CRCA Board Meeting-Minutes

Date:               January 6, 2015

Location: Conference Room at Apartment Bldg. of Matt and Lisa Vandivort

 In attendance: Liz Marcello (president), Ken Edwards, Ann Marie Miller, Lucia Deng, Joe Grgic, David Carr, Lisa Kennish Vandivort, Alexis Kraft, Tomi Ketcham, Randy Locklair and outgoing board members Josh Sakofsky and Ashley Doane.

The president opened the meeting with a warm thank you in advance to all board members—incoming, remaining and outgoing—for their hard and sometimes overlooked work in keeping the CRCA club program viable and growing. Liz asked that members take care to follow through on what they commit to do, answer emails from fellow board members and from club members promptly, and err on the side of copying her on all correspondence relating to club business (using her president@crca.net email address, not personal).

1. Overview of positions: group check-in with each board member to see if they have any questions about their role, duties, etc.

2. Club race duties: the board discussed distribution of duties to prepare for club races. The board empowered Liz Marcello to work other board members on clarifying how and whether club race results would be uploaded to the USAC (including the issue of how to report other race participants whose position is not recorded), Joe Grgic and others will locate the radios purchased last year well before the next race, Liz Marcello will clarify and coordinate publicity about the waiver process for season passes (as of 1/9, this has now been clarified), and Josh Sakofsky has arranged a time to train both Tomi Ketcham and (backup) Randy Locklair on how to generate the race roster that will then be sent to Lucia Deng for posting well before the first race and (updated rosters) other club races.

3. Open racing: the board discussed how responsibilities for open racing needed to be distributed more broadly, particularly through judicious and proactive use of team duty, but also through other ways that board members and others can contribute. Ken Edwards volunteered to explore getting another vehicle permit to facilitate transport of club gear to offsite races. Lucia Deng agreed to produce updated race guides. And Lisa Vandivort agreed to produce and submit timely NYSBRA grant applications for club programs and races. Ann Marie raised the question of whether our new rider orientation educational seminars might also qualify for grants, and she agreed to explore on the NYSBRA website whether they are eligible (as of 1/9, it appears they are). We are in a much better position than last year on advance work on many aspects of our open racing program, but some jobs (e.g. transport of equipment from the park to Orchard Beach, Grants Tomb and Bear Mountain) require recruitment of club resources well in advance of races and thus need to be identified and covered through team duty or other resources.

4. Membership: Randy Locklair gave the board an overview of initiatives that he is considering to work on growing the CRCA membership in a challenging environment. These included monthly social rides (perhaps some done by teams to cover part of team duty, to be coordinated by Alexis Kraft) providing more publicity of our coaching program (David Carr working with Ann Marie Miller and Lucia Deng), social events (Liz Marcello working with Randy Locklair), finding ways to partner with the NYCC (identified by Ann Marie Miller as a major source of new CRCA members; done by Lucia Deng), connecting with bike shops (Randy Locklair and others), Lucia Deng will develop a simple Q&A template for use in gathering regular member profiles for the webpage, recruiting people to do a bi-monthly member profile for the webpage (Lucia Deng), working with team managers to identify team members who might be particularly interested in helping to grow the sport through recruiting new CRCA members, and reports from coaching sessions (provided through/by Ann Marie Miller and edited/posted by Lucia Deng). Josh Sakofsky raised the possibility of a scholarship program to provide help for a limited number of new members for whom cost was an issue, and Tomi Ketcham and Ashley Doane raised the question of having a student discount for the annual membership fee. Neither was passed at this meeting, but both will be considered in the future. Liz Marcello will work with Ann Marie Miller on options to help new members of CRCA participate in coaching sessions at the outset of the season before team and/or CRCA kit arrives. Overall, it was agreed that we need to get the word out that CRCA is not just racing (though our club races remain our primary mission), but offers a full range of social events-rides and coaching.

The board identified a target of January 16 to open membership. Tomi Ketcham agreed to work over the coming weekend on loading races, including inputting minimum marshal numbers, into the database to prepare for this.

The board also voted to continue an adapted form of the 2014 referral program, offering CRCA members who recruit a new member to the club a $15 discount on a 2015 open race. Randy will take the lead on managing this program and will work with others on the board, particularly Lucia Deng, to advertise the program.

Lucia Deng will work with Randy Locklair and others on the board to build buzz in the next weeks about the coming season, season pass, new features of the race schedule and coaching program.

5. Website re-design – Liz Marcello reported that Matt Vandivort is heading up a project to redesign the Wordpress skin for the crca.net website. This will be accompanied by board members updating the content on different parts of the site that relate to their responsibility, e.g. Tomi Ketcham on parts of the website that relate to marshaling, Alexis Kraft on teams, Randy Locklair on membership.

6. Broad discussion of goals—many goals for 2015 are implicit above, in the approved 2015 budget, and in the 2015 race schedule: growing membership, reducing overall cost of CRCA membership, website redesign, improving women’s and master’s racing, etc. In addition, the board discussed working on procedures to streamline registration, improve the CRCA community (Randy Locklair is heading up the number distribution social event, the first of several through the year), and possibly having a mid-season or late-season CRCA town-hall meeting with the board to improve board transparency.

7. Expanding coaching staff—Liz Marcello is working closely with Ann Marie Miller, Tara Parsons, and others in the club to identify licensed coaches who can join the CRCA coaching program.

8. Coaching calendar—The calendar is under development and Ann Marie Miller promised to submit permits before the end of the week for the coaching program. Because of the race clinic requirement, many early season sessions are focused on providing such sessions to new members. Nevertheless, as an experienced coach, Ann Marie will add an element of periodized training to the overall program, and David Carr will work with her and Lucia Deng on publicizing this overall training-coaching program to the broader membership and potential new members.

9. Sponsorships—Lisa Vandivort encouraged board members to work with her on identifying new prospects. The board discussed particular dynamics surrounding finding a premier sponsor for the Boyd Cup.   At this point in the meeting, support was also voiced for identifying the top 3 places in the Boyd and Team Cup series, rather than focusing exclusively on only the top spot of each competition. This would better sustain interest over the whole season.

10. Marshal Credit for Outgoing members—The 2015 board voted that outgoing 2014 board members would have a one year relief of marshaling duty as a recognition of their contributions to the club as past board members.

Respectfully submitted,

By David Carr, Secretary