Welcome 2008
January 12th, 2008We had our first board meeting of the year this past Thursday and it had several unprecedented events!
Besides several of us changing positions, we also have several new board members!
Troy Tannyhill volunteered at the end of last year to be our League Secretary! I think we were all relieved that we weren’t going to have to take turns filling the shoes Judy Willats left behind! I don’t even know how many years Judy has been on the board, but it’s more than just a couple, and we sure appreciate everything she’s done, and wish her well! Thanks Judy, and thanks Troy!
Filling board positions has notoriously been tricky business. Our pool of volunteers (all of you!) are all busy parents - we know that - we’re one of you, each of us! So it’s been somewhat of a tradition to try to get a replacement for a position before moving positions, or leaving the board. Sometimes that can’t happen, of course, and we end up with empty slots. So it was definitely unprecedented to have TWO candidates for the position of Director of Girls Competitive Soccer - a position to assist our Director of Competitive Soccer, Keith Scott in getting our girls program fired up and, well, competitive!
Chris Rogers and Alphonso Apodaca both spoke to the board about their qualifications and visions, and put the board in a tricky position we hardly knew what to do with! In the end we were delighted to have Chris take the Director of Girls Competitive Soccer position, and Alphonso took the vacant Director of Coach and Player Development. We couldn’t have had a bigger win for the league and our kids! Welcome to the board to both of you!
We still have a few positions open, folks! And of course you all are always welcome to come speak or listen at a board meeting - we’d love the participation! We meet the second Thursday of each month in the Alex Clark room in Pinole.
Finally, although we voted on several items, the biggest one you’ll all notice, if you have a 6 or 7 year old, is that we are going back to 7-a-side games for the U8 kids. This was not a decision we took likely; we’ve been discussing it at nearly every meeting for the better part of the last year - a decision just needed to be made, and after weighing all the options, looking at our local peers, and what we thought would be best for the development and fun of the kids - we voted to go back to this format. This will start this Spring!
Main differences:
- Each side will have 6 on the field plus a goal keeper.
- We’ll have licensed referees in the center to keep the game flowing (this is great for our youth referee program - do you have a 12+ year old who wants to ref? Please let us know! The money is great!)
- There will be throw-ins, not kick-ins (they’ll get a retry, of course!)
- There will be indirect free kicks only - no penalty kicks
- The field size will be larger
- No offside rules will apply (except blatant “goal hanging”)
This also gives the kids a nice transition between the small sided games at U6 and the 8v8 rules at U10.
The final unprecedented thing is that our new President, Ken Cole, provided us with a streamlined meeting format that meant we were productive AND all got out of there at a pretty reasonable time! Thanks Ken - keep it up!
Phew - that’s a lot to report on! I hope you all enjoyed reading about what’s happening in the league! Before I joined the board I had no idea how much went into making a league run! I really encourage you all to come see what it’s about!
(Please do create a login for the board and respond here - we’d love to hear what you have to say!)
Powered by FireStats