Board Member Attendance John Veilleux President X Chris Kennedy VP/Master Scheduler X John Lewandowski Secretary/Travel Registrar X Sarah Kramlich Treasurer X Stephanie Haskins House Registrar X Rich Tibbetts Coaching X Tom Clifford Referees/Equipment X Fran Norris Boy s Travel X Scott Matusovich Girl's Director X Glenn Jonsson Travel Scheduler X Sally-Anne Morris House Scheduler X Christopher Prinn Webmaster X Amanda Woodford Tournaments X Rachel Pargeter Team Administrators X Bethany Wilson Marketing/Sponsors X Matt Goodrich Learn to Play X Scott Rousseau Mites X Kristin Reynolds Squirts X Matt Clifford Peewees/Bantams X Andy May Midgets Shawn Damon Special Projects/Clinics X The Meeting was called to order at 6:11 pm. Meeting took place at Falmouth Family Ice Pond House First order of business was to approve the minutes of the March meeting. Motion to accepted and passed unanimously.!1
Director s Reports: President s Report(John Veilleux): o CBHA board is a working board of about 20 members. Organization has about 800 skaters. Of primary importance is to get young skaters parents involved with the board. o Casco Bay Arena (cascobayarena.com) is going to be finalized this year. From the banks perspective the project is fully funded. We have to raise about 60,000 left to raise to meet the goal. This will increase ice time and make the schedule more standardized. Thanks to Mike Curtis, Marco Giancotti, Bethany Wilson, Charlie Tarling and Kevin Kaserman and many others for their efforts this year. o This year house programs had more ice although all ice was more haphazard given the rink delay. o Skills will be a focus next year and CBHA will have goalie and power skating coaches. o The goal is to keep the fees stable for next season. o Thanks to the board for a fine and busy year. MEAHA March meeting report o CBHA and the gladiators have issues with the tier iv play in tournaments and there will be a vote to revamp the tier iv program at the may meeting o For travel divisions there will changes to playoff format depending on the number of teams. o We were awarded $4,000 by Meaha for the new rink. It was the largest award this year. Marketing/Sponsors Report (Bethany Wilson): o We had a strong year of fundraising and sponsors. o Sponsors included: Casco Bay Ford, Buffalo Wild Wings, Seafax, Jotul, Norman Hanson & Detroy, Holiday Inn Express SoPo, Bath Savings, Poolside, D&G Machine, Crowley Photo, Play It Again Sports, Pat s Pizza, House Of Lights o Fundraising for the rink: UMAINE Hockey tickets: we sold 625 tickets and made $2,285 Portland Pirates Game: we sold 55 tickets and made $165.00 Calendar Raffle: We sold 2,383 with a profit of $47,380 Dunkin Donuts Mug program - not a strong - $19,240 (to date) and still collecting unsold mugs and payments. o Suggestions for 2015-2016: Reevaluate the sponsorship and connections with them Decrease mugs to 2000 max Consider the raffle again? Treasurer s Report(Sarah Kramlich): o Casco Bay Hockey continues to strive to offer a great program for a reasonable cost. To that end, we are over 800 members strong and our costs are comparably the lowest in the area.!2
o Here is a snapshot of our financials for the past few years: 2014/15(est) 2014/13 2013/12 2011/12 Revenue $580,000 $465,530 $490,640 $449,909 Expenses $530,000 $456,515 $453,663 $438,601 Income(Loss) $50,000 $9,015 $36,977 $11,308 o Over 92% of our money goes directly towards our programs for ice, tournaments, skills sessions & clinics, coaching, referees, equipment, and league fees. In addition, we were able to provide 20 families with scholarship assistance of over $3,000 from our scholarship fund. Secretary s Report(John Lewandowski) o Two Successful Try Hockey for Free events in October and February.A Registrar's Report (Stephanie Haskins): o Casco Bay hockey continues to be a strong house hockey program for Southern Maine providing quality programs for 494 house skaters and 140 coaches (both house and travel). The breakdown was as follows (Please note that there was an increase in the number of travel teams resulting in what looks like a significant reduction.) Division 13-14 14-15 Difference BTI 72 82 10 Initiation 79 57-22 Mites 97 89-8 Squirts 99 86-13 Peewee 75 68-7 Bantam 51 45-6 Midgets 71 67-4 Girls House 19-19 Total 563 494-69 o Struggles this Season: Implementation of new USA Hockey portal was bumpy. It made some tasks very smooth and others quite time consuming. Second year with the new program should be better. o SafeSport Implementation: USA Hockey didn't give us until the typical 12/31 deadline for coaches to complete Safe Sport training, and this resulted in a chaotic process getting teams rostered. o Improvements for Upcoming Season: Would love to meet with new coaching director and TA director to re-establish roles as the new portal has changed the availability of information. o There was great communications from division directors this year. Travel Registrar s Report(John Lewandowski): o Team Breakdown as follows, coached by 47 coaches. Midget 55 Bantam 51 Peewee 49 Squirt 33 U19 girls 17 U16 girls 19!3
