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Minutes of a Meeting
Squash BC Board Planning Session
January 6th 2007

Present: John Roche, Kevin Kydd, Lee Lam, Mark Robinson, Bill Vipond, Alan Foster, Dave Leman, Lorrie Baildham, Asif Hudani

Call to Order: 8:40am

I. Introductions and Overview of Meeting

All present introduced themselves and their current position on the Board. It is an ambitious agenda and we will all be challenged to stay on time.

a) Approval of the agenda
Agenda approved as written

b) Review of Action Items & Approval of Minutes of the Last Meeting
Minutes of the meeting in January 2006 approved. Action items were reviewed. The insurance about travel was discussed from last meeting and people will be covered under the SBC Liability insurance. A code of conduct is going to be done by SBC players representatives. We have been encouraging juniors to take the officiating courses. The legal bill will be dealt with shortly.
Action: K Kydd to distribute the minutes of January 2006 electronically.

c) Confirmation of President Appointment
Motion: That John Roche be confirmed as President of Squash BC. Moved by Mark Robinson, seconded by Bill Vipond. Carried.

II. Around the Province Reports

Zone1: Kevin gave a report on Zone 1. Swingers in Nelson has been sold to a couple, Duncan McDonald and Kimberly Hyatt. They are very enthusiastic about doing things. Talks are underway for doing a coaching course in Feb. Kevin has been in contact with Steve Weatherall in Cranbrook and he has agreed to be the Sport Advisor for the games. The games will have to be played in two different towns since there is only one court in each.

Zone 2: Kevin reported on the Okanagan. Neill and Heidi Steed who are the new owners in Kamloops are breathing new life into the club and many of the old players are coming out of the woodwork. CourtPlex in Kelowna has been sold to iQuest. They have taken out several Racquetball courts but seem to want to keep squash going. Golds is still in limbo. Rosters in Vernon is still very active with most of the traveling players from Zone 2 coming from there. Salmon Arm is being run by the players and have an active in house league. Penticton is having a few problems but should be able to work them out.

Zone 3: Kevin reported on Zone 3. The Fraser Valley League continues to be active between Langley, Chilliwack and Abbotsford. Newlands continues to have the old regulars with the weight lifters using the courts as well. There seems to be younger players coming in and playing amongst themselves. Apollo Club in Abbotsford is doing very well; they now have the lion’s share of the squash players in Abbotsford. Chilliwack clubs are being run by the YMCA. Chilliwack has one team in division 2.
Newlands continues to run the only junior program in the valley with about 15 juniors. Apollo people have talked about getting a junior program going there as well.

Zone 4: Mark Robinson sent in a report. River Club is going well, new VSL team, Sport Central is improving; they held the BC Open and came up with new ideas. Bayside will be holding a new junior event at the end of Feb. that will be held every second year in off years from the BC Winter Games. Membership is going well with new members under 25 years old. They all play together. Juniors are going well with lots of juniors. Great West Fitness is going well, great group of guys playing there who are encouraging more players all the time. Bonsor has 4 teams in the VSL. Neeven Soodyall is coaching there. SFU says nothing is going on that’s organized but the courts are being used.
John talked about Shauna Flath’s new Squash Canada role coordinating University Programs.
Action: John & Kevin to meet with Shauna to clarify her role and discuss a role for Squash BC

Zone 5: report was sent in by Liz. Most clubs are going along fine.

Zone 6A: Phil Green sent in a report and Cedar Hill is doing well. The best marketing weapon is 2 month memberships for 60. They had 40 people signed up and 12 turned into full memberships. Phil has been very active in the school system. Mostly Elementary and middle schools and one high school. Stuart’s club is doing well with lots of tournament and leagues. The turnout for the Women’s Weekend was disappointing. There was a conflict with the rolling stones and CWG trials. Stuart has some schools through. Stuart has hired Mike Johnson to be a high level coach. Quadra club is active with league and ran the Men’s weekend. The Keating club is still operating. The building owner continues to support the club occupying the space.

