RRRC Competitions Committee Notes – 12/11/2017

The Red River Competitions Committee will now be releasing their monthly committee call minutes and notes. View all of the archived RRRC minutes or read on for the most recent:

Roll Call
1. Young
2. Dodge
3. Kolberg
4. Keuppens
5. Tolar
6. Kurylas
7. Gross
8. Hughes
9. Fosco
10. Watson
11. Turner
  1. Regrets
    1. Green
Followups
1. Lone Star (Informational Item)
  1. Dodge: Lone Star has merged with Woodlands, Travis do you have an update?
  2. Hughes: Woodlands has picked up the Lone Star matches and will play the Lone Star matches as friendlies. They haven’t sent in the change forms yet but those should be coming in. I also spoke with the other teams in the region so they are all on board as well.
  3. Dodge: Wendy as far as I understand it, we’ve updated CMS and these are friendlies now? This also means that referee allocations will be adjusted as necessary.
  4. Young: Yes, we’ve made that change in CMS.
2. Men’s D1 Nominations & Election Results (Informational Item)
  1. Bill Taute (Blacks)
  2. John Dale (Dallas Quins)
  3. Chris Hanson (Huns)
  4. Jason Pollack (Little Rock)
    1. Dodge: A D1 club did request an election and the election concluded last Friday. John Dale received the majority of the votes and we did reach a quorum with all teams voting.
    2. Young: I received the votes and agree with John Dale as the winner.
    3. Watson: I move that we certify the votes for the Men’s D1 representative.
    4. Kolberg: Second.
    5. Dodge: Any opposition? APPROVED.
      1. Dodge: I want to thank the committee for bearing with us and I think we’ll be better served with a full committee.
WD1 Waiver Request Approved (Informational Item)
1. Dodge: I sat through my first USA Rugby National Competitions Committee last week. This was our first meeting as the Chair was out of the country. The committee approved our waiver request for D1 (Gold Cup and Quins against top two D2 sides. These teams will play 6 matches and that will meet their USA Rugby match requirements. Wendy, are all of these matches setup in CMS?
2. Young: Yes, USAR has setup the Gold Cup matrix and I’ve added everything else to CMS on our end. The crossover matches with the D2 teams are considered friendlies but will be tracked in CMS.
MD1 Playoff Format (Action Item)
1. 4/28/18 – 1 hosts 4 and 2 hosts 3, then winners play on 5/5/18 at RRRC Championships; or
2. 5/5 – 5/6/18 – Sat & Sun matches at RRRC Championships; or
3. Some other solution.
  1. Dodge: It doesn’t appear that this committee has signed off on the final format for our Men’s D1 competition, ie how do they get to USAR Playoffs? It seems that the above three scenarios have been bounced around but we need to make a determination. Option 1 could set up a travel dilemma as it could cause travel on very short notice. I think the best thing to do is to have the D1 teams come up with a solution and present that as a proposal to the committee. Another alternative is to play sat/sun matches at the RRRC Championships (top four teams). These matches are necessary as these only get us to 10 matches and we are required to have 12.
    1. Dodge: Any questions? None. Any objections to allowing the D1 teams to discuss this?
    2. Gross: Can we provide some guidelines or recommendations to the D1 teams?
    3. Dodge: There are some competing concerns here. Playing sat/sun is undesirable and/or a late travel bill would be undesirable. I think we’re going to have to think outside the box and since it’s only 6 teams I think we could involve them rather than impose a set of guidelines.
    4. Gross: Yes, I meant more recommendations or different ideas to help solve this.
    5. Dodge: My plan is to send an email to all the D1 contacts and explain what the situation is and open the floor for suggestions. I do want to get this sorted and approved by this committee by the start of league play.
    6. Kolberg: I agree, let’s send it out to the teams and start a dialogue.
Working group to propose solution for lack of eligibility documentation (e.g., Lone Star @ RRRC Playoffs Last Year) (Action Item)
1. Dodge: I’d like to propose putting together a working group to help address a eligibility documentation. This happened at RRRC Championships and has happened at some of the 7s stops. I think we could handle this like USAR and require that teams hand in everything in advance. Or we pick a match closer to Championships and have a book check/#4. Any volunteers?
2. Watson: I will
3. Kurylas: I will help out.
4. Watson: A few years ago we required a club book that included all of this information.
5. Dodge: As I understand it the existing rule is that any team can request a book check at any time. If the team doesn’t have their book, the match can be played under protest and the book must be supplied within 24 hours.
6. Young: That is correct.
7. Dodge: I want to institute some practices and procedures and make it clear what the penalties are if they don’t. Teams that follow the rules shouldn’t be put in a bind.
8. Kolberg: The problem that I see is that USAR doesn’t follow their own rules. We’ve been at events where documentation wasn’t presented and players were allowed to play. I believe we shouldn’t allow them to participate if they don’t have their documentation.
9. Keuppens: This has been a huge issue for 7s as well, we know that 7s is a bit different with late transfers etc. What we’ve found is that teams have to be walked through it, the first tournament is almost a practice where we thoroughly check their entire book.
10. Young: I’m leaning more towards teams having to send in their information beforehand, we’ve done this for 7s and it’s cleaned up a lot of issues. I’m not opposed to random book checks but that is always a personnel issue.
11. Watson: What do they turn in with the roster?
12. Kueppens: Roster which includes CIPP # and then we confirm with photo identification on Saturday.
13. Young: What if we required teams to submit everything digitally going forward? Maybe by their fourth match they have a complete book.
14. Dodge: Maybe we could do a best practice for this season and require it going forward? Ok, so the committee is Kurylas (D3), Keuppens (7s), Watson (At-large) and Fosco (Women’s). Bullet point recommendations are due by the next call (January).
Formation of 7s Subcommittee (Action Item)
1. Dodge: Fil and Wendy can you put this together again?
2. Keuppens: Yes! Wendy and I will get back to you.
Bids for TRU & RRRC Championships (Informational Item)
1. Young: I posted the announcement for bid requests, applications are due January 15 and the hosts will be selected by Feb 1. We need clubs to submit bids for both of these events.
CMS Compliance (Informational Item)
1. Young: CMS is looking pretty good, Corpus Cristi Crabs are an issue. Travis you were going to talk to them?
2. Hughes: Yes, I talked with them this weekend (we played them) and they should be getting all caught up. They have a new President so they had to get back up to speed.
3. Dodge: Could we have CMS training as part of a followup from the AGM?
4. Young: Maybe, but clubs have elections at weird times, not sure it would line up.
5. Hughes: I think divisional reps need to make sure they are staying on top of it.
6. Dodge: Ok, let’s keep an eye on it for the next couple of weeks as the majority of leagues are kicking off.
  1. Watson: Just a general question for the reps, are there any club that have short numbers that we are concerned about?
  2. Hughes: I think D3 is looking pretty good, there are some that are a bit short.
  3. Young: We’re still seeing 10-20 players signing up a week, so numbers are still trickling in.
New Business
1. None
Adjourned (9:05pm)
1. Watson: I move that we adjourn
2. Young: Second

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