U14 girls 30 U12 girls 31 Total 285 Casco Bay Hockey Association Master Ice schedulers report (Chris Kennedy): o Summary As an organization, we collaboratively overcame early season challenges (webmaster transition, new scheduling tool, CBA construction deferral, etc.) and successfully secured ice to fulfill our needs with minimal inconvenience to CBHA families. We are fortunate to have strong collaborative support from within (CBHA Board) and across all area rinks to ensure a positive experience and successful season for all CBHA players, coaches, refs, and families. o Highlights Learning curve w/ new master schedule collaboration tool (Google Sheets). Overall good solution for Windows, Mac, and IOS devices though one of our Schedulers had issues so may need to explore alternative tool for next season. Strong collaborative partnerships with rink managers all season with few if any issues. Confirmed ice givebacks to rink managers with requisite lead time. Recovered quickly when decision made to defer construction of CBA until spring of 2015. Weather was a major contributor to cancellations & reschedules. Ice contention with area schools resulted in higher levels of demand than available supply but we all worked together to resolved Supplemental ice secured at UNE, NSB, and CIA (fka CCCC) throughout the season when needed. No issues securing ice for CBHA hosted tournaments. Strong collaborative partnerships with rink managers all season with few if any issues. Challenge finding mid/late season ice for Mites EP but we made it work. o Improvement Opportunities Explore alternative collaboration tool/solution to maintain master schedule. Early development of ice allocation model to ensure well balanced use of CBA across all programs. Collaborative planning with program/division directors to secure the ice needed for all planned offerings. Work with fellow board members and rink managers to ease congestion issues at PIA (Red Claws). House schedulers report (Sally- Ann Morris): Travel Scheduler s Report (Glenn Jonsson):!4
o Logistics of travel scheduling went well. We had no MeAHA or Seacoast games reported with scheduling issues. NGIN and our master document have gone well in o support of this most important component of scheduling. Looking ahead, we need to do a better job of having our team's plan their tournament schedule in order to avoid conflicts and rescheduling. Finding nonleague games competition with teams from outside of the are has also been a challenge and warrants further evaluation of joining additional leagues in order to supplement the MeAHA game count and provide for good competition. Coaching Report(Rich Tibbetts): o Casco Bay had 140 registered coaches this season This worked out to (roughly) a 1 to 6, coach/player ratio. We are fortunate to have a strong group of committed coaches. With all the requirements/mandates and time commitment, it is truly a second job! o We had very few issues with our coaches completing (or not completing!) the USA Hockey requirements (age-modules, clinics, safesport, re-certs, etc.) o Reporting remains a cumbersome and time consuming process A BIG thank you to Stephanie Haskins and John Lewandowski for pulling it all together! This is certainly one area that USA Hockey/MeAHA needs to improve upon. o Spring/Summer Level 4 clinics have been posted on the USA Hockey website. I sent out an email to all CBHA coaches with the dates. o USA Hockey continues to build their online offering of coaching resources (practice plans, checking materials, CEP info, etc.) o The CBHA Coaching Survey was sent out to our parents in early March. We received great response/feedback, with very few negative responses. o Suggestions/Improvements: Coaching road map document, outlining requirements to become a coach (I am working on this and will forward to Shawn White) Coaching Advisory Committee to develop a CBHA coaching model/ philosophy. On ice coach the coach sessions. More checking/contact clinics throughout the season (open to peewee & bantam players) Continued goalie clinics for all levels. Team administrator report(rachel Pargeter): o We had a great season with a very hard-working group of TA's. o All team binders for teams going to states and/or regionals/sectionals were approved by the tournaments.. o Draft locker room supervision policy is attached, along with supporting documents used for research. o Work on Ngin user's manual is ongoing. I plan to finish it after the season ends and post it online. Tournament report (Amanda Woodford): o Both tournament weekends went relatively smoothly for the CBHA in house holiday tourney and the season ending mites and squirts tourneys. Challenges for both were the same as specific team numbers for logistics of even pool play needed whether or not cb teams participated or outside teams joined in. o Looking forward to next years change to a holiday tournament. Schedule and showcasing the new rink with the outdoor feel. o Confirming ice early will help directors and families plan accordingly.!5
