Berlin Yacht Club Junior Sailing

2011 Planning Meeting

February 13, 2011- 2:00pm

The Harrod’s House- Kent, Ohio

Agenda, Annotated with Meeting Minutes

Attendees:

Tim and Kelli Harrod

Gordon MacDowell

George and Jackie Allen

Ed and Anika Aberegg

Mike, Nicole, Ryan, Ally, Anna and Abigail Green

Tom, Robin and Camille Sherer

Warren and John Duckworth

Rick, Kristina, Lauren, Christian and David Myers

Barry Leven

Chris, Conor and Christopher Ruppen

Did I miss anyone?

The agenda was used to capture and organize the discussions and actions from the meeting. Meeting discussion is shown in italics.

1. Berlin Junior Program Organization

a. Draft Organization Chart

b. Parent and Junior Positions/Assistance

c.

A draft organization chart, structured around Junior Club Activities and Junior Race Team Activities, was discussed. Volunteers (wink, wink) were identified for each of the key positions to support Berlin’s junior program. Thanks everybody for stepping up and offering to help! The final org chart is provided attached to this email in Word and pdf versions. John D., this may be something worth posting on the junior portion of the webpage.

2. 2011 Junior Calendar

a. Junior Weekends

b. Sail Camp

c. Bayweek

d. Travelers Series

Tim Harrod developed a 2011 BYC Junior Sailing Race and Event Schedule and this was handed out at the meeting. The calendar includes BYC events like BYC Regattas, Sail Camp, Junior Weekends, etc and the regatta schedule for regattas held all over the area, including Bayweek. The Travelers Series schedule was not available as of the meeting, but may be available now. Tim, once updated, suggest you email to all on this distribution. This will be a bit of a living document, but juniors will also be informed by email on a regular basis about upcoming sailing opportunities. An example of this was the email Tim sent yesterday about the Junior Olympics Sailing Festival to be held in June in Sandusky. Thanks Tim!

3. July Sail Camp

a. Camp Theme?

The juniors present at the meeting convened their own quorum to determine a theme for sail camp. After reported heavy debate, the theme for 2011 was determined to be “Under The Sea”. I don’t know about you, but the theme seems to support a lot of capsizing.

4. Race Team

a. What fleets are juniors competing in? Lasers, Laser Radials and Thistle

b. Bayweek- Who is planning to attend? At this time, Harrods, probably Ruppens, possibly Jackie Allen if we have a Thistle team and Myers are in deliberations. (Rick, that’s a legal term….. I think). When I returned from the meeting, I had an email from Ken Hopkins saying that the Hopkins were hopefully in for Bayweek and Sail Camp.

i. Island accommodations for parents?-None yet. Costs have gone up. Ruppens will look into this and start with information Nicole has from last year. If numbers are low, we may be camping to make this a little more financially friendly. So, if you have decided your intentions, please let me know soon so we know how many to plan for.

ii. Bayweek registration responsibility- Ruppens will handle for now. If Myers elect to attend, Kris offered to help.

c. Travelers Series- A good opportunity to gain experience on many different water and conditions. Cost is typically $15 and all are one day only. This makes it easy to make a game time decision based on weather and wind to give our kids the best opportunities. Several juniors plan to attend in some capacity. As well as individual awards, there are team awards for the Series. To show we can compete, our juniors finished, 2^nd, 3^rd and 5^th in the lasers fulls and laser radials in the 2010 Series. Rick Myers volunteered his services to an ILYA Junior committee, I believe specifically related to the Travelers Series. Rick will keep his pulse on junior activities related to ILYA. A Travelers schedule will be emailed to this group when finalized.

d. Regional Regattas- Watch for email notifications.

e. Club Racing and Race Committee- Tom Sherer and Kelli Harrod offered to promote club racing. Ideas presented by Gordon MacDowell included things like an early race start for Lasers and Sunfish once a month, potentially a Laser/Sunfish race night once a month on a different night (Monday or Tuesday) and encourage adults and juniors to sail their “little” boats together. These types of events will be initiated by Tom and Kelli, working with Gordon to help organize.

f. Practice/Coaching and Commitment – The idea here was to get some structured coaching for the juniors, especially early in the season. We have talented adult sailors at Berlin and many have offered to work with Juniors, especially if the juniors are willing to show the commitment. Warren and Chris offered to help organize this. Chris has already had conversation with Thistlers that are willing to put juniors in their boats for hands on teaching and coaching on Wednesdays or Sundays or even at regattas. Warren and Chris will also try to look for volunteers to work with our Laser team. Stay posted and watch for emails.

g. Process for adding new race team members- Much discussion occurred about the process for adding new race team members. The juniors also discussed in their own quorum. After much debate, we arrived at:

How to Become a Member of the BYC Junior Race Team?

Within a calendar year, a BYC junior member must participate in a minimum of three (3) regattas. The regatta can be three junior regattas like Travelers series or other regional junior regattas. Additionally, juniors can qualify by sailing in an all junior boat that competes at an adult regatta. Again, the three regatta criteria still holds true. An example of this would be a three person Thistle Team with all three (skipper and crew) as juniors, competing at an adult regatta.

It was discussed that it is nice to invite the qualifying juniors to the Race Team at the Fall Meeting and continue to present the juniors with a BYC Race Team sweatshirt.

John D- Please add the question and answer to the website as you see appropriate.

5. Miscellaneous

a. Junior Safety Boat- 2011 updates and needs?- Seats and a steering wheel. Search is underway.

b. Junior Club Responsibilities- Not many. Be good representatives and citizens of the club and support club work days when you can. We discussed the idea of the juniors taking responsibility for a Sunday club race day by essentially assisting with the race course, helping to run the races, helping to launch and recover adult boats, and prepare the meat and serve the meal and drinks. Essentially, be seen, be helpful and show the adult members that the juniors care about the club and the members. Tentatively, Sunday May 22 was identified as the date since that weekend is the first junior weekend and the juniors will already be at the club Sunday morning.

Bill B, do we have your concurrence?

c. Junior Budget- The junior budget was discussed and Gordon was not sure of the current disposition. It was agreed to request the budget status form the Treasurer and receive the junior amount from the general fund to open a junior account. We will manage and be accountable for that budget and any fund raiser proceeds will go to that account to support junior activities, safety boat parts or blue sweatshirts. Warren offered to open an account once we receive our distribution from the general fund.

These are the thoughts as I noted. I’m sure I missed some items since I had trouble capturing notes. Feel free to send comments if we are missing anything of value. Thank-you to all that made the meeting and for your participation and interest in the BYC junior program. It was a good start to our 2011 season. For those that could not make the meeting, we will keep you apprised of junior activities and opportunities, so please jump in where you can. Communication will be the key, so please keep the discussion and interaction going. See you soon,

Chris February 23, 2011