Minutes for the Leadership Team Meeting on April 1st., 2024.
Members Present: Joyce Noland, George Carr, Faith Loeb, Cheryl Breidenbach, Dean Cheatham, Linda Blake, Kathy Reiter, Chuck Buchanan, Marian Garcia, Sally Serago, Brian Eberhard, Christy Pritchard, Marcia Stivanson, Bill Bourbeau, and Mo Garcia.
Dean Cheatham began the meeting by handing out a copy of suggested bylaws to members. Since we became 501c3 we need bylaws so he told us to review and comment on what is written. The bylaws state how the leadership is elected, their yearly terms in positions, meeting requirements, voting quorums, duties for officers, and financial controls. It is hoped we can vote on the acceptance of these API bylaws during next month‘s meeting.
1. Feedback back from Player Representatives :
Bill -Open courts on 4/5 are not crowded. Joyce stated outdoors are vacant too. The drop off of indoor play always occurs when spring time arrives in Aiken and a lot of players choose to play outside. We are not sure why outdoor court playing has diminished but we are not too worried about it.
2. April is National Pickleball Month.
The city designated April as National Pickleball month a couple of years ago. The committee wants to do something weekly to promote this proclamation. The USAP is also encouraging clubs to promote weekly happenings. Mo offered to donate gift certificates for lessons. It was suggested to have an Open Play night indoors. A volunteer would be needed to head this up. Duties would be fliers/internet advertising/raffle coordination. Chuck volunteered to fill this position. Mo/Chuck will talk to OW to hang Declaration outdoors and indoors. Mo stated that Thursdays are used as youth pickleball time. Tuesday would probably be the best day for an open play or round robin. April 23rd/30th will be looked into by Mo.
Faith brought up having a social on Tuesday night like a Funday Monday. She asked if we thought this would work. Marian thinks outdoors is more popular now. Joyce stated we need to use our indoor court time so the city doesn’t take the allotted time away from us and give it to some other organization. We will therefore have a social event indoors.
Mo suggested having a Groovy Tuesday which would include free pizza and clinics. The clinics would start at 5 and end at 6. Open play and eating would be afterwards. Marian will head this up with lots of people to help.
Bill brought up that not too many people showed up for the last social. Joyce thinks this might be because it was a Friday night and people do other things on Fridays. It will be interesting to see if we get a better turn out on a Tuesday evening.
3. Pacer Life-Kathy.
Marian and Kathy have designed a flyer. Mo and Kathy will work out a date and final details.
4. Results of OW time allocation survey.
Joyce passed around all comments. A good cross section of people….72 responses….suggestions/desires varied greatly. Everyone wants something different and we aren’t going to please everyone. Mo suggested sending results out to all people so they know we are doing our best with people wanting too many options. API is offering all times and types of play we can. Given the court time that is allocated to pickleball, API is making a strong good faith effort to balance as best as possible between Open Play, Designated Play , Court Reservation, Funday Monday, etc.
5. Weeknight Evening Play-Faith. - Was discussed earlier in the meeting.
6. Court Reservation Issues of Invalid reservations and rolling reservations. Joyce
People are reserving court times and not showing up. People are also using additional email addresses of no players to reserve court time. We don’t know how to solve this issue. It is thought that perhaps talking to individuals may help the inconsiderations. Cheryl has volunteered to talk with players who may not be adhering to API reservation rules.
Mo asked Brian if he thought it was time to revisit how we reserve court playing time and perhaps have a rolling reservation method. Instead of a mad rush of reserving courts Thursday mornings, each day another day of play would be added to the SUG perhaps 10 days in advance. This rolling method would cost API approximately $10/m. A decision to change to a rolling reservation was not present at this time. We will consider this change and discuss it at next month’s meeting.
7. Ongoing/Upcoming - Check the website for dates in April
-
Drills with Harve and Little Mo on Saturdays were both well received.
-
New Players Clinic and Practice Play at Odell were full - 8 players each
-
Eleven (11) players were rated in March.
8. Palmetto Update. Joyce
In prior years there have been complaints of too much wait time between matches and combining of age brackets. We solved the waiting times last year by having all round robin divisions with dedicated courts and adding to the court monitor responsibilities. Sanctioning this event will hopefully bring in more players so we won’t have to combine ages brackets. We are encouraging local people to play too, since all of our events are ultimately done for our players. George has flyers to hang. Jody has packets for sponsorships. Ask George/Jody for material as needed. We need players to make this a successful event.
9. Possible CanHope tournament. Joyce
This tourney has been pushed back to 2025 since they have a running race scheduled in the fall. It would be too much for them to have two major events. The city approved of October 12 for this tourney. Now this date is open. Joyce wondered if we wanted to use this date for another event. Mo stated that it would be nice to have a juniors tournament. It was stated that last year we only had 17 youths which is not enough for a tourney. Mo stated that there are 65 kids in chartered middle schools that play pickleball. He feels he could encourage most of these kids to participate.
10. Ambassador Update-Mo and Chuck
Chuck stated that we could all bring the players we play with during the days to the evening Groovy Tuesday.
April 27 is the SPA tournament that he is helping to promote.
11. Closing Comments.
Joyce wanted to know if we needed weekly monthly meetings. Bylaws and Groovy Tuesday need to be discussed as well as the Reservation policy. Therefore a May meeting is desired. The date will be May 6 and held at Odell.