Monday, March 17th @ 7:30 pm New Mark Stingrays Board Meeting

Board Members in Attendance:

Kayla Sheer, Ashley Wesner, Melanie Rooney, Judy Nye, Jen Kimball, Liz Stalone, Emily O’Connor

Kayla began the meeting by talking about the calendar for the upcoming season:

• Meet schedule: July 3 meet will be moving to the 1st and the June 19th meet is moving to the 17th.
• June 10th is Team Tie Dye Activity (Tentative)
• Pictures are now moved to June 13th due to later start to season
• Coach Appreciation: June 23-27
• Meet the Coach Night May 22nd
• First day of Practice May 30th
• Meet Themes:

PJ Night June 12

Neon/Senior Night June 17

Tie Dye June 26

USA on July 1

Cowboy/Cowgirl On July 10

Luau on July 15

Conference: TBD

• Coaches—Kayla updated the status of returning coaches:
  • Nate (yes)
  • Nick (maybe)
  • Emma (no)
  • Taylor (maybe)
  • Spencer (yes)
  • Jacob (yes)
  • New Assistant Coach Applicants: Hannah Sheer, Hannah Herren, Ellie Hanchette
• The board decided that it would be the best decision to require assistant coaches to be 18 AND have been 1 year removed from being a Stingray Swimmer.
• Website—feels sound at this point, slight adjustments may be needed, depending on decisions from this evening. We will add coach bios and pictures as well as board member pictures.
• Volunteer Exempts—these have been verified by Ashley for accuracy. Erin Haniger is going to assist with concessions (load, unload, store, etc.) and Emily O’Connor is being added
• Field Day/Crowley Crash Area—Kayla proposed to do a Crowley Crash Area in lieu of a field day. Attendance to field day has declined in the recent years. The crash area would include access to a tent, chairs, etc that can be auctioned off for use at meets. We will need to have a sign made for this.
• Spirit Wear—Mandy Hill has this all taken care of getting the spirit wear store ready through Cumpy’s
• Sponsorships—Lilo’s is on-board, Fast Signs (prints the banners for us), Megan O’Keefe is doing heat sheet. Stephanie Shugart will have logos ready for us. We will have Stephanie reach out to Sun Fresh to see if they are interested in donating the donuts for Fun Swim.

Melanie:

• Volunteer Number per family—348 jobs are currently in Swimtopia (Non-conference). We need 70 families in order to do 4 jobs/family.
• Pool Contract (Willow Farms)—Melanie met with Bruce, and the pool contract has increased in price. Bruce said everything pretty much stays the same, but they don’t have lifeguards anymore. The Willow Farms Board is possibly considering converting to a zero-entry pool in the future. A decision won’t be made without letting us know first. This would make the Willow Farms pool unusable for meets/practice.
• Brookings-wants to know what they can do to make it meet-ready. Needs a handicap bathroom, there’s not as much crash area, the pond is close (which can be a hazard).
• Is Pine Grove an option?? We explored this a couple of years ago and met with a negative response. Maybe things have changed in the past couple of years?
• Registration Buy-Out--$1,000. The Board decided to try offering a volunteer-hours buy-out as an option during online registration.
• Missing Volunteer Shift Penalty—it was decided that if a parent does not do a volunteer job he/she signed up for, then their swimmer will not be allowed to sign-up for the following meet until the $50 fee gets paid (1st offense), $100 (2nd offense), $200 (3rd offense)

Judy:

• Caps—final prices were confirmed and added to registration info
• Swim Outlet Store-link was added to website. New team suit was added to the store, and extra superfluous items were cleaned out.
• Coach Appreciation— It was suggested by the board to ask Erica Zahabi to help with this.

Ashley:

• 2025 Expense (incoming and outgoing) spreadsheet—The board looked over last year’s fundraising and expenses to see where we might be able to tighten up the budget
• Bank Info—It was decided to add Coach Nate to the Team Bank Account as currently Ashley is the only one listed on the account. This would allow Nate the freedom to make purchases more easily, if needed.
• Concessions—The board brain-stormed ideas for how to make it more profitable—what items to bring back from last year, what new additions to make, etc.
• Cost per swimmer based upon last year’s numbers
• 2025 Registration Fees-The board finalized the registration fees.

Liz:

• Rules Update—Non-competitive swimmers (our rookies) must be registered with USA Swimming. This was not a problem for our team last year. . .. just something that we need to be helpful with on Meet the Coach Night in the event of questions. We want to make sure our prohibited substances are in accordance with USA Swimming (which they are)—making sure there’s no vaping, marijuana, etc.
• Officials Update-Returning: Mike Hill, Pat O’Keefe, Laura Graybill, Jamie Dawson, Michelle Sousley, Liz Stalone, Will Wells, Barry Crilley

Jen:

• NSC Update—Jenn shared some tips that NSC had recommended for handling volunteer hours that are missed, having parents write their swimmers’ names on their backs for meets (especially younger ones).
• Fundraising Update-
  • Jose Pepper’s is this Thursday. Thur, March 20
  • Fundraiser night @ Hot Rocks Date TBD
  • Dennis has agreed to host our post-conference party (July 23).
  • Looking into Chick-Fil-A and Culver’s.
  • We also brainstormed ideas for additional auction items.
  • Jen’s contact is going to be doing some mock-ups for possible fundraiser items (cups, towels, etc)

Nomination for Member at Large: Michelle Jeffries was nominated. Kayla will reach out to her and extend the invitation.

The meeting was concluded at 10:18 pm.