TRRA Board Meeting Minutes 9/28/20

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As proposed at the TRRA AGM of 2020 – the TRRA Board will explore posting meeting minutes for all members. A record of the meeting minutes can be found here.

  1. Roll Call
    1. Roche
    2. Herrera
    3. Bayazitoglu
    4. Johnson
    5. O’Gara
  2. Kit Update
    1. Roche: Tank tops are in, so far getting a lot of positive feedback from those. All other kit stock is good since, ya know, nothing much has happened since August.
  3. Treasurer/Bank Update
    1. Roche: I finalized the process in getting the Chase Bank account transferred from Scott to me. Tim and I both have debit cards linked to the TRRA Bank account. The CPA’s payments are automatically coming out so we’re still good there. I reached out to the CPA to let him know about the change over as well and he said he was going to verify with Scott. Haven’t heard back from that, but I assume we are all good on that. I am still waiting for the PayPal information. So the next question I want to broach – do we want to have a paid treasurer position for this upcoming year? This person would be in charge of sending payments to all referees, ARs and coaches. Ensuring only referees and coaches whose match reports are submitted are being paid. Checking in the reports to ensure the ARs assigned actually turned up to the matches etc. We can easily create a login for Chase for someone to do this, but it’s definitely a big role. What would our qualifications be and what would the stipend be for someone taking on this role?
    2. Johnson: I think it’s a really important position and requires attention to detail. It should definitely be a reimbursed job, but not sure on a good number,
    3. Bayazitoglu: During the busy season it’s a very challenging job.
    4. O’Gara: Isn’t it all going through Zelle?
    5. Roche: Yes but someone still has to individually go through all the games and pull the information.
    6. O’Gara: The difficulty last year was that when something went wrong, it was difficult to correct the errors. Other than those few times, it went very smoothly with Scott last year.
    7. Roche: I am willing to do it but definitely don’t want to take away a position from someone who wants to step up and get more involved.
    8. O’Gara: We should post the position and see who puts their hand up and has a good resume.
    9. Bayazitoglu: We also have to consider the other roles that may get reimbursement, Scheduling is definitely a large role.
    10. Herrera: I like the idea of sharing the wealth, we need more people involved at the top level who will lead the pack in the future.
    11. Bayazitoglu: What are your thoughts about scheduling Kat?
    12. Roche: So my plan with scheduling is to hopefully have a liaison if not a dedicated scheduler for D1 games, ideally someone like Scott or Derek since they know the landscape. Then have someone working the rest of the assignments with separate individuals maybe running the high school?
    13. Johnson: What about having schedulers by region?
    14. Roche: We did that last year and while it worked, i think we all operated in our own bubble and it seriously hindered referee travel, so I would either not want to do that again or at least make sure we are working together more.
    15. Bayazitoglu: In Houston, it’s nice in theory to separate High School from the rest of it but you’re using all the resources every day we needed refs. They scheduled games on Saturday so there was overlap between club and high school scheduling.
    16. O’Gara: We would schedule the best ref to the best game, and sometimes that would be the high school games not Club D1. 
    17. Bayazitoglu: Also if we have a development game that’s planned to be a blowout it would be a good opportunity to be a training game.
    18. Roche: I would not like these high school games to continue competing with Club games. Especially in Houston the focus seems to be covering high school games instead of club games. I do not want to cover any Saturday High School Rugby Texas Games.
    19. Bayazitoglu: We did enter into a 2 year contract with Rugby Texas.
    20. Roche: They broke that contract at least 12 times with their late changes, so I don’t see the validity of remaining in that contract.
    21. Johnson: High School Girls have to play on Saturday when there’s tournaments far away in Laredo etc that schedule for Saturdays.
    22. Roche: I played three years of High School rugby and we always played on Sunday.
    23. Bayazitoglu: Since it’s a transition year and with COVID, maybe it’s not a great time to try to enforce this change. What if we wait until the end of this contract to rediscuss. 
    24. Roche: I disagree, I do not want to go through what we went through last year.
    25. Johnson: If there’s regional play, it should have to be on a weekday but if it’s cross-state play it has to be on the weekend.
    26. O’Gara: When the youth clubs complain about lack of referees, they are just exposing their lack of involvement to give referees.
      1. Referee Assignors tabled to next meeting.
  4. Membership Registration
    1. NCR
      1. Roche: NCR sent out an email to all Chairs of LROs and wrote that referees are automatically covered under NCR for those games. In Texas those games are in the Lonestar conference so we currently do not referee them anyway.
      2. Bayazitoglu: Should we register anyway for NCR?
      3. Roche: It’s not required, we’re automatically covered but anyone who wants to – can. 
    2. USAR
      1. Roche: Membership is available through USA Rugby, we have all our dues applied and members can register but are not required to immediately. You just need to be registered before you get a game and you don’t want to wait until the last minute.
  5. HPG
    1. Roche: I am looking for someone to step up in this group and kind of gather individuals together – maybe have a group chat once a month about a game or anything. I would want to volunteer myself but I do a lot of stuff. I feel like someone would be willing to just host a meeting and pick a game to discuss. We can provide Zoom links, but we want to create a platform where people can bounce ideas off one another and use a team environment where they can develop.
    2. O’Gara: We can reach out to the HPG group and see if anyone wants to step up. We can create opportunities for everyone to learn through this group but we need to have a starting point. We could partner a CMO with the group to maybe take this lead?
    3. Herrera: I would be happy to head this up.
  6. Training—Richard Every
    1. Roche: Richard has put together an outline for us for a four part series to have biweekly in October and November. I think this would be a great benefit to all our members and we could record these and always have them. So for me this is really a no brainer to benefit our members.
    2. O’Gara: We have paid people in the past to do this and I think having Richard involved is just incredible.
    3. Roche: Is anyone opposed to this?
      1. None opposed.
  7. Liaison for Rugby Texas 
    1. Bayazitoglu: Rugby Texas asked us for a referee to join their Board calls. I was the representative informally, but this year do we formally want to appoint someone to be on that board?
    2. Roche: I would like to have someone who understands our assigning pains but understands both sides of the fence.
    3. O’Gara: I would like to volunteer for this role, I was very involved in the High School level.
      1. None opposed.
  8. Sabercats updates re possible field access; ref certification; coordination
    1. Bayazitoglu: I talked to Grant and asked if we could use their pitch for referee training. They are waiting for final confirmation from the president of the Sabercats. Their HTX squad is currently having practices and has the lights on, so we are able to use a small section of their pitch to have our own training. As time goes on we may be able to use their practices for referee training sessions on rucking and unopposed situations. He also wants the entire HTX squad trained as referees so he wants to have L100 courses for them. Then a few will join the TRRA to ref High School games and youth. Everyone is welcome to sign up for those courses when the Sabercats host them.
  9. New Business
    1. Referee Trainings
      1. Roche: We’ve had two in Dallas, it’s been fun to get everyone back together and back thinking about rugby. Anyone else have anything planned?
      2. O’Gara: Ozzie do we want to get something together for Saturday?
      3. Herrera: I’m planning to reach out to San Marcos and just put something together for October, set a date and just see who shows.
  10. Meeting Adjourned