Eastern Alpine Competition Committee Spring Meeting. Minutes

Transcription

1 Eastern Alpine Competition Committee Spring Meeting Fairfield Inn, White River Junction VT Saturday, April 20, :00-3:00 pm Minutes Committee Members Present: Connie Webster, Chairman Kirk Dwyer, Children s Racing Committee Chairman; Laurel Lashar, ME; Andrew Gannon, NH; Dan Chayes, PA; Sean Stumpy McGee, SARA; Laura Sullivan, Tri-State; Julie Woodworth, VT; Tao Smith, At-Large; Doug Williams, At-Large; Chip Knight, Athlete; Jamie Wylie, Athlete; Michael Browne, NY; Chuck Hughes, Alpine Officials Committee Chairman; Dan Marshall, High School; Peter Dodge, College; Bev Oliver, Historian Absent: Willie Ford, Athlete; Steve Utter, Development Committee Chairman; Rob Dowd, NJ Staff Present: USSAE: Dirk Gouwens, Eastern Alpine Competition Manager USSAE: Alex Krebs, Eastern Youth and Development Manager USSAE: Patti Nichols, Eastern Alpine Administrator USSA: Lester Keller, National Regional Alpine Development Director USSA: Martin Guyer, Eastern Region Coach Guests: Kathy Okoniewski; NY; Richard Smith, NH; Travis Widgen, NY; Horst Weber, NY; Cody Larson, VT; Adam Chadbourne, NH; Stever Bartlett, VT; Peer Cornish, VT; Bear Bryant, ME; Chad Willard, VT: Ryan Sheredy, VT; Ron Quesmnel, VT; Gerd Riess, NH; Lori Ford, NH; Jack Bailey, VT; Trey Spencer, VT; Ted Sutton, NH; Jason Barcoff, NY; Sam Damon, NH; Paul Van Slyke, NY; Micah Lashar, VT; Chuck Schweitzer, NY; Tim Maguire, NH; Hank McGee, Ski Racing Magazine.. Welcome and Call to Order, 1:39 p.m. by Connie Webster, EACC Chairman Administrative Announcements Requested that questions and/or comments be held until the end of the meeting Recognition of those over 40 years of age in attendance and a presentation of flowers to Bev Oliver, who has a birthday in a couple of weeks Proxies Julie for Willie Ford, Dan Chayes for Rob Dowd Approval of the Agenda Motion: To approve the agenda. T. Smith/D. Williams/Unanimous Minutes of the Previous Meeting Reports Motion: To approve the minutes of the previous meeting. K. Dwyer/M. Browne/Unanimous A. EACC Chairman report deferred until later B. Eastern Alpine Competition Manager Dirk Gouwens.Thank you to all on the EACC as well as all the coaches for all their help in what proved to be a very busy winter. Thank you also to Alex and Patti for their help, communication and for an outstanding job in the region this season. It was a very different winter in view of the many 1