Zone 6B: Lorrie reported on the Nanaimo club. Membership is not growing and the facilities need modernizing. There’s not enough revenue to hire both squash pro and manager. Lorrie conducted a women’s social night for novice and beginning women. Three women subsequently joined. They have 150 members with Wednesday night league. They have a good web site. February is the tournament date with a theme party. Last year they had very competitive men’s A. Ladies A were non existent. There was talk about using PSA players after they lost to go to clubs to give exhibitions. Gerry Poulton will be conducting a mini clinic at Nanaimo. Parksville courts have re-opened and have a change room. Courtnay is thriving with lots of people playing. Port Alberni is talking about renovating the club. Campbell River is doing well with a strong junior program. They had a very well attended tournament.

Zone 7: Kevin reported that there are not many Squash BC members in this zone but there are squash players. The BC Winter Games will be at Terrace in 2010 so Squash BC will assist with organizing the event up there

Zone 8: Kevin reported this zone is mainly Prince George and it is active with in house leagues. There are very few juniors in PG. We have a new Zone Rep, Grant Emmond.

Bits and Pieces:
Owen Smith is developing a program for organizing tournaments, leagues and doing ranking. We will be entering into a contract with Owen. Other leagues will be encouraged to use this program since the program should be a huge improvement for most leagues.
John has done a lot of work doing a Google Earth Squash BC map of all the clubs in the province. This is now on the web site on the “Member Clubs” page.

III. Committee Reports

Coaching: Stuart is the coaching chair and was not present at the meeting. We have held a level 3 coaching course in late August. Two Introduction to Coaching courses in the fall and we are organizing an Intro to Competition in January.

Advertising: Our current advertising policy is to sell ads on our web site and in the squash handbook. The ads are placed for a one year period. Our renewal process is transparent. Each year, advertisers are approached to determine their willingness to advertise with Squash BC. All advertisers are sent a package describing the opportunities and requesting a response. In the case of multiple advertisers wanting the same spot, Squash BC will contact the advertisers requesting a final bid for the spot. Highest bid wins the spot.

Squash BC was approached by an advertiser willing to give Squash BC funds for each referral made to them. The Board agreed that this is not appropriate. The Board encourages advertisers to offer discounts to members or donate funds to the 2020 fund, local clubs or junior programs. Donating funds to Squash BC directly could become a conflict of interest.

A suggestion was made to create a web page of all our advertisers including any advertisers who may only wish to purchase a spot on the advertisers web page.

Action: Kevin to administer the advertising process starting in March. He will also investigate the option of creating an advertisers web page and report back to the Executive.

Our marketing material should be reviewed by someone with marketing expertise and make recommendations on a marketing strategy.

Action: Kevin to contact Sue Griffin to determine her willingness to assist and potentially include a request for marketing assistance in our weekly email.

Officiating: As if reported to the board with a written report. He wants to strengthen the existing officials and promote new ones. We had tournament where we needed higher level officials. The CJO was a big event with the Squash Canada officiating committee was here. We were lacking local commitment. Allan commented that the USA was night and day with CJO and US Open. 80% of the matches in the US were refereed by kids. We have to do more full clinics and we need to promote the advantages of becoming an official. John said Alberta sets aside money as do we. Dave Leman worked out that official got paid about $2 per hour for the CJO. We need to keep going with this and try and get tournament organizers to set aside some money or do we take and pay for the officials from Squash BC.

Referees are being encouraged to utilize Rule 17 to control the behavior of players on court. Squash BC referees can deal with on court behavior however, the club will have to deal with off court behavior such as offensive language on club premises, theft, etc.

Steve Lawton’s paper was discussed. After a lengthy discussion, the consensus among Board members is that Steve should convene a meeting of the open players and tournament organizers to develop strategies and options for dealing with behavior unbecoming to the sport of squash. Steve should also request a recommendation from the group on the issue of whether to allow ranking points for invitational tournaments. Once the two issues have been reviewed by the players and organizers, the Squash BC Board will review the recommendations and make a policy decision.

