TRU Board Meeting Notes – 10/17/22

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:

  1. Roll Call
    1. Young
    2. Kurylas
    3. Martin
    4. Hiller
    5. Tate
    6. Ohmann-Wilson
    7. Tomsak
    8. Dodge
      1. Regrets
        1. Roche
  2. Election Results / Welcome / Thanks
    1. RRRC Chair
    2. MD1, VP & Women
      1. Tate: We’d like to welcome our newest member Whitney to the Board as the Women’s divisional representative. It’s great to have you on the team!
      2. Ohmann-Wilson: I’m really excited to be here. Thanks.
      3. Tate: Dodge and Tomsak were re-elected for their positions. We also have a new RRRC Chair in Dave McPhail. To have Dave back in the saddle and with his level of experience is great. 
  3. Budget
    1. Travel for RRRC Championships and/or Super Regional
      1. Young: This is my item from McPhail and I chatted about upcoming events for the TRU. I couldn’t remember what we covered as far as RRRC or TRU Board travel.
      2. Tate: Ok, we would do travel reimbursement for Match Commissioners for RRRC Championships and there are funds for that in the USAR SCC budget for Super Regionals. We trust folks to keep these at a minimum. 
      3. Dodge: McPhail was the match commissioner last year so it’s perfect that he is involved this year. There were supposed to be folks from the Southern conference at Super Regionals but that didn’t happen. 
      4. Tate: I had a call recently with Kerri O’Malley from Florida and they are working through possible hosts for the Super Regionals. Young: OK, we will just want to determine who we want to send to support these events. I knew there was a budget put aside but I couldn’t recall.
      5. Dodge: I’m not quite sure that the USAR SCC paid for the match commissioner travel though. 
      6. Young: I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be covered?
      7. Dodge: Ok, I’ll double check. 
  4. Upcoming Season
    1. Compliance
      1. Tate: How are we looking?
      2. Young: We’re looking better, 38 out of 45 clubs are registered with 790 members! I think what we’re mostly lacking is coach certifications, and in particular the background check. We need coaches to complete all of their requirements to be considered compliant and the background check can take 2 weeks or longer.
      3. Tate: Yes, I saw your note about them needing to ensure they’ve completed all of their requirements. There is also a L1 coaching course coming up in Houston on Oct 29. Dodge, do we have any clubs that have milestones to hit?
      4. Dodge: Yes, we were looking at the Huns, HURT and Kingwood. Huns and HURT are compliant but Kingwood is not there but close. The RRRC is talking internally about Kingwood as they had a deadline of Oct 1 to hit and they missed it.
    2. Schedule – RX and WTR
      1. Tate: Ok, the schedule has been loaded into RX and WTR. Up next for clubs is beginning to prepare for their first matches. There will be a learning curve as clubs do their first couple of matches. As Board Members I’d like to get this information out to everyone as soon as possible. 
      2. Young: I would recommend that the clubs load their squad early and do it on their COMPUTER. We have heard that if you try to load the team on your phone it is a bit cumbersome. So the recommendation is to manage your squad on the RX website on your computer and then you can score on the day with your phone if you’d like. It would also be smart to have a hard copy in case something goes wrong on the day.
      3. Tate: Do we also want to be a bit lenient on the locking of matches and any fines? Folks are having to learn new software and we want to give them time to understand those and ask questions.
      4. Young: Yes, we are generally pretty soft the first month and we’ll continue that. 
    3. CMS Help
      1. Member management – view your members records and information
        1. Public Rosters – have changed a bit, there is now a Find a Club feature that shows compliance; scroll down past the large image to use the tool
        2. Rosters must be loaded in RX (squad management) before they can be viewed in the game link or on the Match Day app
          1. Tate: So this may be a small change in our policies. Teams have always been able to see the registered players before a match. Now they won’t be able to see that until a team has been entered into RX. We have always had a soft Friday night rule of entering your roster and we may need to tighten that up. We really need teams to be entering rosters as best as they know them on Friday and if they have changes they can reflect that.
          2. Young: I see the value but not sure we have the administrative bandwidth for this. 
          3. Tate: I hear you, I have a suspicion that the teams will help us with managing this. If we make it a part of the process and a formal requirement we can let the teams inform us of violations. We can then contact any clubs and issue warnings. If we have a repeat offender then we can discuss how to proceed.
          4. Dodge: When on Friday?
          5. Tate: That’s a great point. I don’t think we could do it any earlier than 5pm on Friday.
          6. Dodge: I would say 8 or 9pm would be better. Coaches know 70% of their roster by Thursday but there are those last minute decisions.
          7. Tate: Let’s shoot for 7pm and we can tweak it.
          8. Young: Ok, we will need to publicize this and make it well known. 
      2. Squad management – add players into the squad via the Squad Management page (admin portal). You can only allocate registered players into teams. We recommend completing this NOT ON MOBILE first before using the Match Day App 
        1. Editing team list on game day
      3. Match Day App – use to score from the field. We still recommend having a hard copy for a few matches until you’re familiar with the App.
        1. Download
        2. How to use
      4. RX FAQs & troubleshooting tips
        1. Young: This is new for all of the clubs and so I’d like to ask for a bit of help. Kat and I usually help manage the few clubs that are struggling with CMS but this is going to be everyone using a new Competition System. Can the reps help us check calendars and email out helpful links and such?
        2. Tate: Yes, I think that is an excellent idea. We can help make everyone comfortable with the system and avoid conflicts. I’m hoping that with the live mobile app entry we can shift the post match checks away from Wendy and Kat’s plate. Clubs will start to see the value to do live scoring as their fans begin to demand it.