Equipment/Referee Report (Tom Clifford): o Equipment was easy. Thanks to help from Scott Rousseau at play it again sports o Officials went well Support for officials from CBHA was much appreciated. On ice clinics for continuing education. CBHA have worked division 3 tournament. One former referee is an iihf official and will likely work the Olympics in the future. There were two try referee for free nights. About 50 people showed up. Most were high and bantam aged kids. Webmaster Report (Christopher Prinn): o Created a new Master Schedule/NGIN spreadsheet in Google Docs. FREE Solution allows for multiple shared users, remote cloud storage and access to both PC and MAC users, which didn t exist with last year s HyperOffice. Transition to new system almost painless? o Some early season issues with NGIN uploads creating duplicate entries. Research found that the duplicates were caused by manual entries which are not able to be overwritten and/or earlier uploads done by another user (Brucker) which my uploads would not touch. o As long as the Master Schedule was clean and complete, the uploads through NGIN were smooth and easy. o Some frustrations with NGIN s layout limitations and quirky content management systems, but worked around throughout the year to get information on the site in a easily viewable area (beyond just using the homepage feature News slider). o Online Registrations were built on time regardless of NGIN s 2-7 business day turnaround. NGIN staff was helpful and responsive. o Email notifications/announcements went out in a timely manner. Team page web access to TA s eventually happened without too many headaches. o Still digging through NGIN template options to make a better looking and informative site o Thank to Matt Brucker for his help is season. Boys travel Report (Fran Norris): o The boys travel program had 2 Squirt, 3 PeeWee, and 3 Bantam teams this year. We had 2 teams from each division in the MeAHA league, 2 teams in the Seacoast Hockey League, and 2 teams in the Valley Hockey League. All teams were competitive in their respective leagues. o Looking forward to next season, I see the new rink providing additional ice time for our program. This additional ice will be used to support regularly scheduled skills sessions for goalies and skaters. o The open league continues to present challenges to our program- around try out times especially. Various programs appear to be actively recruiting our players. These leagues put pressure on our Tier 3 teams especially, as players who are selected to our T3 teams are sometimes targeted by other programs and leave our association to play elsewhere. o Our try out numbers continue to be strong. This year we had over 200 kids try out for Squirts, PeeWee and Bantams. o Each year, we look for the best fit of leagues, ice schedules and balance of practice and games for our teams.!6
Girls hockey report (Scott Matusovich): o All of the girls Travel teams for the 2014-15 had a successful, fun, competitive seasons. Our programs continue to grow in numbers and player development. All of our players and coaches represented Casco Bay extremely well all season as we continue to try and build them appropriate schedules with a lack of a true MeAHA based league for them. o A few important notes on each team below The U12 B team continues to be a fantastic feeder for out Tier 2 teams as 9 girls who played U12 B will be on the U12 A team for this coming season. Coach Duffy has done a tremendous job with this group blending the hockey development these girls need with a successful winning team capturing the MHD March Challenge 2 years in a row. U12 A had a fantastic season playing 1/2 their schedule against MeAHA PW T3 teams and other 1/2 against New England U12 Tier 1 and Tier II teams. The season culminated by winning the New England Regionals and establishing Casco Bay as a regional power for girls hockey. Our 3 team skills sessions were a financial and skill development success. U14 A played a very challenging mostly Tier I schedule and has produced a number of very talented High School hockey players. They won the MeAHA State Championship and represented Me very well in the regionals. U16 and U19 split season teams had great seasons. U16 came in 2nd in the Polar Bear tourney which is a very strong National girls tournament. Our expansion of additional ice during the winter season was a success in terms of giving these girls more opportunity to come together for more competitive hockey and coaching than they were able to get with their HS teams. o For 2015-16 we had 120 girls try out for our travel teams which is up from the last 3 years and will be offering the same teams at each level. We have plans to turn the U14 T4 team into more more a travel team in terms of additional practice ice and skill sessions and a more regional schedule. o We will scaling back the number of games across the board and focus more on practice ice and skills sessions to get more in line with the USA hockey practice to game ratio. Learn to Play (Matt Goodrich): o Good year with a great bunch of kids and coaches. The overall focus for LTP was power skating and puck control. Game play was a focus towards end of year. o Initiation Group----We followed the ADM model with skill stations but started every skate with 15-20 minutes of full ice power skating. This allowed for 5 stations at 6-7 minutes a piece. No cross ice games first third of season, 4 to 1 ratio on next third, and 1 to 1 ratio in last third of season. Games such as 3x3, 2x2 were incorportated into stations throughout the entire year. With only 1 group this year, it was important to make sure kids were color coordinated by ability and age. Skaters were moved from group to group based on ability throughout the year. 3 kids moved up to squirts before Jan 1. o BTI Group-- also focused on 15-20 min powerskating before each practice followed by ADM stations. I had 2 different head coaches for the 2 sessions. o BTI and Initiation overall numbers were down vs prior years. Initiation more so than BTI. Only 1 group this year with Initiation with about 50 kids at the end of season. o Next year, times of Initiation Skates should be reevaluated based on day and time of the week. Portland Friday evenings are tough because of parking. 610pm is!7
