GEJFA Council Meeting

November 1, 2006

Minutes

__________________________________________________________________________

Call to order at 8:00pm

ATTENDANCE:  John Veentjer; Chris Garrod (VP/Five Star); Shawn O’Brien (At Large); Billie Hartline (Scheduler and Inglemoor); Bob Goldberg (Officials); Andy Main (Bellevue B&G Club); Jim Brenden (Knights); Ron Walker (Bothell); Kelly Yarbrough (Bainbridge Island); Billie Hartline (Inglemoor); Dave Ciszewski (Issaquah); Tom Michajla (Kirkland); Meredith Cutting (Mercer Island); Steve Cox and Jim Sypher (Skyline); Michael Burrus (Woodville)

      Systems not represented: Bears, Wolverines, Cedarcrest, Eastlake, Mt Si, Shoreline-Univac, Redmond

Minutes of the last meeting, October 17, were provided with the meeting agenda.  Comments were requested to be emailed to John.  If none received, then the minutes will be posted to the web site as they are.

Again, indicated appreciation for the outstanding job Billie has done with the GEJFA web site, the Game Report and Score Reporting system.

Schedule Review

·         Still experiencing multiple field availability changes weekly, resulting in special effort by Billie and Shawn.  However, all games are being accommodated.

·         Playoffs begin this coming weekend, 11/4 – quarter finals; otherwise all other teams have a match-up game.  Unfortunately, one rookie team and one sophomore team will have a bye because of our number of teams at these levels; sought volunteers but none came forward so had to select teams – Univac Rookies and Bainbridge Sophomores.

·         Semi-finals and Eight Grade Seniors Championship 11/11

Ø      (Rookie/Cubs @ Eastlake HS; Soph/JV @ Issaquah HS; Varsity/Seniors @ Bellevue HS

• 8^th Grade Seniors are participating in a tournament down south and then Skyline and Five Star/Issaquah will meet on 11/11 for championship.
• 9^th Grade Seniors are in round robin play amongst the four teams and the two teams with best win record will meet on 11/18 for championship.  If there is a tie, we will have a full game tie breaker midweek.  
• Game score reporting  -- we still want and need Game Reports for the playoff games and matchup games.
• Video recording Championship Games will be performed by Final Take.  Program and video production preparatory materials will be handed out to the semi-final winners after their 11/11 semi-final game.

Game Reports

• All but three game reports for Game 8 were in Sunday morning (most Saturday night).  This is very good, but we still need to get to 100% submission. 

Winter meeting/committee work

• Streamline administration – need to shift some of the admin workload to the System level.  This might be more efficient in some cases.  Need to consider Systems doing their own background checks and then providing GEJFA with certification of completion.
• Roster review – Although we have made significant progress, we still need to pay more attention to enforcement of transfer procedures.  Implication that some deceptive tactics were being used, although no formal complaints were made.
• Rule updates/clarifications – seems like whenever a coach or parent has an issue, they go to the rules for their answer.  While this is good, it would be nice if they went to the rules before hand.  In any case, a number of areas in the rules need some clarification in the off-season.
• Review the Age/Weight Chart – suggest has been made that we have some significant age spread at some levels with older but smaller players playing with kids two or three years their junior.  Although we have several complaints in this regard, the very brief discussion by Council indicates that some done necessarily see a problem that needs our attention.  We be covered further in off-season discussion.
• Council membership – it was raised by someone that we have members at-large on the Grievance Committee and members at-large are not Council members by the By-Laws.  Further it was noted that the elected officials of GEJFA aren’t members of the Council.  Is a change in this area appropriate for further discussion in the off-season.
• Grievance Committee procedures – continued concern that the Grievance Committee rulings on coach ejections is not equitable considering the varying degrees of inappropriate actions. 
• Huskies/Seahawks – Woodinville needs to seek a Huskies pregame.  John will seek a Seahawks pregame.
• Coaches training program – John just reiterated his desire to see us get to some form of mandatory training for coaches.
• Five Star would like to incorporate Hazen High School boundaries into their program.
• Transfers – need to discuss the proper application of transfers during and modified the rules as appropriate during the off-season.
• Divisions – proposal to eliminate the divisions and just mix up the opponents each within the American Conference and National Conference.  

Officials

·         We’ve had a few more PNFAO officials join with us toward the end of the season, however, we still need more youth football only officials, adults in particular.  One of the positives in our program is the official corps we have created.  Other programs in the area have lost their support from association officials and consequently are struggling to find officials, sometimes seeking volunteers from the bleachers.

• We will again pursue some form of preseason clinics for our officials.

Early sign-ups

• Push or early sign-ups and determination of number of teams; remember the waiting list and split policy rules.

Calendar

• Meet more often during the off-season – John suggested that there was enough issues for discussion in the Spring that an April meeting would have been good; thus John proposed an April off-season meeting.

Nominations for 2006 Officers 

• Remember elections will take place at the December 5 Council meeting and we need nominations for President, one of two Vice Presidents, and Secretary.

No other business was raised.

Adjourn

Next meeting:  November 14th, 8:00 pm @ Bellevue Boys and Girls Club