        3. Young: That would be fantastic!
    4. RRRC Championships
      1. Pathways updated on the website
        1. Tate: Updated pathways from the RRRC are on the website. Clubs please review!
      2. Championships April 22-23 
        1. Bids due Nov 1; received 1 so far
        2. RRRC Bid Review Sub-committee – Wendy, John Kurylas, Gordon Hanlon and Monique Fosco
    5. USAR Championships – Jun 2-4
      1. Tate: USAR SCC moved Championships back to the first weekend in June. That does provide a big window of opportunity for traveling teams but does put a hole in some of our teams’ calendars. This will also put XVs back to back with Club 7s and that has always been tough for teams to do both. We did get a proposal approved by the USAR SCC that they would lock in the 2024 Championship date by April 1. Then each subsequent Nationals date will be determined by April 1 so Unions can make their schedules in the summer..
    6. Eligibility Rules Changes
      1. Redlined
      2. Proposed
        1. Tate: We now have new eligibility rules for XVs and 7s. XVs have been approved and 7s will be approved soon. The only substantive changes have to do with professional players.
        2. Dodge: There were a couple others that we covered on the RRRC call last week. There are adjustments to “professional players” as you mentioned as well as changes to the 36 month rule and match minimums are back. 
        3. Tate: They were looking into whether the definition of “professional” was calendar or registration year. The answer is registration year. So for this coming season, if they played rugby from Sep 2022 forward they are considered professional and you can have 5 of those on your roster. Unless they were an amatuer on your club before they became professional. Hopefully this will relieve some of the stress of our clubs having their players getting called up.
        4. Dodge: We’re working on a memo to help clubs understand the major changes.
  5. Appeals
    1. Alamo City Appeal of 3/28 Red Card
      1. Tate: I need to check with the sub-committee as I haven’t heard anything from them. I will do that. Zach, appreciate your email about volunteering to help with the sub-committee, I’d love to hand that over to you.
      2. Hiller: Ok.
  6. Operating Procedures Review
    1. Tate: This was something Wendy and I had spoken about, we have a mishmash of edits and revisions…to be honest our Operating Procedures have gotten messy over the years. We wouldn’t be making changes to actual policies but a reorganization. I will take a swing at it and I might engage some help with that. If anyone on the Board would like to assist that, I would welcome your help. I have also mentioned it to a few members and they are willing to help as well. Any questions or objections to editing and cleaning these up? Obviously if we have substantive changes we will bring that to the Board first. None. APPROVED.
  7. MG All Stars
    1. Tate: We have the annual Mary Graham All Stars coming up in December. We have probably the best coaching group we’ve ever had, massive congratulations on that endeavor. They had a camp in early October and had really good numbers. There is another camp at the end of October and then they have a warm up match. Have we ever had a warm up before?
    2. Young: Nope, this is a first!
    3. Tate: Fantastic. We also have unprecedented interest and have 3 teams on the waiting list. 
    4. Young: Yes, they had their Women’s All Stars had their first camp on Oct 9 and had 38 athletes show up! The next camp is Oct 30 in Dallas and then the team will play in the Austin tournament on Nov 12. They also released the tournament schedule.
  8. USA Rugby Senior Club Council Openings
    1. Dodge: There is an opening for the XVs USAR CCC Chair and certain committee spots. Tam Breckenridge has been the interim Chair so the committee is continuing their work. Nominations for Competitions Chair and spots on the committee are open and close on November 13.
    2. Tate: It would be great if we could have someone on the USAR Competitions Committee. We do already have Fil for 7s and that may make it harder for this nominee but we should always try. We should try to have as many TRU people as possible on these committees. If anyone knows of a good candidate, please put their name forward. 
      1. Job Descriptions
        1. 15s Competition Committee
        2. 7s Competition Committee
        3. Eligibility Committee
        4. Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Committee 
        5. Discipline Committee
        6. Governance Committee
      2. Nomination Forms – due by Nov 13
        1. Competitions Chair
        2. Other committee positions
  9. Potential Sponsors
    1. Tate: We have been approached by Brad Dulong about C4 Energy Drink as potential sponsors.They are going to start with social media presence at TRU matches and based on the number of views or impressions they can generate will then determine what kind of cash sponsorship might be available. We’re looking to generate a sponsorship for future TRU events. The good news is that they aren’t asking us for anything that costs money. They are wanting to assess the value of our market to their business.
    2. Dodge: If a club has an energy drink sponsor, how does that work? 
    3. Tate: C4 isn’t requesting exclusivity and if your club doesn’t want them at your event that is fine. 
    4. Dodge: Are they handing out product samples? I can see that being a problem if they start handing out samples and the club already has a sponsor.
    5. Tate: Yes, that is the plan. The discussion I had with Brad is that they would need to notify the club before they came out.
  10. 501c3
    1. Tate: Still waiting on the government.
  11. New Business
    1. New Clubs
      1. Las Colinas
        1. Dodge: Wendy, did you get an application from Las Colinas? 
        2. Young: Yes! I did get the application, participation agreement and they asked for access to RX.
        3. Dodge: Great, we had gone ahead and put them into the MD4 and agreed they could join as soon as they completed their New Club requirements.
        4. Tate: Yes, if they have everything in place we can approve tonight or via email.
        5. Young: Technically they haven’t sent everything in, they need to register with USAR and then get their coach onboarded. So we will probably do an email vote.
        6. Tate: Sounds good.
  12. Meeting Adjournment (9:25 PM)