Minutes approved at the April 13, 2009 meeting.

Potomac Valley Swimming

Board of Director’s meeting

Overlee Community Center

6030 Lee Highway, Arlington, VA

March 9, 2009

• Dinner: 6:30 pm
• Attendance: Greg York, Jim Garner, Art Davis, John Hirschmann, Riley Eaton, Bill Marlin, Dan Jacobs, Manga Dalizu, Brian Pawlowicz, Linda Klopfenstein, Boots Hall, Ward Foley, Jim Thompson, Tara Banks, Virginia Ratcliff, CJ Fiala and Terri Marlin
• Call to Order: Greg calls the meeting to order at 7:00 pm

• Items Requiring Board Action
• Approval of February 9, 2009 Meeting Minutes: motion made to approve the February 9, 2009 minutes; seconded and approved.
• HOD: We need 20% of total participation to be athletes at HOD (if they are less than 20%, the weight of each athlete’s vote will be increased so that athletes votes in total will equate to 20%of the total votes cast.); The Board encourages each team to send one athlete’s name to the General Chair, so that he may nominate them to be an athlete rep to the annual HOD meeting. Since the PVS By-Laws dictates that athletes must be at least 13 years of age in order to vote for an athlete representative to the Board of Directors, the board decided that the minimum age for an Athlete HOD representative should also be 13. Flash Mail to be sent regarding athlete participation.

• The list of attendee to the EZ Meeting in Ft. Lauderdale currently is Greg York, Art Davis, John Ertter, Bill Marlin, Dan Jacobs, Boots Hall, Paris Jacobs, Terri Marlin and Bill Stephens, please contact Terri if any other Board Member plan on attending.

• Greg York informed the Board that Karl Hellmann has resigned from the PVS Board, effective immediately. He is moving to San Diego for his job. Greg stated that he will wait the May HoD meeting to fill the position, rather than make an appointment. The Nominating Committee will be asked to nominate candidate(s) for this position.

• HOD meeting is scheduled for Wednesday May 20, 2009. [Subsequent to the Board Meeting it was announced that the meeting will be held at the Fairlington Community Center in Arlington]

• Appointment of Nominating Committee for PVS BoD and Board of Review positions up for election at May HOD Meeting; The General Chair nominated John Hirschmann as the Chair of the Nominating Committee, and Linda Klopfenstein; Dan Jacobs and Brian Pawlowicz to be members. The Board approved this recommendation.

• Travel Assistance; 2008 SC Nationals & SC Juniors
• SC Seniors; only one request received (out of 10), Linda recommends acceptance of this one travel reimbursement request and stated it satisfied all requirements; 1 share at $450. All Board members present voted in favor.
• SC Juniors in December 2008; of the 35 swimmer who competed at SC Juniors, travel reimbursement requests were received on behalf of 27 swimmers. Fifteen were granted for a total of $3,750. One request received as an appeal was denied due to precedent from prior years (swimmer was too ill to travel a the last moment and did not go to the meet). All Board members present voted in favor.
• Eleven requests were incomplete as submitted; the coach did not list a swim in a Potomac Valley SC meet of at least one of their events swum at Juniors. Since is appeared that most of the swimmers had swum such events in PVS, the Board voted to grant the shares if/when the proper "paperwork" was submitted.
• Separately, one athlete has asked PVS to be partially reimbursed for their participation in the Maccabiah Games to be held in Tel Aviv, Israel this July (this meet is held once every 4 years). Linda recommends that this athlete only gets the money after their participation in the meet. USA Swimming is not financially supporting USA athlete who participate in this meet. Greg made the recommendation that if you make the Junior Team, then you get a “Junior Share”, if you make the “Open Team” then they get a “Senior Share”. The motion was made, seconded and approved. The reimbursement will be considered a Grant.

