<![CDATA[Held: Sunday December 6th, 2015 at 4:00 pm
Location: The Rose and Crown

In attendance (33 people):

Jessica Wong

Emily Holmes

Krista Carroll

Tim Ralphs

Billy Cudmore

Matt Penney

Caroline Aksich

Natalie Rosecky

Meghan Iley

Ashley Rycroft

Steve Darley

Andrew Prior

Adam Mernick

Clayton Beckett

Pete Towill

Mark Lewis

Mark Magill

Roman Sidey

Dale Ryan

Jenn Russell

John Nguyen

Joe Kopu

Cynthia Moore

David Moore

Raven Mitchell

Greg Lavigne

Megan Watcher

Mark Murphy

James McLintock

Andy Stuart

Shannon Marks

Mark Johnson

Bill Brown

Actual Meeting Start: 4:10 PM

Presidents Update

–        2015 – overall was a good year for the club

–        Thank you to all volunteers and to everyone in attendance today – you are the people who help make this club run

–        Review of goals

  • Recruitment is biggest goal going forward into 2016
    • Have a meeting where definite goals will be set and strategies to achieve these will happen immediately

–        Sponsorship did best year ever – HUGE thanks to Mark Lewis and Ross Pinkerton

–        Fletchers

  • Board of Directors has been voted to get rid of it entirely
  • Started a new board with 5 presidents of the clubs and president of Rugby Ontario
  • Everything that has been done before is scrapped and starting fresh
  • Ultimate goal to have players not have to pay to play on Saturdays

Instruction to Membership – Two proposals are being tabled, but please save all questions and opinions until the end of the meeting. Being tabled now so that membership has time to think them over during the rest of the Director’s reports.

Proposal to change Executive Committee structure

–        Cut positions down so that there is only one person per branch of the exec

  • Looking to get more people involved in smaller way rather than a couple of people that do everything
  • Each elected director would be able to create their own sub-committee to help spread out the workload
    • Would be up to the director to determine how much help they need and how many people and who to recruit for their sub-committees

–        Roles that would be part of new exec:

  • President
  • Vice President
  • Treasurer
  • Secretary
  • Director of Junior rugby
  • Director of Men’s rugby
  • Director of Women’s rugby
  • Sponsorship Director
  • Social Director
  • Alumni Director

Proposal to add a Level of Oversight – Board of Directors

–        Reason for proposal is that the Executive committee spends all time looking at logistics and operations – have a hard time looking at 5-10 year strategy

  • Create a board that would have oversight on all long term goals/strategies of the club
  • Board members would be appointed by the Executive Committee and would stay on for multiple year terms
  • President, Vice President and Secretary would serve on both Exec and Board
  • Size of Board and initial members would be determined at first Exec meeting post AGM

Registration

–        Numbers down overall across the board – need to really work at Recruitment

–        Remove the position of Registration from the Exec and split the role by division (ie. Men’s registration, Women’s registration, Junior’s registration)

–        Rugby Ontario has asked that one of these people take point just so that there is one PoC for them within the club

Treasurer

–        Good year financially

  • Actual final number – $5679.34

–        Increased sponsorship was good – but we also spent a lot more money across all branches of the clubs

  • Some of this was one-time purchases – eg. new tent
  • Some was re-stock in all apparel – some of which will be liquidated during the next season so we will see a return on spenditure on these items

–        Need to strengthen sticking to the budgets across all branches and create some more controls within the club to help with this

Juniors

–        Juniors have two that look like they will make team Canada U17

  • Good for overall recruitment for the club at the junior level

–        Added some really key positions

  • Technical Director
  • Head Coach
  • TIRF facilitator – Lauren
  • Girls Rugby Head – going to work to build the program from the ground up – Lauren

–        Academy rugby – partnered with Upright Rugby

  • Running 10 month of the year rugby
  • Run offseason training, and gym programs

–        Registration

  • Trying to even out the numbers across the program
  • Have good numbers overall, but they are patchy across specific age groups

Women

–        Struggled with community and club events, and struggled with turnout at practices as well

–        Didn’t make 50% win goal – but were able to make playoffs

–        Left without a coach for last month of the season

  • Have already put out the call for a new coach

–        Player retention and recruitment

  • Have looked at way to attract players
  • Follow up with some of people who dropped off to find out why there was drop off

