Farmington Girls Fastpitch Association Board of Directors Meeting- Open Session October 21, 2018, At Bat/Celts Farmington Board Members in Attendance: Alan Krueger Vice President Mark Kiecker Treasure (Incoming) Kim Boyd Secretary (Incoming) Erin Garofalo Apparel/Promotions Coordinator (Incoming) Ryan Dennis Fields and Facilities Coordinator (Incoming) Andy Skluzacek- Travel Director Chad Redman Equipment Manager Angie Muehlenkamp - Volunteer Coordinator Chris Schweich - Fundraising Director Corey Schweich Program Development Marie Odenbrett Concession Coordinator Matt Johnson - Communications Director (Incoming) Board members met at @Bat to view a demo by Scott Hughes for the HitTrax machine. This machine tracks launch angle, bat speed, and exit velocity for hitting. The machine can be used not only for hitting but for pitching (speed, where on the plate, rise and drop) and catching (pop time and arm strength) as well. Machine could also be used for tryouts to get data instead of using a person and during bat demo days for bat fittings. The HitTrax machine allows data to be sent via App, Email, CSV to phone. The players swing can be imported then compare it to a video then draw angles (like Coaches eye). There is also a gaming module that allows you to set up two teams to play a game. Scott wanted to give FGFA the opportunity to make this a part of the experience for FGFA players. Scott stated that Farmington Baseball Association was planning to pay $2000 then offer 100 kids the opportunity for $10 each ($1000). This provides 30 minutes of instruction from Matt and 30 minutes of time on the HitTrax machine. Additional sessions can be purchased at the same price. Andy asked how much time is needed for baseline data? Scott stated 10-15min (30min max). Andy mentioned it would be a good idea to rent out for 3 hours and run team through. Can Coaches provide list and groups/teams be set up ahead of time? Yes Corey asked what if we set up at cost per team? Could teams rent out/reserve times? Scott mentioned if a member wants to reserve the HitTrax machine it is $15 per 30 min and $20 per 1 hour. For non-members it is double the price. Angie asked Scott if he needed/wanted a guaranteed number? Scott said no this was just an information meeting. Board stated they needed to talk more about this opportunity and make a decision on how it could be incorporated into the FGFA experience. Do we offer through registration, do we officer based on teams etc.?
Meeting moved to Celts 1. Welcome and call to order by Alan Krueger. 2. Approval of September meeting minutes. Alan asked for approval of minutes from September meeting. Chris made a motion and Marie seconded. Board approved minutes. 3. Alan asked for feedback from @Bat demo of HitTrax machine. Andy stated it s worth trying. Alan stated we could follow something very similar to the pricing that baseball is using and give every member of FGFA (that wants to try it) a chance to do so. Board decided we would discuss further. FGFA would cover part of the cost and player/team would cover a portion. 4. Approval of 14 U Teams Roster was sent to all members of the board a couple days prior to the meeting for review. Chris made a motion to approve. Erin seconded the motion. Board voted and approved 14 U roster. None opposed. Andy provided information to the players as well as the Lakeville and Rosemount directors about opportunities for the girls who were released. 5. Directors Reports Fields and Facilities - Ryan Everything is lined up for gym space. Nothing additional to report. Equipment Chad working on getting shed cleaned up and ready to go. Chad and Erin will set up a time to go through uniforms at the shed. We are currently down to needing to collect from two 10U coaches from fall ball. Currently getting stuff ready for the inside work for winter and the first night of open gym we will see what we need. Secretary Kim Nothing to report. Apparel/Promotions - Erin Laptop has been handed off from previous coordinator. Laptop only has a list of girls from last year. Does anyone else have a list of all the girls and their numbers? Erin will search Dropbox for additional forms (including uniform forms) and lists. Andy said there used to be a list and the numbers were recycled every so many years. Expo - Erin stated she was told she was in charge of the booth at the Expo. Chris said that Ryan is actually in charge. Erin