2 changes that have taken place. Everything that was accomplished was focused on what is as fair as possible and as transparent as possible for the athletes and coaches in our region. This was the driving goal for the winter. We did have an excellent winter and accomplished everything that was planned. C. Eastern Alpine Administrator - Patti Nichols My charge is to provide support for Eastern coaches, athletes and their families as well as support of any of our officials who are running USSA events. My job also includes handling the race entry system on the website, entries for athletes going out of region, travel arrangements, etc. and education for race administrators at numerous officials clinics throughout the year. Commitment to the athletes is a priority. Although time consuming, making it an easier process for coaches, athletes and families to receive needed information in order to achieve their objectives is invaluable to the region. D. Eastern Youth & Development Director Alex Krebs Thank you, Dirk and Patti, for all your help this year. Thank you also to the Children s Racing Committee and to Connie also for almost daily phone calls providing insight which was very helpful, making the job a lot easier. It was an extremely busy season and a fantastic year. To be noted is the fact that it was easier to get coaching help at the projects this year. Many thanks go to the many individuals, coaches, race organizers and officials, who helped out with the various projects. Thirteen region youth projects were delivered this year. Three of these were 2 U14 and 1 U16 Elite Dryland projects added last summer. There were also 7 speed element camps (including a U14 and a U16 Elite Speed Camp). There were 10 program visits to 5 of our 8 regions (Vermont, New York, New Hampshire, Maine and Tri-State) this past season. A major focus at these visits is coaches education. For the second year in a row skills assessment and free skiing were included at the Can-Am events. Participation was mandatory in order to be eligible to compete in the races. There was no negative feedback regard this. Current needs include: 1) looking at developing regional U12 projects, 2) addressing ways to raise development level of female athletes in the region, and 3) continuing to foster the competition relationship with Canada. E. National Regional Development Director Lester Keller Lester summarized his function in the Eastern region and acknowledged the support has received from the region at a difficult time. F. Eastern Regional Coach Martin Guyer No report at this time. G. EACC Chairperson Connie Webster. Thanks you to Dirk, Patti and Alex for the privilege of working with you to promote ski racing and excellence in our region. The East is a large and diverse region. With continued support we will be able to not only meet currents goals but also be able to raise the bar in providing support to our athletes. Our job is to provide excellent options for the athletes to offer them the best template possible towards meeting their goals. The focus for our region is the athletes. She requested a cooperative environment for the remainder of the meeting. Committees and Working Group Reports A. Development Committee Doug Williams 2

3 Most of the issues have already been addressed in Dirk s report at the Public Forum. Mike Morin has stepped down as Chairman of the Development Committee. Motion: To approve Steve Utter as Development Committee Chairman for a term of 2 years. D. Williams/D. Marshall/Unanimous Committee Membership is being looked at in terms of the Age Group change, program representation, etc. A matrix will be created presenting committee members, terms of office, etc. B. Children s Racing Committee Kirk Dwyer.Kirk s report was presented at the Public Forum C. High School Racing Dan Marshall The 32 nd running of the Eastern High School Championships for 2013 was at Cannon Mt. in Franconia, NH on March 8, 9 &10. There was record attendance with 250 athletes attending this year (up 25 athletes from prior years). There were eleven states that participated. Maryland, Delaware and Virginia banded together to form a team. There were three great days of weather and snow. Friday was a training day, SL on Gary s and GS on Turnpike. Saturday was the SL event followed by a banquet and SL awards in the evening. Sunday was the GS event. Unfortunately, the second run for the men had to be cancelled due to an issue with timing and a couple of injuries. This year s event conflicted with the USSA Finals making it difficult for the athletes to decide which event to attend. This will be addressed in next season s calendar. The 2014 event is scheduled to be held at Attitash, Bear Peak on March 7, 8, & 9, D. College Peter Dodge NCAA/EICSA perspective last season was very successful. Six Carnival events were completed successfully. This was the seconded year with an expanded league size. The NCAA Championships were held at Middlebury this year. The first five carnivals were FIS-U events. One race was postponed due to wind. Races were run efficiently and effectively, perhaps even more so than when they were smaller. The penalties and the quality of competition was markedly outstanding. Women s SL penalty averaged 18, GS 21; Men s SL penalty averaged 11, GS 14. This clearly shows the penalties generated are about 5 points higher than Nor-Ams. Dirk and Patti did a great job of handling the quotas. The NCAA Championships at Middlebury were well run. Eastern athletes performed well, particularly tin he alpine events. Looking forward to next year, the calendar is close to being set. The EICSA meeting will be held in a couple of weeks. E. Endowment Working Group/EASEF Dirk reported that he had talked with Mike Davenport, Secretary of EASEF. EASEF is in good shape and all is going well. The established process is working well. A meeting of EASEF is planned for the end of May. F. Masters Chuck Hughes for Nadine Price, NE Masters representative NE Masters had a great year, partly due to the excellent work of Lucy and Kip Blake, who assured that all USSA requirements were met and proper paper work prepared and filed with USSA. There are approximately 300 fully licensed New England Masters, 530 Eastern and 1600 nationally. There were 1250 starts, up 4% from the prior year. There were 8 SLs, 8 GSs and 4 SGs.GS were better attended than the SL events. The New York Series, with its shorter schedule, had about 750 additional starts. Ways to increase interest in SL are being explored, e.g. pre-race 3

