Minutes approved at the May 19, 2010 HOD Meeting

Potomac Valley Swimming

House of Delegates Meeting

Fairland Community Center

3308 S. Stafford St.

Arlington, VA 22206

May 20, 2009

• Dinner: 6:30 pm
• Attendance:
• Board of Directors: Greg York, Art Davis, Bill Stephens, Riley Eaton, Bill Marlin, Dan Jacobs, Manga Dalizu, Dave DiNardo, Boot Hall, Jim Thompson, Virginia Ratcliff (athlete), Tara Banks (athlete) and CJ Fiala (athlete).
• House of Delegates (voting members); Evan Stiles, AAC; Bob Walker, ASA; Mike Kreauter, BWST; Tim Kelly, CUBU; Norm Wright, FISH; Bruce Anderson, HACC; Christian Doud, MACH; Heather Coulson, MAKO; David Mengering, MCSL; Chris Houtt, MSSC; Jack Schaeffer, NVSL; Aaron Dean, OCCS; Tim Husson, PMSL; Mark Eldridge, RMSC; David Essig, SDS; Shelley Gesker, YORK
• At-Large Delegates: Kerry Ellett, Paris Jacobs, John Hirschmann, Arthur Lopez, Linda Klopfenstein, Brian Pawlowicz and Mark Faherty
• Athlete Representatives: Danielle Schulkin, SDS; Abby Pasztor, BWST; Logan Moore, MAKO; Catie O’Brien, YORK; Robin Brazier, HACC
• Non-Voting Members in attendance: Denise Adams, ASA; John Ertter, PVS, Sumie Emory, PVS and Terri Marlin, PVS.
• House of Delegates Representatives were provided access prior to the meeting to information to prepare for the meeting which was posted.
• Call to Order: The General Chair Greg York called the meeting to order at 7:30
• General thanks to everyone for coming and to Paris for arranging the food.
• Approval of May 21, 2008 HOD Minutes: Motion made to approve May 21, 2008 minutes, seconded and approved.
• Approval of May 20, 2009 HOD Agenda: Motion made to approve May 20, 2009 agenda, seconded and approved.
• Report on General State of the Corporation
• Board Member introduction: All PVS Board Members were introduced and thanked for their service over the past year. Additional introductions and thanks also went to: John Hirschmann, Brian Pawlowicz, Tim Husson, Linda Klopfenstein, John Ertter, Paris Jacobs, Terri Marlin and Sumie Emory, all of whom serve and support PVS throughout the year either as contractors or volunteers.
• Thanks to Dan Jacobs: This is Dan’s final HOD meeting as a PVS board member. His term as Coaches Representative expires in August. Dan was thanked for his four years of service. A new Coaches Rep will be voted on at the 2009 PVS LC Championship Meets.
• Welcome to Dave DiNardo: Dave has agreed to serve as the interim Operations Chair position on the Board, due to the resignation of Karl Hellmann. The Board in April approved his appointment to the Board until elections could be held at the next House meeting, where somebody would be elected to complete the remainder of Karl Hellman’s term.
• Thanks to Virginia Ratcliff, for doing a great job as Athlete Rep. Virginia’s term also expires at the end of August. Virginia has been a very active member of the PVS Board.
• Congrats to both Short Course and Long Course Zone teams on their wins.
• Thanks to Paris Jacobs for running a great Junior Olympic meet and to Brian Pawlowicz for a great Senior Champs.
• Thanks to all of the PVS Contractors for all of their hard work over the year; John Ertter, Sumie Emory, Tim Husson, Terri Marlin and Jake McGrail.
• Eastern Zone Meeting in Ft. Lauderdale; PVS is now being recognized as one of the leaders in the Eastern Zone, both in running meets and being active. We are helping to run LC  Eastern Zone, the IMX meet and Sectionals in the next year
• PVS is now the 5^th largest LSC in USA Swimming, and as a result will have 3 additional Delegate votes at the USAS Convention.
• Our finances are in great shape, thanks to John Ertter and Bill Stephens for all of their hard work.
• Paris Jacobs was given a “Volunteer of the Year” Award, for always being willing to help PVS with whatever is needed.