asked if we have giveaways for that? Are we giving out Cups? Chris stated we have more than enough cups. Someone picks up Candy to hand out. The board signs up for shifts (set up, take down and 2 hour shifts). We use feather banners and get tablecloths. Register for Expo through Community Ed and our booth does not need electricity. Andy mentioned in years past we brought a laptop to display photos. Uniforms - Erin wanted to confirm that this year is not a new uniform year. Members of board confirmed that is correct. Erin recommended we should look at uniforms earlier since 12U tryouts are in the fall. Erin reported that the previous coordinator stated we have a contract with CA
Gear for one more year for the pants and they (CA Gear) still has 500 pair of our pants and would be out money if we do not use them. Chris said we will need to check into the contract as it could be a verbal contract. Erin will follow up with her contact at CA Gear to get additional information. Pictures - Erin passed around an example of a Memory Mate picture from Picture This out of Northfield. Baseball, Basketball and other sports have used Picture This. Angie Asked if they do banners? Erin will find out. Marie stated we have to make sure the twins logo is on each of the banners. Fundraising - Chris Bob with fundraiser cards has been emailing. Need to decide when we plan to hold the Parents meeting so we can make sure we have the cards by then. Parents Meeting - Feb 8 th was the Parent meeting last year for 2018 season. The board discussed possible dates as we need to hold the meeting prior to 10U tryouts, Thursday, February 21, 2019 was the final discussion date. Board discussed doing two sessions, one for 12 & 14U and one for 10U. We will have Youth First set up a booth at the meeting instead of a speech. Erin asked if it would be possible to sign up for tryouts online instead of the long lines at the meeting. Corey mentioned he, Alan and Andy helped with the Rosemount tryouts which ran very smoothly. Donation - Chris reported we got the $358 check from the golf tournament, however we need a tax receipt for the donor. Receipts - Chris has receipts she has been collecting for the past three years from Family Fresh. The receipts allow you to earn points but even with multiple trash bags of receipts we are nowhere near earning enough points to earn money. Can we just throw them away and stop collecting them? The board agreed this is not worth the time. Parents Night Out getting donations was a lot of work last year and we got minimal items. We should focus on a few larger items and the 50/50 raffle, booze wagon, cooler of cash etc. We could do a custom set of FGFA bean bag board (then raffle). People seem to be tired of donating and there are usually multiple groups getting donations around the same time. We made money but not enough for the effort put into collecting donations. Angie asked what if a team wanted to do a basket for silent auction instead of just FGFA getting them. Last year the Booze Wagon was huge hit (every member of the board brought some sort of alcohol for the wagon then FGFA purchased the wagon and filled it with the alcohol). Board agreed this would be a good idea to do again. Matt asked what did FGFA spend money on for the event? FGFA purchased the wagon for $60 and spent $90 for lottery tickets. The year before FGFA bought a TV and used a deck of playing cards for the raffle. $20 per ticket only 52 tickets sold. Erin mentioned looking for a TV around the holidays. Matt stated he has a connection to get Yeti products. Board discussed we should focus on three big items instead of the smaller donations. Marie, Erin, Chris, Angie and Kim will form a committee to work on Parents Night Out. Mark asked what is the FGFA budget for Parents Night Out? Chris asked for $500. Andy made motion to approve, Alan seconded the motion. Board approved, none opposed. Board discussed Saturday, February 23, 2019 as a possible date (no official date set this will be discussed more with committee). We can remind parents at the parents meeting and sell raffle tickets. A discussion was started to see if we should hold the event somewhere different than Celts. The majority of the board said we should make Celts our first option. What about a band instead of a DJ? Chris has an idea for a band. Should we also talk about a theme? This will be discussed by the committee.
