph and shorten the line.
  6. Tonya (age 49)
  7. Approval – – Dean, John D, George, Scott, Matt, Hutch, Jim Powell, Wick, Jean, Gary
  8. Abstained: Brett, Jon
  9. Out of the room: Hutch
6. Proposal 17 – read calendar year <<I didn’t capture the discussion between Doug & Gary>>
7. No other rules were discussed
Safety
1. 15 years can up can be a safety (they can become life guards then they can be involved in the safety program for AWSA)
Towboat
1. HQ is looking to help find insurance solutions for club owned boat (i.e. the triple rigs for show skiers)
  1. George V shared Sports Insurance (Lake Placid) Garya@aeginsins.com 518.420.9578
2. Approved boats are announced.
3. If the props are on the list they are approved – its
Water ways
1. CT has an issue but it’s looking like it will resolve itself.
2. MD had another site at risk, but it has been resolved.
Walk on topic
1. RECOMMENDATION: Jim Powell – have pro skiers form (virtual) teams that can ski in events (team is made up of various levels of the skier community).
2. Bids for 2018 nationals
  1. Okee
  2. Bell aqua (Sacramento, CA)
  3. Kansas
3. Team Events – Hutch will remain the east coordinator

Tally-Ho,
Tonya Maurer
860-539-9287

AWSA East

Eastern Region 3-Event Water Skiing

2017 January/Winter Meeting Minutes