CONNECTICUT SWIMMING, INC.

House of Delegates

May 23, 2000

 

Call to Order: The House of Delegates was called to order by General Chairman Mary Anne Condon at 7:45 PM at the High Plains Community Center (Orange, CT).

 

Present: Board members- Mary Anne Condon, Bill Ball, Ken Block, Steve Carroll, Ed Easley, Bill Krumm, Pam Libertiny, Mary Lynch, Tim Quill, Lauren Taft, Judy Snow, Kathy Walsh and Wendy Whitcomb.

 

Absent Board members: John Abrami, April Haskell, John McCann, and George Miles

 

At-Large Delegates: Jim Cooper, Barbara Ehmer, Carol Navarro, Mary Beth McCarthy

 

Also present: Ann McCann (AJSC), Mike Divernierno (ARAC), Sean Farrell (CDEV), Ann Hughes (GLAS), Sheryl Skroski (HNHS); Kurt Bittel, Kit Reville, (ICSC); Peter Boucher (LEHY), Carol Feeney (NCY); Tim Wise and Henk Jansen (OMNI), Skip Nitardy (PSDY); Brian Waits (RAC), Eric Benvenuti (SECY), Jason Paige (SOCO), Ed Dingus (WAC); Clark Cooper (WCA), Pat Love (WEST), Ellen Johnston (WRAT), Jeff Allen (WYW) and Nan Cooper.

 

 

Approval of Agenda: The agenda was approved as published.

 

Adoption of Minutes of October 1999 House of Delegates Meeting: The minutes were approved as published.

 

Welcome/ Announcements/ Chairman’s Report: Mary Anne Condon welcomed all in attendance to the May House of Delegates meeting.  Mary Anne extended thanks to all the volunteers that contributed their time to Connecticut Swimming, Inc. during her five year tenure as General Chair, and a special thanks to Jim Cooper, Mary Lynch, Judy Snow and Barbara Ehmer for their many, many years of service and assistance to her.  Moving to the future, Mary Anne noted that the sport of competitive swimming is changing from the national level down to the local level.  It will be our challenge to make these changes in the best ways possible for our athletes while as an organization we remain fiscally responsible and fiscally sound, continue to develop the grassroots programs, and develop ways to recruit and retain volunteers. 

 

 

REPORTS OF OFFICERS

 

A Short Course Update for 1999-2000 was available.  This publication contained reports of the officers.

 

 Administrative vice-chairman: No report

 

Treasurer: Sue Lecza distributed a treasurer's report for September 1, 1999 to April 30, 2000.  Sue reported that check request and reimbursements forms were required and available on the web or from the office. 

 


Finance Vice-Chairman: Not present.

 

Age Group Committee: Ken Block reported running a successful SC Age Group Championship meet and thanked all that offered support and helped run this meet. Ken this past season, formed an age group committee of coaches and parent volunteers.  Ken appealed for input as he puts together next year's plan for age group swimming in Connecticut.

 

Senior Committee: No report.

 

Program Development: Mary Lynch reviewed the sectional meet format.  The Eastern Zone decided to offer two sectional short course meets for spring 2001.  CSI is in Region I with AD, ME, MR, NE, NJ, and NI.  The sectional short course meet will be held March 8-11, 2001.  This date allows time for entries into Phillips 66 National meet.  It is anticipated that the qualifying times will be such that 800 swimmers will compete.  Swimmers may compete in a maximum of seven events; bonus events will not be offered.  Further details will be available in June at the national General Chair's meeting in Florida.  The Eastern Zone age group meet entry limitations will be amended to reflect the demise of Junior Championships.  Only senior national swimmers will be excluded from the zone meet.  How sectionals will impact the CSI short course season has been referred to George Miles of Technical Planning.  Comments and ideas are most welcome as the short course schedule is formulated.   

 

Program Operations: Steve Carroll reported a successful short course championship meet schedule.  Steve met with Wesleyan University to review our contract and facilitate communication between Wesleyan and CSI.  Steve has secured the UCONN natatorium for this LC season and hopes that this venue will be available for future senior meets. Due to the scheduling problems involved with the short course season, bid packages will be mailed later than usual, most likely mid to late June. 

 

Coaches Representatives: Bill Ball announced that Glenn Neufeld, newly-elected Junior Coach Representative, will be leaving CSI for a job opening in PA.  An election for Coaches Representative will be held this summer at senior and age group championships.   

 

Technical Planning: No report.  


