• Held at the Chinese Restaurant – corner of Memorial Parkway & Governor’s Drive

• 11:30am on Tuesday, December 18th, 2001

• NASL board members in attendance were:
  Craig Hardwick, Kari Elliott, Christy Clark, Ken Gamble, Marty Eaton, David Ghoja and Belton MacCary.

CALL TO ORDER:
       Christie called the meeting to order.  Discussed were the following items:

NASL SPRING LEAGUE:
Craig talked about scheduling for the NASL Spring League.  The scheduling meeting is tentatively scheduled for the second week of February 2002.  The league will be for U11 through U14 teams. Craig followed up his discussion from the last Board meeting and provided further details on possible Interstate and Super Y League play.  He is working on getting interstate play set up and sanctioned as a USYS and AYSA tournament.


REC-PLUS LEAGUE:
Belton said that the U9 and U10 Rec-Plus league will schedule about the same time.  Anyone interested in Rec-Plus should contact Belton.  The cost for the Spring Rec-Plus League is $150.00 and will include eight games.  The season will run from the end of February through the weekend of the Huntsville Soccer Club’s Spring Classic Tournament which is scheduled for April 12-14th, 2002. 
 

AYSA BUSINESS:
District Commissioner, Marty Eaton, filled us in on AYSA business and proposals for next season.  He discussed that AYSA considers the State League to be a player development league and that results from the state league are not considered critical but rather games should be used to develop players’ skills and to allow coaches to experiment. Play dates will be used to determine a Final Four in each group.  We discussed plans for a proposed split Governor's Cup and State Cup for next year.  The 2002 Snickers State Cup semi-finals and finals will be held in Huntsville.  There is a proposal that the Governor’s Cup be split by Divisions with the U11 and older Division II teams playing in Huntsville and the Division III teams and younger U10/U9 teams playing in Montgomery in 2002. The was some discussion about how the dates would be worked in such an arrangement.  The board also agreed that we should begin recruiting volunteers from each club and team in the league so that we are set for volunteers long before the tournament.  One proposal was to attend the local club meetings in the months before the tournaments and explain just what is involved and what we would like each club/team to provide.  Marty also noted that Girl’s ODP sub-regionals should be played in Huntsville in February 2002.
 

STATE CUP:
We don't have a final financial number on State Cup but Kari will total and deposit the checks and let us know where we stand. Christy thought we probably lost about $200 overall due to fewer teams than were expected. There are a slight number of t-shirts still available.  Christy proposed that we provide some of the shirts to the city parks and recreation department volunteers who worked at the State Cup.  This was enthusiastically agreed to by all.  

Added by Kari Elliott on 1/18/2002:
Here is the financial outcome of state cup.
Income $4,498.00
Expenses $4,309.58
Delta +$188.42
Rather than going in the red $200, we were in the black!
Our current NASL checking account balance is $7537.33
 

AYSA PROPOSALS:
We discussed NASL's position on a few items but no actual votes were taken on any single issue.  We discussed the effect the 100 player rule will have on our clubs.  We discussed whether seeding should be done for State Cup qualifiers based on league play.  We discussed supporting a bond forfeiture for teams that did not show up to play their games.  Ken recommended that AYSA not allow results of games of any team that forfeits a State Cup qualifying game to be used in determining who makes final four at State Cup. David also recommended that the games at Governor’s Cup not be shortened and that steps be taken to ensure that Governor’s Cup be the best possible experience for all teams.  Questions were raised as to whether there would be refunds from AYSA for games in which officials were “no-shows” or those games in which only one or two refs showed up.  The assumption was that the fees that teams paid to AYSA for the State League provided for three USSF refs at all ten games.  We also considered some possibilities that AYSA might make next year including changing number of State Games from 10 (5 away, 5 home) to 8 (4 away, 4 home).  The state A.G.M. will be March 1st and 2^nd, 2002.  We discussed which proposals and candidates NASL might support at the AGM.
 

NASL PROPOSALS:
Ken noted that according to NASL By-laws we need to have our NASL A.G.M. in May each year so this year he proposed that we decide on any changes to our by-laws and vote on them at a May AGM meeting.  One change would be to move the date of the NASL A.G.M. to the August pre-season NASL meeting so as to get the majority of league members present.  Also Ken asked that we try to get more people involved as officers - we have two or three board positions unfilled this year.  We discussed whether we need to look for a new NASL registrar if Cyndi Lindblom  didn't do it in 2002.  Kari proposed small changes in fall fees so that all teams pay a
user fee to use fields. We had a few older age teams that did not pay any fees to NASL despite the fact that NASL had to pay fees for the field scheduler and ref assignor for those teams.  We agreed to provide better education to NASL members as to what their fees paid for.  We discussed the need to encourage coaching development in 2002 – specifically in the outlying areas of Madison and Morgan Counties where USYS teams are not currently located. 
 

SOCCER SURVEY:
Ken is working on a survey for Huntsville Sports Commission to find out the level of soccer participation in North Alabama.  This covers all soccer – USYS, AHSAA, AYSO, SAY and independent soccer programs - in our area.  Please provide Ken any figures (even if only estimates) for any programs in your area.


SCHOLARSHIP:
Christy recommended that we have our NASL scholarship requirements firmed up by Spring 2002.  The ones proposed by Ken are listed on-line at:
http://www.nasl.com/articles/scholarship.htm

ADJOURNMENT:
Christy adjourned the meeting and as a bonus paid for the meals.

Thanks for your help.

Ken Gamble
NASL Secretary
dsports@hiwaay.net
http://www.nasl.com