TRU Board Notes – 11/28/16

At the request of our members the TRU Board will be releasing their monthly board call minutes and notes. View all of the TRU archived minutes or read on for the most recent notes:

*Pushed a week to avoid Thanksgiving holiday

  • Roll Call (8:05pm)
      • Young
      • James
      • Parker
      • Dodge
      • Tate
      • Butch
      • Turner
      • Tomsak
    • Approve minutes from last call
      • Turner: Motion to accept
      • Tomsak: I second.
      • Tate: Any discussion or objection to approving as written? None. APPROVED.
  • Follow Ups from last call
    • CMS
      • Logins
        • Young: Logins were sent out three weeks ago to all Club Presidents. A notice was also posted to the TRU website.
      • Friendlies/Playoffs & Championships now included in CMS
        • Tate: This is great for record keeping but doesn’t count towards eligibility or anything like that.
        • Young: I would say for this year we encourage it but think about “requiring” it for the future? If they are motley matches rosters are tough but we should encourage it.
      • CMS Reminders
        • Young: I’ve been focused mainly on compliance but am now shifting over to CMS completion by clubs. RRRC Reps are also sending out notices but I’ll be sending them out weekly now as well.
        • Tate: Yes, we definitely need your help. There has also been some suggestion from the RRRC that the TRU levy a similar fee like the match change if match data isn’t completed. One thing Alan suggested was that we would mark the match on Wed as complete and if a team hadn’t entered in their data, they have to pay a fee to have it unlocked. What are ya’alls thoughts on that?
        • Dodge: How does this encourage teams that aren’t in playoff contention? We will still have to hunt them down and make sure they enter their data.
        • Tate: It’s a good point.
        • Dodge: It’s typically the newer clubs that struggle and some of the established clubs.
        • Young: Yep, it’s usually the turnover from one board or leadership to another where that information is sometimes lost.
        • Tate: I think the idea is that we need to put some teeth in place to help motivate clubs to do this data. Players are the ones usually that notice the issue and bring it up to an administrator. Then they may put some pressure on their administrators to take care of their business.
        • Dodge: Is there a tutorial or a handbook?
        • Young: Yes, the CMS handbook was emailed out and it’s available on the TRU website (https://texasrugbyunion.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2015-2016-Competition-Management-Handbook-Club-Team-Edition.pdf). When I get questions it’s about rosters not syncing correctly or the game is marked as “completed”. Never do I get questions about how to enter rosters or subs, etc.
        • Tomsak: What if we gave a monetary reward if they completed their data for the whole year? Like give them a reward back on their cipp fees?
        • Tate: Those fees are individually based on a per player basis but we could come up with a reward incentive if we pondered it…
        • Young: So a few GUs are already locking matches and have found that their compliance went from very little to very strong, very fast. I think we need to follow their lead.
        • Tate: What if we start locking the matches on Wed and then say starting Feb 1 it will include a fee if not completed. They will have to reach out to Wendy to have it unlocked, starting Feb 1st it’s $25 bucks. I will go ahead and make that a formal motion, results will be locked by Wed at 5pm and Wendy will put out a notice that on Feb 1st, a $25 fee will be required to unlock the results. This notice will include a link to the handbook and the current CIPP policy.
          • Parker: Second.
          • Tate: Any objections? None. APPROVED.
      • 4th Official BETA
        • Turner: I’m wondering how much it would be to include a 4th official and they are responsible for uploading to CMS?
        • Tate: I think it’s an idea worth considering, but if we wanted to be someone that was referee certified, that would be tough as we don’t have the bodies. But that 4th official doesn’t have to be referee certified to do that job, so we could look outside that pool. Even at Championships we have non-referees doing the job, so it’s an interesting idea. I think we’d have to look at the total number of games, total matches at a location, etc.
        • Young: Yes, some weekends we have 40-50 matches…
        • Turner: I’m basically suggesting that we have the home team provide a record keeper and then each team would agree to the facts/approve the score sheet.
        • Tate: So are you thinking that they would do the CMS entry as well?
        • Turner: That would depend, if we were paying them, they should do it as well. Each team would hand in their rosters, substitutions, disciplinary and scoring…etc.
        • Dodge: What is the problem that we are trying to solve?
        • Turner: I think the focus is on how teams aren’t entering the full data, including substitutes. We know that there potential issues with eligibility.
        • Young: Another angle to look at is that the #4 official also controls the sidelines/crowd/coaches and subs. It’s not just data entry.
        • Tate: My initial inclination is to do a small pilot of this since we are already in season for some of our competitions.
        • Turner: Tulsa has a home game this week, maybe we run a small test this weekend?
        • Tate: Let’s do Tulsa this weekend and then we need to look forward to how many games we’re talking about. We need to know what this financial agreement would look like.