4 training, stubbies. Four SG races at Attitash in January were scheduled in concert with four junior races. Masters ran after the juniors. One of these events was cancelled due to lack of daylight. It is hoped that this will lead to similar ventures. Presently NE Masters is working on creative marketing to increase participation. Additionally the formation of the New England Masters Foundation to assist aspiring young athletes has been completed. G. State Chairs Working Group Julie Woodworth. The State Chairs Working Group met this morning. Discussion centered primarily about in-state issues. All states experienced scheduling conflicts with the Eastern calendar. Hopefully the new outlook on the regional calendar for next year will reduce these conflicts. Another issue brought up by Tri-State is that there are new federal requirements regarding payment of volunteers in organizations. States need to check this out. The quotas review was briefly discussed. The Quotas Working Group (Gerd Riess, Mike Browne, Laura Sullivan) will meet over the summer. It will be reviewing recommendations made by the Children s Racing Committee and will present an update in the Fall. Julie is stepping down as Chair of the State Chairs Working Group. Laurel Lashar will be taking over this position. H. Alpine Officials Chuck Hughes The action item ed to the EAOC and EACC boards at the request of the EAOC BOD will not be part of this report. This is not an open public matter and can be handled internally by both BODs. Friday night s closed meeting of the EAOC consisted of upgrades and advancements by State AO Chairs. There were many upgrades and new advancements. Action items: 1) There is confusion over the date of last update attended is still not correct for many officials. This information needs to be sent in the same Excel format as the upgrades. This will be clarified by Chuck at this year s Congress. 2) There is a need to encourage participation of others on the EAC and EACC. There is no longer a vast volunteer base at the event level. In order to encourage participation, State AO Chairs need to publish committee meetings, dates, times and places on their web sites. Saturday s Open Meeting of the EAOC: All were encouraged to attend the Congress. There is a need to explore planning EACC and EAOC Spring meetings on the same weekend to aid those travelling from afar and to improve the two committees relationship and communications. Education Committee: 1) Request made by AO clinicians to receive update materials in September rather than later. 2) ROCs need more training and assistance. A move toward best practices will improve all events. 3) Requests for more support from USSA needs to be tempered with the understanding that resources there are limited. 4) Methods of increasing parent participation is important, in particular as gate judges. A new short, relevant and concise gate judge video is needed. The current video is ten years old. A Video Working Group (C. Morsey, M. Howard, R. Lipton, L. Sullivan and J. 4