• 2009 LC and 2009-2010 SC PVS Meet Bids & Awards; The four members of the Competition Committee (Bill Marlin, Riley Eaton, Dan Jacobs and Manga Dalizu) recommend to the Board the following:

• LC Meets 2009:
• AG/SR1: PM (Fairland) and MACH (Lee District)
• AG/SR 2: PM (Lee District) and FAST (Fairland)
• Junior and Senior Champs: CUBU (UMD)
• AG Champs: FBST (Fairland)
• No bid for LC Distance meet (Takoma) in June: It was announced at the meeting that CUBU would consider putting in a bid for the LC Distance meet.
• A motion is made to accept all above club bids for the 2009 PVS LC schedule; motion is seconded and approved.
• 2009-2010
• Oct Open: Marlins (Mt. Vernon), CUBU (Fairland), OCCS (Fairland)
• Nov Open; FISH (Cub Run), PM (Takoma), FBST (Takoma), OCCS (Lee District)
• Jan Distance: FBST 
• Jan Open: FAST(PGS&LC), MACH (PGS&LC), RMSC (MLK) [subject to change if a 4th site is added]
• Feb Distance: FBST
• 18 & Under Champs: FBST (Lee District)
• Junior Champs: RMSC (MLK)
• Senior Champs: CUBU (GMU)
• 14 & Under Junior Olympics: MACH
• A motion is made to accept all above club bids for the 2009-1010 PVS SC schedule; motion is seconded and approved.
• It is also recommended that a fourth site is added for the Jan Open and Fairland has offered to rent their pool. This will be taken to the Competition Committee Meeting in May for their input.

• Disability Information: Bill Marlin will be attending the Disability Conference in April. Bill has been in contact with several community members about Disability Swimming. He has asked them about what PVS can do as an LSC to reach out to the Disabled Athletes. Bill would like to run a Disability Clinic in the spring of 2010. There is an athlete who is a Junior National Level swimmer in her disability class, who is willing to demonstrate to other disabled swimmers. Bill has also found additional organizations that cater to the disability swimmers; Bill would like to see these athletes become part of our Diversity and Outreach athlete program. He has been given a fairly large list of organizations that we can reach out to. Either PVS, or individual PVS clubs could do so.
• The board was advised that PVS is now the 5^th largest LSC, however USAS informs us that we are at the bottom in terms of Disability and Diversity.
• Because we are the most geographically compact LSC in the country, our area has many other opportunities, therefore we may not really be doing as badly as it seems.
• Greg wants to show that PVS is trying to reach out to all Diversity, Outreach and Disability athletes. We would like to try to set up opportunities
• Use the April Budget meeting to look towards adding some of these programs.

• Fairfax County Community forums – PVS Attendance Designated Attendees: see Executive Director Report
•  There will be 10 Open forums, about one per month, with the Fairfax County Park Authority. PVS is encouraging teams in Fairfax County to participate. Both John Ertter and Greg York plan on attending several of these meetings.
• Arlington County Parks & Rec and Arlington County Public Schools is considering changing their management structure and are inviting teams to contribute their views. There are two PVS teams that use the Washington Lee Pool. This is an opportunity to hear about the proposed fees and management change. Must hear from the public to endorse these proposals.

• USAS Risk Management Workshop; June 12-14, 2009 in Oklahoma City, OK; John Ertter to attend with Board Approval;
• In addition Registrar: Terri Marlin, Disability: Bill Marlin. Greg made a motion to approve the three PVS representative to attend the list conference/workshop scheduled; motion was seconded and approved.

• 2009 Budget – Identification of new initiatives for 2009-2010 (These are items that will be brought up at the April meeting of the Board when it meets to review the 2009-2010 budget it will present to the House for adoption):
• Disability Camp
• Outreach Camp
• Open Water (in a pool) Camp
• Travel: is there a better way to handle Travel Reimbursement
• Zone Team support
• Equipment; 1. Will we need additional equipment if we are going to start running 4 sites of Open Meets. 2. What do teams think about the possibility of teams purchasing their own equipment, 3. How much do we continue to purchase, etc.
• Open Water Meet in conjunction with Summer Sr. Champs

• Approval of April 2009 Board meeting Agenda: We will meet for about 30 minutes to meet on Board issues; It need to include Nominating Committee Report and General Chair’s At-large vote and at-large athlete reps. . Compensation Committee will also meet to discuss how much will be funded for compensation to the PVS’s employees and contractors.