 

Athletes Representatives: Wendy Whitcomb and Lauren Taft introduced Brian Carey, the new Junior Athlete Representative. They reported that more swimmers this year ran for office.  They would like to see CSI add a page to the web site for athletes with contents of the page dictated by the athletes.  Efforts to get an active athlete committee together continue.

 

Safety Committee: No report.

 

Official Chairman: No report.

 

Registration: Judy Snow stated that athlete registration is consistent with last year at this time.  CSI now offers a “seasonal athlete” membership, which will be available to seasonal swimmers who wish to compete between April and August.  Fees will be one half (˝) the usual, annual membership.  Swimmers may not compete at the Zone or National level with this type of membership. Judy urged all clubs to evaluate this carefully before registering swimmers as seasonal.  Upgrading to a full membership requires full payment with no refund of seasonal membership.  Judy reported her registration software now produces a report of coaches with expired credentials.  Letters are then sent to these coaches and a non-athlete card is issued rather than a coach card.  Currently there are 26 coaches with expired credentials.    

 

REPORTS OF COMMITTEES AND COORDINATORS

 

Zone team: Mary Anne Condon reported for Ben Wallace.  The summer zone team will again travel as a team.  This is the second summer season in which the zone team has following the same travel requirements as the spring short course zone team.   

 

Awards: The awards position remains vacant.  Interest was solicited for an awards and banquet chairman.  

 


Time Standards: George Miles was not present, but the time standards for 2000 put forth by George have been approved by Program Development and were distributed at the October House of Delegates. 

 

Technology: Jim Cooper reviewed the technology gains of CSI over the past five years, noting that our LSC led the way in swimming website design. The current web site boasts a database query with over 65,000 hits since inception.  Email addresses at ctswim.org are available to board members.  Reviewing past projects, Jim mentioned the failure of discussion groups.  The future includes the ability to run queries against meet results. Jim continues to offer LSA Software at no cost to each CSI team as well as code for the database query if teams would like to set up a team database query. 

 

PRESENTATION AND APPROVAL OF THE ANNUAL BUDGET

 

Sue Lecza, for John McCann presented the Budget for the 2000-2001 fiscal year. It was moved, seconded and approved to accept the budget for the fiscal year beginning September 1, 2000 as proposed by the Budget Committee and the CSI Board of Directors.

 

PRESENTATION AND APPROVAL OF THE ANNUAL AUDIT

 

An independent accounting firm has conducted the third annual audit.  An audit by John Tobin concluded that the “books are in order and all taxes have been filed”.  Copies of the audit are available through the CSI office.

 

ELECTIONS

 

Leanne Spletzer, Chairman of the Nominating Committee, gave each nominee an opportunity to make a brief presentation, then asking for nominations from the floor.  There were no nominations from the floor.  Motion made, seconded and approved to accept a unanimous ballot for unopposed nominations of Program Development (Bill Krumm), Membership/Registration (Judy Snow), Senior Chair (Tim Quill) and Finance Chair (John McCann).  Contested positions were General Chair (Steve Carroll and Pam Libertiny), Administrative Vice-Chair (Jeff Allen and Clark Cooper) and Secretary (Barbara Ehmer and Mary Beth McCarthy).  Ballots were collected and counted by David Moyer, Leanne Spletzer and Mary Lynch.  Elected to the position of General Chair was Steve Carroll, Administrative Vice-Chair was Clark Cooper and Secretary was Barbara Ehmer.  Motion made, seconded and approved that Leanne Spletzer destroy the ballots in the next 24 hours. 

 

 

NEW BUSINESS

 

DISCUSSION

 

Mary Anne Condon presented the idea of a CSI "mini-convention".  This one day convention would offer a coaches clinic, officials clinic, training courses, etc. in the morning, break for lunch and then reconvene in the early afternoon for the House of Delegates meeting.  This may be a possibility for future meetings.  Input regarding this idea is appreciated.  

The annual awards banquet will now recognize volunteers with service award pins.  The banquet agenda will be changed.  Special honorees will be recognized first. 

 

Tim Quill encouraged careful reading of the senior open meet announcement, as there are significant changes.

 

Travel funds are available to swimmers attending the USA Disability Championships as well as the US Open, Junior Championships and Olympic Trials.  Program Development has approved increased travel reimbursement for CSI Olympic Trialists, who meet certain criteria.  Details will be available after the Board of Directors meeting June 21, 2000. 

     

   

The meeting was adjourned at 8:15 PM.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

Nan Cooper, Administrator

Permanent Office