Volunteer - Angie Angie gave volunteer checks to Mark (Treasure) that need to be cashed. There were six from the summer and two from the fall season. How long does Angie need to keep paper copies of the Volunteer tracking? Board discussed if it s on a computer then no need to keep the paper copies. Angie already informed the families above that their checks would be cashed. Angie stated she needed a list of Assistant Coaches. Also discussion on how to get in contact with Dan Last in regard to coaching 12U team. Erin will get ahold of him. Program Development - Corey everything is ready to go for off season open gym, the first date is November 12 th. A board member needs to be there to open and close the gym. Someone will set up a Signup Genius and each board member will need to sign up for 4-5 times. Reminder open Gym is two days a week in November and December, then three days after first of year. Open and closing consists of setting up cage and opening and making sure everything is back in the closet. Must also make sure cage is put back at end. Angie suggested we have a board training on how to open and close the gym. As a reminder, Mondays there is a hitting clinic and Tuesdays there is a pitching clinic but the other side of the gyms will be open. Players can throw and field on Mondays and hit on Tuesdays. After the first of the year Thursday will be wide open. Clinics - Clinics are almost full. We tried to make them sign up for all or nothing and broke down amounts so they only have to pay for the ones they attend ($10 per night). Mark stated he noticed that some girls were only signed up for one night but paid $50 and there was one pitcher that paid $100 and signed up for two nights. Mark will contact these players/families to let them know. Discussion on whether there could be an option to sign up one time for the entire package instead of signing up for each night. Frenzy Coordinators - Corey reminded the group we are still looking for Frenzy Coordinators, we should put something on website for that. As a reminder we need the Coordinator then that coordinator picks their assistant. FGFA 14U - We need to start thinking and talking about 14U and where to go for the future. Discussion on the possibility of a club team or paid coaches. We need to have further discussions on paid coaches. Many leave FGFA for Club ball something needs to be done. Erin stated it s also good to be coached by someone other than parents. We really need to keep good players here. Corey stated we need to be careful because just because someone is a paid coach doesn t make them a good coach. Erin said there would have to be an interview system. Erin stated she would rather pay more for 14U team ball to have someone be paid to coach the girls. Chris asked if we should form a subcommittee to discuss. Chad, Ryan, Alan, and Corey formed the committee. Erin stated she has someone in mind who has coached high school in the past. She can pass on the information to the committee. Tryout Committee - Corey stated he would like to be added to the tryout committee. He is making this request since he does a lot of the off season work with the players, sees the girls at open gym and dome league and can give insight on girls. This is a bylaw change and would need to be a bigger discussion. Andy said maybe we need to look at the committee as a whole and see who else could/should be added. Also look at what some of the other leagues do for team selection, gave examples of Lakeville (top 9 locked, two picks) and Rosemount (top 3 locked, rest picked from the next 16-18 then have to have board approval).
Travel Director - Andy Reminder on how dome ball is working for 12U this year. There are eight weekends of dome ball the games have been split between four of the teams, so each team got two weekends each. This gives all teams the opportunity to participate. There was a Signup Genius that went out for players to sign up for the weekends they can play for their team and then also put themselves on a wait list for other weekends. Marie mentioned she has heard a lot of positive comments about 12 U sharing the Dome games. Andy mentioned that Tri-county meetings are starting early. If anyone has anything for Andy to take to the meetings let him know. As a reminder the tri-county board meeting is in January Communications - Matt The survey sent via Survey Monkey has not had any new responses in for a while so he will download it soon to compile the data. Matt asked for regarding the Frenzy coordinator to post online to blast out. He will also be posting information and updates for open gyms and clinics. Erin will look into the apparel store and getting it up for the holidays. Once she gets the information she will work with Matt to get it online. Chris mentioned we should be cautious with posting Signup Genius via social media because it puts the girls names out to the public as well as time and locations. We just need to be cautious of what we are posting and where. We do have to post the SignUp somewhere as we don t have email addresses for everyone. We will just keep it off of Facebook. Angie asked Matt