• Diversity initiatives – see Executive Director Report
• Black History Meet went well; We received lots of positive feedback; Cullen Jones came, swam a few exhibition heats and signed autographs. There was a delay in beginning on Sunday morning due to poor water quality;
• The DC Government was very thankful to PVS for helping out with the meet.
• There is a signed contract for PVS to use Takoma for a two course meet (2 ½ day format) for the November Open in exchange for PVS paying for Cullen Jones’ appearance at the Black History Meet
• DCPR has paid all equipment rental fees to date, this includes both the 2008 and 2009 Black History Meet equipment rental fees.
• There is a possibility of using a pool or space in DC for our Swimposium, which would include a Diversity Track. The city is interested, but we need to check into whether the proposed space is appropriate for our needs and/or we can be confident construction will be completed in time. 

• Old Business
• No old business
• New Business
• Brian Pawlowicz commented that for Senior Champs March 12-15 at George Mason University, equipment can be delivered at anytime due to the fact that GMU is on Spring Break. It was recommended that Brian email equipment manager and cc the General Chair and Admin Assistant.
• After all of the March Championship Meets, there will need to be several discussions on what to do with and how best to handle the equipment issues in PVS.
• New housing will have to found for equipment by mid-May.

• Reports
• Athlete Representatives: There will be Athlete Representatives elected to the Board this summer. The athletes were encouraged to come up with will come up with nominations to be presented at HOD. The election will take place during Age Group, LC Junior and Senior Champs in July.

• Executive Director Report; see report submitted
• Administrative: no report submitted
• 3 clubs with insufficient number of officials; Art is staying on top of this.
• Webmaster Report: no report submitted
• Finance/Accounting: no report submitted; The PVS financial statements as of February 28, 2009 were provided to the Board in advance of the meeting. Status report on the Audit Committee (John Hirschmann reporting); The audit was concluded just prior to Christmas. The Audit report was received by the Audit committee in time for the February Board meeting. The Vice Chair for Finance agreed to provide any requested information for the Audit Committee in order to assist with the process. However, as of the date of this meeting no definitive answers have been given to the committee.

• Operations Division: The issue regarding purchasing the trailer for equipment is first and foremost on the agenda in the next week or so.
• Senior Division: see report submitted [this report was submitted after the conclusion of Senior Champs; to include all information on Junior and Senior Champs.]

• Age Group Division:see report submitted.  EZ LC Zones (Aug. 12-15, 2009): GMU has denied use of both of their pools for this meet. Bill will check with the EZ to see if it is permissible to have the 12 & Under swimmers compete between the 13 & over session and Finals. If it is ok, then Bill will check with the Naval Academy again.

• Coaches Representatives: see report submitted regarding longer events for 8 & under swimmers
• Dan talked to many coaches at both Jr. Champs and 18 & Under Champs. Coaches felt that 18 & under was a little crowded, but the meet filled a need, in general coaches were pleased with the meet. Coaches also felt that Jr. Champs a little small, but happy to have it back, they liked the size of Senior Champs. The CCM will assess all these meets at the end of March, discuss at their Spring meeting and begin planning for next year.
• Manga reported on the February Distance Meet; He recommends that instead of coming back for the second day of the February Distance, which allows those swimmers that want to swim both the 1000 and 1650 an opportunity to swim both, that these swimmers swim the 1000 in the first heat or two of the meet and then the 1650 in the last heat or two. This year there were only 12 entries (6 male and 6 female) for the entire second day session (roughly the same numbers were recorded in 2008 as well).

• Officials: see report submitted
• The Official Committee was asked to help oversee the PVS Club Officials Coordinators and to make sure that all positions are filled and clubs understand the purpose of this position.
• It was stressed that if we didn’t have the huge number of Un-attached officials then we would have trouble running meets particularly at the Referee position.
• There is interest in holding a meeting with Club Officials Chairs to help teach them what is expected of them; a meeting like this would most likely take place in September

• Strategic Planning: No report submitted

• Next BOD Meeting – April 13, 2009 (Budget Meeting)
• Adjourn: The meeting is adjourned at 9:18 pm, motion to do so is made, seconded and approved