        • Dodge: I think clubs need to continue doing their own data entry but the #4 could track all the data during the match. Then the #4 could be the cross-check.
        • Tate: I can see that argument at this stage, but in the future we may want to look at someone entering the data that is validating the standings, etc. We aren’t quite there yet. I think this is worth us experimenting with.
        • Tomsak: I just worry about the financial burden on the Union.
        • Tate: We can’t commit to a financial thing now but we can look into that. Luke, talk with Dan and come up with a plan for this Saturday. Then please report back via email and we’ll continue the dialogue.
    • U21 Pilot Program
      • Tate: Still on hold till the Spring. No update on a budget update from Bill Taute yet; so no funds are planned until we have more information.
    • TRU Non Profit Foundation
      • Tate: I signed an engagement with a firm and I’ll be meeting with them next week to see what next steps are.
    • Compliance
      • Covered under CMS above.
    • Coach Training with Darren Morris
      • Tate: Dodge has talked with Darren and we are awaiting a proposal.
    • Budget
      • Tate: I haven’t made a lot of updates to the budget, still waiting on U21 budget and possible Darren coach training. I propose that I will finalize a budget without those things and get it out for electronic approval. Wendy, I know you’re working on the All Star numbers, just include me on those.
        • Young: Will do, just waiting on a few receipts.
    • All Stars
      • Tomsak: The weekend turned out better than we could imagine with no major issues. All the travel, food and team arrangements was phenomenal.
      • Young: Yes, it was a great weekend, the teams were so complementive of the facility, streaming and the entire event. Biggest feedback was that we need a fourth team for next year so nobody has to play twice in a day.
      • Tomsak: I also got a call from a potential sponsor that wanted to know how much it would be to be on our future streaming!
      • Young: The streamed matches should be broken up into individual Youtube links soon, check the TRU Youtube channel soon.
      • Tate: Drew, if you and Wendy can work together on the hard numbers and put together a post mortem for next year. Really want to focus on what worked and what didn’t…Would you be able to put that together for us?
      • Tomsak: Yes, I can pull all that together. Note that we got free medical for both days from Baylor Medical because played their commercial and showed their logo. We also presented the new TRU pins to the TRU players at dinner, that was in front of the men’s and college teams; very cool opportunity.
      • Tate: That’s exactly what I talked about, that’s a nugget of information that needs to be recorded.
      • Young: We’ve also been invited to two other events and Holly is working on proposals for that.
      • Turner: I’m curious to where else we’ve been invited too?
      • Young: The Carolinas GU and CARFU have invited us in June and August.
    • Website Redesign
      • Young: Got a generic quote from Ruck Science (Tim Howard) that we can consider. He did mention the option of moving some of their promised sponsorship money to this.
      • Tate: If we decided to go with them we would probably recommend that he pay his promised sponsorship and then we just pay him back for his services. We want to be as transparent as possible if we did this, it needs to net out.
        • Young: Ok, I’ll talk a bit more with Tim and see how he feels about that.
    • RRRC 7s Administrative Fees
      • Bonobo
        • PAID
      • HEB
        • PAID
      • HARC
        • PAID
      • Ft Hood
        • PAID
      • Tate: So as far as I understand it, we don’t have any outstanding fees or fines for anyone at this time?
      • Young: Correct, everything is all paid up.
  • American Rugby Championship Weekends (Feb 4/ Feb 11)
    • Young: Still way too many games on that weekend (referee concerns); TRRA has obligations at the test matches AND USA Rugby/Rugby Texas has scheduled a youth festival that they’ve asked us to cover. So we will have very few referees available. Matches need to be moved OFF that weekend.
    • Tate: We’ve previously sent notices to clubs and we’ve had very few reschedules happen. Teams need to reschedule to another weekend or prove that they are covering with a certified referee.
    • Butch: These weekends won’t take all of our referees and we can probably cover some…but we just want to be very transparent that we won’t be able to cover the majority of the matches.
    • Tate: So reps, check WTR and see what teams have matches in your division. Please ask them to reschedule or to take a hard look at where they are going to get a referee from. There are no guarantees on the weekend that a referee will be available.
  • Competitions Update (from RRRC)
    • Woodlands III
      • Tate: Requested to drop their D3 side and move their D2 down. RRRC denied that and required that they stay in D2 but allowed them to drop their D3 side. Note that this ruling is consistent with USA Rugby policy. Woodlands accepted and will only compete in D2; WTR/CMS have been updated.
  • New Business
    • Franchise Status (Texas Rugby Inc.)
      • Tate: This came out of us trying to rent a field for the All Star tryouts at Moneygram Park. We had missed some paperwork for our Inc. and so I’ve completed those now. I also updated the address to be mine instead of Dave McPhail.
      • Dodge: Perhaps we need to update it to be Dave Phleger as Treasurer?
      • Tate: I see what you are saying, we almost need a permanent address for these types of things.
  • Adjourned (9:41pm)
    • Dodge: Motion to close.

Tate: No objections or discussion? None. CLOSED.