5 Higgins) has been created to develop this video. A U-tube video is not acceptable due to lack of control over content. 5) There is a need for a getting to know officiating video along with a learning guide to be posted on the web site. Jill Firstbrook will take a proposal to the Congress recommending that they post an introduction to ski racing video and Level 1 exams on the web site. 6) The Eastern FIS update is scheduled for November 1-3, 2013 in Canada. Homologation Committee: Ted Sutton 1) There is a need to continue to push USSA to allow for age class homologations. He has been doing this on his own for both USSA and FIS (e.g. a particular piste might be appropriate for U14 SG development but ne inappropriate for a SG event. This will help open up more venues for athlete development. Ted will take the Age class homologation concept to the USSA Working Group. 2) Racing under lights requires homologations that specifically address lighting. Currently the ski area takes responsibility by signing a document stating the piste meets the NSAA lighting specifications. The jury still may reque3st additional lighting if necessary. Ted will take his concept and recommendations to the USSA working group. 3) All TDs and ROCs should be able to contact the regional inspectors easily. They are listed on the USSA website but are difficult to find. The website working group will place a link or list of the regional inspectors with contact information. Eastern regional inspectors are Ted Sutton, Mike Browne, Dan Chayes, Laura Sullivan, John Norton, Dana Huff, Parker Gray and Doug Hall. Eastern Alpine Official of the Year Award Carl Anderson is this year recipient. Burkett-Dodge Award This year s recipient is Doug Hall. Business State Associations 1. Jeff Weinman now has a new set of responsibilities. Michelle Demschar will be handling Alpine Officials updates and communications from now on. 2. The hike or no hike rule ( has caused issues this year. Paul Van Slyke will take a motion to the Alpine Executive Committee to rescind the USSA exception in the East and recommend that USSA remove the exception from the competition guide. 3. Discussion took place regarding an increase to the USSA TD to $120 per diem. Chuck Hughes will take a motion recommending to the TD working group that the USSA per diem follow that of the FIS and continually stay current with that amount. Ted Sutton will take this motion to the homologations working group. A. Maine Laurel Lashar: It was a good year with plenty of snow. Maine is a big state with not a lot of people. It was difficult to provide races with low penalties. The U16s raced in scored races including qualifiers. Both Membership and officials numbers were up a bit. B..New Hampshire Andrew Gannon: NHARA had a pretty good year. Membership was down a bit but race starts were up. Racer management was pretty good. Thirty out of thirty-two scheduled scored races were held. U16s occupied a good portion of the field in these races. The Children s numbers were consistent with prior years even though there were about ten fewer races. and there was good representation of U16s in the State SG series. There were 23 FIS races held in New Hampshire last year. This has been a season of change. We held a Coaches Council meeting recently to bring out the shortcomings of the season, issues, scheduling problems, scoring system, tier championships, etc. The goal is to provide a system which will let the top athletes develop while retaining an avenue for lower tier athletes. NHARA is a committed member of USSA in the Eastern Region and will continue to be that way. 5

6 In general, in regards to the ongoing talk and the McKinsey report, etc., New Hampshire is a committed member of USSA Eastern Region. and is confident that with regional and national assets as well as stronger state programing it can provide the best possible environment for all of its members to achieve their athletic goals and retain lifelong skiers in the sport. C. New Jersey Rob Dowd: No report. D. New York Mike Brown: NYSSRA has hired Kathy Okoniewski as a full time Youth Development Coordinator. The Age Change worked pretty well in New York. U16s participated in scored races when appropriate as well as the unscored U16 race series. U18/U21 athletes had a blocked race schedule consistent with the clear path strategy requiring limited event participation that has been developed for this age group. U14s mirrored the prior Children s progression, however, there will be an age specific development curriculum for U14s in NYSSRA held 73 race days 21 Scored events and 52 Unscored events. NYSSRA has 215 officials who attended 4 in-state clinics. Eleven attended other USSA or FIS clinics this season. NYSSRA has 32 clubs, 6 Councils, 198 coaches, 201 U18/U21, 254 U16, 330 U14, 329 U12, and 204 U10 members. The NYSSRA website is te primary source for information; NYSSRA will no longer publish a printed manual. E. Pennsylvania Dan Chayes Clubs in PARA s Eastern and Western regions had limited training terrain in December, and most mountains in the central region did not open till the very end of December. Cold weather settled in the third week of January, in the end many mountains closed with substantial skiable terrain still open. Several clubs within PARA utilized Skills Quest through the season with positive results. At the younger ages PARA athletes remain competitive with three athletes qualifying for the Can-Am event. We had 858 registered competitors, a decrease of 1% from the prior season. Total membership was 1,146 including Coaches and Officials. We continue to use USSA s services for collection of state membership fees This past year PARA allowed second year U16s to compete in the PA Cup, scored U18/U21 series. How our U16, U18, and U21 races will be organized for the 2013/14 season is presently a major topic of discussion. The new USSA website continues to be a source of frustration for many users, difficulty finding information and slow response being common gripes. PARA remains firmly committed to the national organization and believes the lack of services within our geographic region can be resolved. Concerns have been raised with in the PARA community questioning what financial oversight is provided for funds collected by EASEF, in the form of head taxes, and distributed in the form of grants supporting Eastern projects. F. SARA Sean McGee Skiing began on Halloween and remained open continuously until the end of March, setting records for SARA. No snow from the end of December through most of January, forcing postponement of four races, cancellation of one event due to perceived lack of participation by the host area. U16s raced with the scored racers, which work out really well. The level of competition actually rose be doing this. 6