to clean up the volunteer page to remove last year s information. Matt will leave some of the generic info but remove dated stuff. Matt stated he wants to keep adding stuff so that the feed can be at the top of peoples pages. He is trying to keep the site fed with information. Marie reminded we should ask teams to share pics from dome ball. Treasure - Mark Mark, Mike and Kim went to bank and changed all account signers (Treasure, President, Secretary). Mark changed all passwords for accounts (bank, PayPal, credit card etc.). Provided Kim with information and will provide to Mike at a later date. Off Season Payment Tracking Mark is in the process of tracking payment for multiple off season programs (clinics, dome ball). Mark will contact families to clear up confusion for payments on clinics (see Program Development report). Mark will need list for dome ball to know which players owe money ($30 per night). FGFA paid $2300 each for one 10U registration and one 12U registration. Will need to collect from players for the nights they played. Corey recommended not to wait until the end of the season to collect or FGFA (or coach) will end up paying extra. Mark said to put it on his shoulders and he would do the work to get the money from the players. Angie mentioned some of the 12U teams may want to do fundraising for Dome Ball. Chris said she wouldn t recommend using fundraising money for Dome ball. Alan said he will make sure his parents are accountable and pay or the players will sit until paid. Registration - In process of tracking payment for 12U and 14U 2019 Summer Registrations. For 12U there are 54 players on roster, 21 unpaid players. For 14U there are 12 players on roster, 8 unpaid players. Mark is working with Andy as there are also refunds owed for the players who were cut. Concessions Receipts since last BOD meeting. Week 4 Fall Ball (9/22/18) gross receipts were $1,362.78. Fall Ball State (9/29/18) gross receipts were $1,032.45. Tom Bye with MN Softball sent a $400 check to FGFA for hosting the Fall State Tournament. Chris asked if the tournament director got paid, if not that is for the tournament director (Marie). Angie mentioned that we talked
about it being split between the two board members who were there (Marie and Chad). Marie will look to see if she got a separate check in the mail at home but did confirm the t-shirt money was given. Mark and Marie will work together to finalize the 20% commissions owed to Empire. Need to discuss best practice for concession stand. Need two counters to count and initial before concession stand opens and two counters to count at the conclusion. Budget - Mark will bring a budget for next meeting to review. He will follow up with board members to discuss any needs for the next year (equipment, fields, pins etc.). FGFA Cash Position As of 9/30/18 FGFA has the following balances; $51,648.86 (checking), $20,884.16 (savings), $16,639.16 (PayPal). Grand total of $89,172.18. Board should discuss how we are doing financially and if there are any other opportunities we can offer to the players. Also what fields/facilities improvements need to made/purchased. We have talked about working with Empire for netting and scoreboards and well as purchasing a golf card for FGFA use at tournaments. Need to find out when the next meeting is with Empire. Again need to think about funds for paid coaches for 14U. Concessions - Marie We need to confirm/decide summer 2019 tournaments. We currently have two weekends for Frenzy and one weekend for June qualifier. No plans host Nationals in 2019. Ryan will just need to know when and what dates to reserve the facilities. Chad stated 14U should not be played at Boeckman. Marie and Andy mentioned they only played at Boeckman last year due to needing fields and it was only for one Friday evening of a tournament so they could get three rounds of games in. Marie will work with Mark to get permit in January. Marie asked to order a second hotdog roller for Boeckman. The board stated it had already been previously approved. Marie will purchase machine. Vice-President - Alan Alan passed around thank you card from Shaun McEwen and family. More discussion on the demo at @Bat. It would be nice to be able to offer it to anyone interested. FGFA needs to figure out what we want to offer. Could it be something FGFA is able to provide (pay the cost) for the first year as a trial? Many board members like the team idea. Alan stated we need to talk more with Scott to figure out the actual cost. Angie recommended we start using the 12 and 14U teams since those teams are already formed. Alan if the girls can benefit from it in the long run it is a good idea. The players need to be able to understand it and get better from it. Discussion also started about getting sand balls for the teams. Corey mentioned he has seen bats break with sand balls and he tends not to use them. Alan stated he got some different balls that seem to be a bit softer. Further discussion needed for the HitTrax machine and how FGFA will more forward. 6. Adjourn Meeting Marie made motion to adjourn meeting. Erin seconded motion. Board Approved.