Doubles: Marvin Mizinski reported that the doubles pro tournament went well with 100 to 125 people a day watching. Some attendees were very surprised when told viewing matches would cost but the funds were used to create a prize pool for the professionals. Marvin suggested we put together a list of media contacts and a time line of when they should deal with them. There should be someone at Squash BC appointed to media relations person. This could be included in our marketing strategy.

Juniors: The Juniors Development Committee reviewed the ranking system and decided to stay with the head to head system. In addition, they decided to eliminate the weighting of the tournament. There is still the issue of how to apply a penalty to non active players.

The High Performance committee has met and are working on the program. They will roll out the program this spring and will bring it on in full by the summer. They are in contact with Sport BC.
Dave Leman and Kevin Kydd met with Chris Trenholme of the BC Winter Games. Squash BC is on probation for 3 different problems. We would like to change the format from 3 boys/3 girls to 4 boys/2 girls. We will go to an individual type format. Athletes will still earn points for their team. We need to have Coach Instructor certified coaches. (Old Level 2.)

The Gudewill Fund will be distributed in January

The Junior Web site needs to be updated.

There has been some talk of a high school league in Vancouver.

Squash Canada Participation committee: Mark Robinson is the Squash BC rep onthis committee. A conference call was held. Mark is on a committee to look at the programs like Instant Squash, Skill Awards, etc. They will look at the programs and see if they are working or not. They will survey the clubs to see if they are working. There is a different committee looking at how to bring in and keep members.

IV. Presidents Report

John Roche spoke about the steep learning curve to become familiar with Squash BC operations and issues. The major project he has worked on is the Strategic Plan. He has had some contact with Squash Canada with a conference call relating to the budget and dealing with SC about the team events. Kevin made a presentation to SqCan at the last AGM on BC’s dissatisfaction with the team events but didn’t get any support from any other province. The minutes of SC meeting state that the rest of the provinces did not agree with Squash BC’s position. The budget is now $2500 per team. In future, we will make the budget $5000.00 for both teams and apportion the money proportional to the costs incurred by each team. The teams will be picked Nov. 15 of each year.

V. Financial Report

John Roche introduced and explained the format of the budget report. Bill Vipond reviewed the highlights of the budget:

• The revenue from membership appears lower due to an extra grand last year.
• Advertising is up $3000.
• There is a surplus due to reduced expenses. We have been closely controlling expenses due to lack of gaming funds. The funds arrived on December 23 so we can now spend according to budget
• The office expenses are down mostly due to less bookkeeping expenses. Our bookeeeper has been very efficient with her time

Motion: That the budget be changed 14300 line Canada Winter Games income be changed to reflect the new SportFunder funding increase and the corresponding expense line 24300 CWG be changed to reflect that same amount. Moved by Bill Vipond, Seconded by Dave Leman. Carried.

In future, the Canada Winter Games program will be under the direction of the Junior Development Committee.

The Doubles budget was increased by $300 to cover the costs of upcoming women’s clinics
Lorrie Baildham requested consideration of Squash BC funding exhibition matches by two of the PSA players participating in the Evergreen tournament. It was agreed that this year, we will fund an experiment to test the concept of utilizing PSA players to promote squash around BC. This time, Squash BC will fund two players to hold exhibitions in Nanaimo and Victoria. Next year, other locations and funding models will be considered.

Action: Kevin will call Paul Marley about getting two PSA players to play in Nanaimo and Victoria. Lorrie and Cathy Clackson (Vancouver Island zone representatives) will coordinate on behalf of Squash BC. The funding will come out of Introduction to Squash section of the budget.

Motion: That the financial statement be approved. Moved by Allan Foster, seconded by Lorrie. Carried.

VI. Long Term Plan Discussion

Board members participated in a lively discussion of the plan. Numerous edits and changes were suggested and incorporated into the plan. John will now circulate the plan to those individuals who responded to his request for member input. Following this, the plan will be posted on the website for review by all members. We will target completion for March 31 2007

VII. Adjournment

Moved Marvin Mizinski, seconded Lorrie Baildham. Carried.

The meeting adjourned at 4:45 pm