fine for Initiation practice but if there are 2 groups next year, 710pm is too late. Mostly because of coaching. Parents able and willing to coach at the Initiation level usually have kids 6 yrs old and under and dont want to be getting home that late. o Goalies...towards end of season, we had some mites come to practice to play goalie but also had some of our initiation kids with own equipment play goalie during cross ice games. I would recommend purchasing 2-4 sets of goalie equipment for this age group. I believe this would help improve our overall goalie talent within the organization. o Heather Gagnon will be the LTP Director for 2015/2016 Mites Report (Scott Rousseau): o Great year. o 88 players, 8 years. o Great coaches and set up for next year. o Mite goalies were identified and trained. o Need to do more skating and more power skating. o Ep needs to start earlier and get registered earlier. Squirts Report (Kristin Reynolds): o Casco Bay fielded 6 House teams this year. Over half of the Squirt players this year were incoming Squirts. The teams played in-house during the season, until the State tournament play-in in February, when they faced the Huskies and Biddeford. Two Casco Bay teams, the Wild and Predators, advanced to the state tournament. While neither advanced past the round-robin stage, they played hard and showed great sportsmanship. All teams played in tournaments outside of Casco Bay, with the Predators winning the Lions Tournament hosted by the Gladiators in February. o Focus going forward should be two-fold. First, identifying and developing goalies will make for stronger Squirt teams. At this level all who wish to try goalie are still allowed to do so,and that leaves some teams with no goalie wanting to play more than one game, while other teams have 1 or 2 goalies who get the bulk of the games and their teams are stronger for it. This was certainly an issue this year. Having the new rink up and running, and having consistent goalie clinics will go a long way toward helping our goalies succeed. o Second, working on skating skills is crucial to successful Squirt teams. Incoming Squirts take time to develop those full-ice skills that the 2nd year Squirts already have. The Mite EP program has helped bridge the gap and gives the incoming Squirts a sense of what's next. I hope that with the new rink that power skating skills can be provided on a more consistent basis. Peewee/bantam report (Matt Clifford): o Peewees: Overall a good season. The 4 teams were balanced and there were close games for the play-in at season end. Better coordination with the power skating coach Kristin Andrews could have happened. o The was good parity however better goaltending skill development throughout the season needs to be a focus. 2 goalie clinics were great but it was a weak year for goaltending. o Ice time was great and plentiful but there were complaints about inconsistent ice times and schedule changes. o A checking clinic earlier in the season would also be good. o Bantams: 3 teams with lots of parity with good ice times and good goaltending!8
o o o Goalie clinics were well attended. More power skating needed. Having 2 travel teams next year will help house play. Casco Bay Hockey Association Midget House/Travel Report (Andrew May): o We had approximately 85 registration for tryouts. Process went well. CBHA will field 2 U16 travel teams and 1 U18 travel team (same as last year) Shaun Stairs will again coach the U18s and Peter Metcalfe will coach a U16 team. We are still in need of a U16 coach, please see the Travel Director with names of candidates. New Business o Awarded coat to Bethany Wilson for outstanding fundraising service o Tom Marjerison gave an update on the construction schedule Ice should be in by October 1st. 95% of ice is sold. cascobayarena.com has a schedule online. o John recognized Tom for nine years volunteering with Casco bay. o Retiring Board members were recognized and given awards for service. Election of next years board. o Ballots were distributed. All in attendance have one vote per skater in the association. o 22 Board Members elected John Veilleux Rachel Pargeter Scott Matusovich Fran Norris Bethany Wilson Sally-Anne Morris Shawn Damon Matt Goodrich Tom Clifford Jason Cyr Scott Rousseau Heather Keoghan Shawn White Tim Bernard Eric Turgeon Chris Kennedy Glenn Jonsson Christopher Prinn Sarah Kramlich Amanda Woodford Stephanie Haskins Michele Trepany Meeting adjourned at 8:20 pm!9