7 SARA sent athletes to several post season events - the High School Championships, USSA Finals, U18 Finals, Piche Invitational and U14 Finals. G. Tri-State Laura Sullivan: Tri-State Numbers: 283- Officials/Coaches; 257:Ut0; 268 U12; 235 Ul4; 186 Ul6; l16 Ul8; 48 U2l Tri-State hosted in season scheduled 82 events with only one postponement and one cancellation Ul6 Tri-State Members hosted their own age group series n In 10th year of Championships with Sponsorship Tri'State program pays up to $1500 to any mountain for Homologation expenses upon request. BOD Message to EACC: ACC should not be used as a platform or vehicle to market a non USSA alliance; requests that ACC leadership be members who are willing to work/communicate with USSA effectively; Full Transparency - no closed committee meetings which greatly affect the direction of our membership; Request report/audit of head tax distribution H. Vermont Julie Woodworth: The VARA website is under reconstruction. VARA has 28 voting clubs. Held 307 scored and non-scored races last year. Reconstructed this year by JEG designs, shows race results, schedules, calendar, announcement information, rules and procedures, as well as changes in scheduling and cancellations, standings, VARA Team, archived results and articles. Special event info, forms, race request sheets as well as State Championship Bid Forms. The VARA site allows each clubs to go onto their own link and update race info as well as any club info they want on their link roll inventory owned by KSC, Okemo, Middlebury SkiClub added SNSC Membership: 2448 for 2013;.2451 tor Changing from Active.com to Admin Sports for registration Eastern Budget Old Business VARA provides financial support for racers in the range of 20k -30Kper YR Officials: VARA held 9 Clinics and Updates r. VARA had , USSA AO's Reminder by Kirk that when the head tax was created some years ago, a concern was raised by Paul Putnam over allocation of funds. There was a stipulation that at least 20% of the budget needed to be designated for initiatives benefitting J2 athletes (15 yr. olds) and younger. Bev will do some research to get the exact details. Dirk reviewed the preliminary draft budget. Of note is the fact that every athlete who requested support received some level of support. (US Nationals/U18 Nationals/Development projects at Copper), all receiving the same amount. In response to a question from Tri-State relating to the how the Budget is developed Dirk explained the process: Development Committee (M. Morin/S. Utter) reviews and approves the draft budget first. It then goes to the EACC for review. Funds are distributed by EASEF. The final budget is brought to the fall meeting for approval by the EACC. Relating to the posting of EACC minutes on the website in a timely manner: the minutes were sent out, but no vote was taken. New Business 7

8 Elections Athlete Representatives athlete representatives to the EACC oversee the selection of representatives to the EACC. Jamie Wylie and Chip Knight will co-chair the finding of and selection of qualified candidates. Dan Chayes brought up the topic of getting a major event scheduled in the East again. Dan Chayes - financial oversight is recommended for the EASEF monies. Recommends an independent audit even though EASEF BOT has an oversight committee within EASEF. Agreement in principle by others on the EACC. Dirk explained the current procedure in depth. A better understanding of the system would be available if Mike Davenport could have been at the meeting to address questions. Election of Vice-Chairman for a two year term Two nominees Julie Woodworth and Dan Marshall. Dan Marshall was elected. Election of Chairman for a two year term Two nominees Connie Webster and Chip Knight. Connie Webster was elected. Comments from the audience during an open session There was an opportunity to make comments and receive feedback from ACC members. Meeting adjourned 4:14 pm Chayes/Smith unanimous Bev Oliver Recorder 8