• Nomination Committee Report
• John Hirschmann presented a report on behalf of the Nominating Committee. Their report had been made available to the House prior to the meeting. He advised that the House has 4 positions on the Board of Directors to elect this year. They are for General Chairman, Treasurer, Senior Chair and Operations Chair. He advised that the current incumbents (all of whom previously stated that they wished to seek reelection are eligible to run.
• Greg York as General Chair; Bill Stephens as Finance; Riley Eaton as Sr. Chair. If elected, all will fill a full two year term until 8/31/11
•  Dave DiNardo as Operations Chair. If elected will fill an unexpired term and would serve until 8/31/10.
• Additional nominations for all of the above positions were sought from the floor. There were none.
• Accordingly a motion made to close the nominations, the motion seconded and approved.
• Motion made to elect them in by acclimation. Motion seconded and approved
• Hirschmann announced that 4 more positions to PVS Board of Directors are to be voted on this summer, two athlete representatives and an Officials Representative. 1. Athlete Rep-Virginia Ratcliff (not seeking re-election), 2. CJ Fiala (seeking reelection) 3. Danielle Schulkin (SDS) announced she is interested in running for Athlete Rep and will be seeking election.
• Officials Rep to the Board of Directors, Boots Hall can run again and she has indicated she plans to do so.
• Dan Jacobs will step down for Coaches Rep after completed two 2-yer terms. Yuri Suguiyama has announced he is interested in running.
• Board of Review Elections: Hirschmann announced there are four vacancies on the Board of Review to elect this year. Two current members cannot seek reelection due to term limits-Steed Edwards and Boots Hall. Virginia Ratcliff has indicated she does not wish to seek reelection and Brian Pawlowicz is seeking reelection. In addition Ward Foley, Jim Garner and Kate Zeigler (as athlete) are also being nominated (one must be an athlete).
• Additional nominations for all positions were sought from the floor. There were none.
•  Accordingly, a motion was made to close the nominations, the motion was seconded and approved
• Motion was made to elect them in by acclimation. Motion seconded and approved
• Greg York extended a special thanks to John Hirschmann for his help as “Special Assistant to the General Chair”, John is also spearheading the LEAP program; a program set up by USA Swimming similar to their Club Recognition program. PVS will be one of the first 15 LSC’s to participate.
• Committee Reports
• Administration & Registration Report; Art Davis: Art thanked Sumie, the PVS registrar (for athletes, non athletes and clubs) for all of her hard work through out the year.
• Registration numbers are not expected to grow this summer, we had an unusual influx this past year, but the expectation is for this year’s registration numbers to level off. See Year to Date Stats.
•  Racing Start requirement; is just a “tightening up the screws” to make sure that everyone is safe. John Ertter will be attending the USA Swimming Risk Management Conference at the end of the month and will receive additional information for teams.
• All teams are now complying in the minimum number of certified officials.
• At USA Convention the several by-laws were put into the USA Swimming Rule book, therefore we do not need to update our by-laws
• In the past we have received reports on the size of the LSC by club. PVS is now able to produce this report ourselves.
• By-Laws Change: Term Limits on Official’s Committee Chair & Committee Members
• A Motion was presented to the HOD: For the Officials Committee to limit each Officials Committee member to one term of office and no more than a 2 two year term, the motion was seconded.
• Art Davis advised the House that the previous Operations Vice Chair, Karl Hellmann looked at all the positions within the Officials Committee and thought there should be a term limit similar to all other committees
• Art suggested that between now and September 1, the Official’s Committee should elect a new committee Chair and decide what changes if any to make in the Committee membership.
• Many of the officials feel that it is important to start to incorporate new younger people into the officiating program.
• In PVS you can be invited to be one the Officials Committee (USA Swimming, Officials apply based upon their requirements - experience)
• The Motion to amend PVS’s by-laws was called and the motion to all passed. The motion to amend our by-laws was then approved.
• Webmaster Report: See report submitted
• Tim was very helpful in implementing the Scholar Athlete application
• Operations Chair Report: No report submitted
• The new Operations Chair will be involved in looking at all equipment to ensure we will have 3 solid sets of equipment and will become more involved on the Officials Committee.
• One of our priorities is getting a 4^th set of equipment, to be a great back up set (according to our by-laws, PVS announced practice to have prudent spares). We will be spending some of the budgeted equipment money to do this.
• Official’s Chair Report: see report submitted:
• When PVS hold meets with National Certification it is not just to train Officials but also the coaches and athletes in how to act National level meets.
• Please continue to encourage your young parents to be officials, we have a lot of unattached Officials, who are still very active within the association, however new Officials are needed to help fill the spots as the veteran Officials begin to step back and retire.
• Safety Committee Report; no report submitted

