Committee Meeting

1. Report from Pony Rep

DOS stated the Pony staff was currently happy with the state of the team. DOS however did raise the on going issue that Burgess Hill are not confirming the fixtures according to the BBF bye-laws.

AS stated he had a conversation with RH the previous weekend. RH had suggested that BaseballMK should be approaching BSUK and asking for the schedule to be re-worked in such a way that all weekends are scheduled at either Bracknell or BaseballMK so that more baseball is being played.

RH then asked the Pony staff if they believed that they were providing "Value for Money" as long as the period were no games are being played, and training is only occurring once a week continued.
The Pony staff agreed that they were not providing "Value for Money" but AS stated that the game schedule and lack of games were beyond the control of the Pony staff.

RH then asked if the Pony staff had managed to resolve the issue caused by them all being unavailable for the bank holiday weekend.
DOS then stated that Scott McVay had offered to manage the team for the weekend, however Burgess Hill had once again failed to confirm the game.
AS and NS then acknowledged that they had made an error and would endeavour to avoid this in the future.

RH then asked why the Pony practice had been moved to Denbigh High School and whether practice would continue to be held there.
DOS explained that Denbigh High School was being used because it had nets that made using the pitching machine easier and safer. AS also added that the Pony practice was supposed to be including the MK Hitmen adult team, however they had not yet attended.
KS then queried whether BaseballMK had permission to use the school facilities. AS said that the Hitmen had got permission, and then KS asked DOS to get permission specifically for the BaseballMK Pony team. DOS/0504-01
AS then informed RH, as the Webmaster that Pony practices would be held on Wednesday's at Denbigh from 6pm-8 until further notice.

RH then asked whether the Pony team had any rookies that had been recruited.
Both AS and DOS confirmed that the Pony team had not recruited any new players this year. DOS also repeated that it was very hard to recruit new players.
RH suggested that maybe Pony practice was a little too repetitive and not varied enough to include children that were not as confident about baseball. The entire Pony staff did not see this as an issue; with NS going further and stating that toning down the core baseball practice may actually alienate some of the existing players.

AS then stated that if there were enough players to run two Pony teams then there would be more opportunity to run varied skill teams. AS said this would tie in with BSUK's plans to expand and provide a full development division once the child numbers in Pony baseball had expanded to an appropriate size to support multiple divisions. RH then expressed that he was more concerned that there would be a significant reduction in the Southern Pony league in 2006, based on the current child numbers and recruitment results from all Southern teams. NS confirmed that he and AS had also discussed this prediction.

RH then asked the Pony staff how they planned to address their potential financial shortfall based on the team predicted income and the current team expenditure. DOS asked whether NS statement at the previous meeting had not said that the team had not already broken even. RH explained that actually this figure was based on spending the entire preseason bank reserve.
AS & NS agreed that they would return to the next committee meeting with a full plan. NS/0504-01

2. Practice Schedule

DOS said she would prefer it if the Pony team went back to holding practices on a Monday.
AS explained that he believed that training on Monday was too close to a game. AS also said that the children training with the GB squad on Sundays would be totally overloaded.
DOS said that she thought the Monday was a good day to discuss the previous weekends activity because all the children had forgotten about it by Wednesday.
AS then said that he would restore Monday practice at Woughton and it would be the "fun" practice, with Wednesdays at Denbigh being the focused practice that would be charged extra session.

KS suggested that the Bronco and Pony team could be combined. RH & AS said they did not think this was a good idea.

AS then asked if he could have the diamond on Monday. KS said that the Bronco's would try to accommodate the Pony team.

3. Voting on new members - Bronco Rep

John Clark stood as the Bronco Rep, unopposed.
The committee then agreed for the meeting Chairman (DOS) to offer John the position on the committee.

4. Voting on new members - Member at Large

Tara Doswell received 3 votes.
Craig Field received 2 votes.
The committee then agreed for the meeting Chairman (DOS) to offer Tara the position on the committee.

Both NS & RH made a special mention of the effort that Craig was making as a Pony coach since he joined the team.

5. Reaction to Member Query - Melanie Whitney

KS reported back to the committee that he had sent the letter to Melanie and then spoke to her after she had time to read it. Melanie explained that she had received some misinformation that the committee were not aware of the promotional video, and now that had been clarified as untrue, she had no concerns.

6. Reaction to Member Query - Genny Simmons

RH reported that he had now spoken to Genny with regards to her concerns about the minutes from the 12th April 2005.
Genny had repeated that she wanted the paragraph removed and RH had repeated that he would not be removing part of the historical record. RH then followed the committee's instruction and suggested that Genny offered an alternative paragraph that did not upset her but still was historically accurate.

RH reported that Genny had agreed to do this, but had not contacted him since, and so he assumed that the matter was now closed.

7. Expenses

KS requested that the club should cover the petrol expenses for running the pitching machine.
The committee agreed that the club should cover these costs.

8. Social Inclusion

KS reported that a situation has arisen whereby the Club, Coaches or Manager have tried to accommodate a child through Social Inclusion and some issues had been brought to him as the Bronco team manager. The committee then repeated and agreed that once the child has been assessed in the basic skills of Baseball it is the Clubs, Coachs or Managers final decision to limit/exclude a child from Training, Intense Training or Game Time, without recourse to the Club, Coaches or Manager.

9. Umpires

The Pony team confirmed that they had now resolved their umpiring issue, by recruiting one of the MK Hitmen adults to umpire their games.

10. Bronco Coaching - Chris Bateman

AS confirmed that he had evaluated Chris Bateman as a BSUK qualified examiner, and Chris met the requirements to join the Bronco coaching staff as soon as he had met the documentation requirements of BSUK.

11. Travel Arrangements

DOS raised the issue of children whose parents were not willing to transport their children to games.
RH repeated that he would not want parents lack of commitment to transporting their children to have any additional consequences for the child.

KS expressed that he believed that parents who expect their children to be transported to away games should be offering "petrol money". The committee agreed.

12. Sponsorship

Estelle sent an update with details of the financial package offered to the club by Argos.
KS advised that he would be requesting some information from NS to help Estelle with her sponsorship efforts. KS/0504-01

13. AOB - Letter from Cecil van Niekerk

RH read from an e-mail received by one of the Bronco children's parents where it was explained that several other parents had been making unhelpful comments on the sidelines at a recent Bronco game.

RH offered a draft document to the committee that was designed to address this issue. AS reviewed the document and said it was very similar to the one he started but not published prior to the season starting.

The committee agreed that this document would be sent to all members of the club and uploaded onto the website.