–        Working with Lauren to try and create a link with new girls program

Men

–        Mixed Bag of results between the different teams

–        Recruitment was a big issue – need to get more numbers now that we’re in a higher league and teams aren’t at the same fields all the time

–        Need to work more closely with the split between U18’s coming up into the Men’s team and getting everyone involved

Alumni

–        Subscribe now button helped to get alumni connected and getting the newsletter

–        Alumni membership went up a lot and got some sponsorship but there is room for improvement on this side as well

–        Some well attended events

–        Own the communication with the alumni so that there is a consistent message

–        Golden Oldies is happening next year in Cardiff – potential to get some alumni out and create a team for that

–        Potential to get some alumni involved with juniors

Social

–        Calendar was really busy this year with breaks in schedules and PanAm etc.

–        Had big successes with Nomads Day, Pan Am

–        Some struggles with Strawberries, Dinner Dance and Players Dinner

–        Need more assistance pushing social events at practices etc. so that there is more hype around the events

  • Comment from Mernick – getting help earlier – volunteers are willing to help, but need to give more heads up in asking for the help and making it easier on yourselves to help plan
  • Comment from Prior – Idea of having head person, with a sub-committee that has each person on the sub-committee in charge of each of the individual events to take the burden off the head person
  • Comment from Prior: Idea to have master list of all Nomads so that we can harass people individually
  • Suggestion from Mark Johnson to reduce the number of events to match the resources that are available
    • Idea is fewer events – but bigger and better

–        Idea to have volunteering a mandatory part of each players commitment to the Nomads

Communications

–        Hootsuite – failure. Get rid of it

–        Twitter? Do we need it? How to we maintain it and figure out what is important to get everything

–        Message to all branches: If you want increased communication to the membership from Communications – you need to tell the communications director what you need communicated

Open Discussion

–        Dale Ryan – transition from junior men to senior men concern

  • Looking at getting them to meet and interact with them sooner and more often
  • Cultural thing? Getting everyone involved to really build a club culture
    • Steve Darley – there is a discussion to create an Academy team on the senior men’s side that will be entered into the TRU thirds team – would be a U23 ish team. Transition team into the men’s team.
    • Mark Johnson – kids need an olive branch from seniors team
    • Mark Lewis – having university team players come out and tell the kids about what it is like to play for their uni etc. Need to have this kind of thing with the seniors too – getting the uni kids in touch with the adult members etc so that the flow is all the way through
      • Suggestion to get parents involved on touch night manning the grill etc.

–        Adam Mernick – question around change in structure – if the roles are disappearing, then do the responsibilities land on other people or do they disappear etc?

  • Director is the one who is ultimately responsible
  • Have other people below that are appointed by the director who would run a sub committee

Motion: Streamlining Executive Committee

–        Proposed by: Steve Darley

–        Seconded by: Clayton Beckett

–        Vote: 27 in favour – motion carries

Motion: Board of Directors

–        Proposed by: Steve Darley

–        Seconded by: Mark Johnson

–        Vote: All in favour – motion carries

Election of Executive Committee

–        President

  • Steve Darley (incumbent)
    • Nomimated by Adam Mernick
    • Seconded by Clayton Beckett
  • Elected

–        Vice President

  • Ashley Rycroft (incumbent)
    • Nominated by Steve Darley
    • Seconded by Adam Mernick
  • Elected

–        Treasurer

  • James McLintock
    • Nominated by Clayton Beckett
    • Unwilling to stand
  • Matt Penney (incumbent)
    • Nominated by Adam Mernik
    • Unwilling to stand
    • Vote: Motion is Carried

Motion: Amend club Bylaws which state that only Paying Members can be Elected

–        Secretary

  • Megan Watcher

–        Director of Men’s Rugby

  • Mark Magill (incumbent)

–        Director of Women’s Rugby

  • Natalie Rosecky (incumbent)

–        Director of Junior Rugby

  • Mark Johnson (incumbent)

–        Director of Sponsorship

  • Ross Pinkerton (absent)
  • Elected in absentia

–        Alumni Director

  • Cynthia Moore

–        Social Director

  • Meghan Iley

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Posted in Featured, General, Juniors, Senior men, Senior Women