• Senior Chair Report: See report submitted
• The swimming community is glad to have reestablished the SC Junior Champs. Although establishing the cuts were a little difficult, we now have a better understanding of what the cuts needs to be. The time standards for SC Junior and Senior Champs as well as the 18 & Under Champ meet will all be reviewed for the 2009-2010 season.
• FBST did a great job with 18 & under Champs, largest meet in PVS this year.

• Age Group Chair Report: see report submitted
• Went to the Disability Workshop in Colorado Spring in early April, additional information will be available after the next BOD meeting and posted to the PVS website.
• The question, “Is there a financial report on the Summer 08 LC Zone meet? was raised.  Historically these reports have never been published and released publicly, however we will provide it upon request.

• Coaches Representatives Report: see report submitted
• “We are the voice for the coaches” if you ever have questions/concerns please contact one of the Coach’s Reps.
• 40 NAG records broken this year, nation wide. It is believed that this is due in part to the “speed suits” – therefore the rules were changes for 12 & under swimmers as of May 15, 2009. FINA recently released a list of suits that are now approved or rejected, check out the FINA website. The new rulings from FINA will be evolving for sometime.
• 18 & Under Champs a huge success! Some modification may be made for next year, but PVS plans to continue with the meet.
• Senior Champs felt more like a “true Championship” meet this year due to the fact that we added Jr. Champs back onto the schedule and tightened the time standards for Sr. Champs. The feedback received indicated that coaches and athletes were both happy with the meet format.
• A task force was established to decide if 8 & under swimmers could be included in Open meets to get their 200 freestyle and 100 stroke times. It was determined that adding 8 & under swimmers would not be in the best interest of the association; however there are several meets within the LSC that are available if, coaches, pay attention and look into “other meets” within the LSC they should find the opportunities they need.
• Manga has proposed a new meet, for 10 & under swimmers to include all 100s and 200s in all strokes, in April. Currently this meet is being considered we are still waiting to see if there will be enough interest to make running the meet worthwhile.
• A reminder: An additional boy and girl for the 10 & under and 11-12 age groups will be added to the Eastern Zone Short Course meet beginning in 2010.
• Open Water getting a lot of attention in USA Swimming. PVS is encouraging its members to become more involved as opportunities become more available.
• Look at the USA-S website, has a lot of great into, doping control (medication), college swimming, nutrition tracker, etc. It is a great resource. All swimmers, coaches and parents should take advantage of it.
• Coaches Rep elections will be held this summer during Age Group, Junior and Senior Champs. If anyone is interested in running as Coaches Rep, please contact Manga ASAP.

• Athlete Representative Report: The athletes reps were responsible for changing the Athlete of the Year age ranges to have athletes selected in each single age from 9-18, created polls, “asked Kate,” etc. Our Current Athlete Reps have been very active member on the board.

• Strategic Planning Report: see report submitted
• Looking at long term and registration, where our swimmers are. The majority are in Fairfax and Montgomery Counties
• Projections in growth for ages 5-19 (98% of our athletes), the most growth should be in the Virginia Counties.
• We will begin mapping the membership and how they are traveling to the meets
• PVS and VSI continue discussing the boundary issues with USA Swimming. USA-S has said that our two LSC will have to work this out.
• The question “How are we using this information within our LSC?”  was asked. This information is important so we can work with the counties and their governments to understand the data and how/when/where to rent pools for meets.
• We also need to work on tracking some Outreach swimmers. According to USA Swimming PVS has among the fewest registered “Outreach” swimmers, however we don’t tend to count them separately, so it is hard to tell exactly how many we really have.

• Board of Review Report: Kerry Ellet—no action this past year.
• Finance & Treasurer’s Report on 2008-2009
• Boundary issue: it was proposed by USA Swimming to resolve this issue (Governance Committee), but it is not going to go anywhere, there are at least 2 other issues within the US, because of this there are more swimmers in the water which is more money for USA Swimming. In our case we have increased the number of swimmers in Loudoun County to nearly 800, VSI never had more than a dozen registered athletes in the same county.
• John Ertter has assisted USA Swimming setup procedures on how teams can better handle their finances. Ertter does a tremendous job tracking and controlling our money.
• We received a clean audit report from an outside Audit company. See Audit Report
• Financial strength and planning. We have fund to support a full year of operations in reserve.
• We also make projections, some years we right on and others we are off. PVS tends to take a fairly conservative approach to our finances.
• Revenue in PVS per swimmers: This has been increasing until the last year or so. It is almost down 10%, swimmers entering fewer meets, fewer PVS meets. The splash fees have been reduced in past years; however we will keep an eye on this trend and will begin to increase the splash fee if needed in the future.
• The desirability to form a Capital Fund…this is happening in more and more sports (Soccer, McLean Youth Sports, as example). There is a thought that swimming should take a good hard look at a system similar to this to acquire pool space.
• Old Business: none
• New Business
• Proposed 2009-2010 Budget
• Motion to accept the proposed budget was made and seconded. As shown in the following bullets, various questions regarding the budget were raised and answers provided.
• The question, “Why are we projecting no increase of athletes for next year”.  Answer: Ertter looked at the last 5 years between April 1 and Sept. and average them. It is about 300. This past year the big growth came in the early months due to the 800 athletes that came in late last year, many from another LSC.
• Is the projection that there will be no growth based upon Strategic Planning? No, we have always had growth, however we are not seeing any new pools in the LSC and many teams are maxed out with the number of swimmers they can manage and places we can compete. Therefore the growth is projected to be minimal.
• In the short term, we are currently experiencing the worst recession since the 30s. Being conservative we are not projecting growth due to the current economy (don’t see many new athletes in our sport).
• Swimposium info will be published as soon as the facility is secured. It will be posted on the PVS website, in addition a mailing will be sent out late summer.
• Diversity: PVS is trying to put together a more comprehensive program; however will not release the money until there is a definitive program in place. DC, MD and VA are all very different in their diversity needs. The Diversity Chair and committee has not yet been able to get the programs together but are working on it. PVS just wants to make sure there is money in the budget, for when the plans come in.
• Ward Foley expressed that he feels that the diversity program is under budgeted. This is what “they” asked for. Ward feels that with Strategic Chair’s planning’s help we should to come up with a plan for a Grant program for diversity.
• Mark Eldridge feels that PVS should not only support new diversity programs, but support programs that are already being offered within PVS programs as well.
• Art Lopez agrees that we need to support what is already within PVS first.
• A motion is called to vote on the 2009-2010 budget, seconded and approved.
• A motion to then approve the Budget fro 2009-2010 as submitted to the House is then approved.
• Other New Business
• Several Delegates questioned the status of the Policies & Procedures. The Board of Directors stated they are aware of the situation and putting together a plan to get all the Policies and Procedures updated and posted on the PVS Website. It is a long process and there are currently people working on this.
• Would it be possible to see the results of 07-08 budget (actual)? This information will be provided upon request.
• Adjourn: A motion to adjourn was made, seconded, approved at 9:28 pm