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| Time: | 12th December 2003 21:45 |
| Venue: | Harvey Hadden Sports Centre |
| Present at meeting: | |
| Toni Jantschenko | Chairperson & Head Coach |
| Rachel Anderson | Treasurer & coach |
| Chris Edwards | Secretary |
| Teresa Edwards | Parent |
| Hannah Morgan | Club member |
| Ian Parker | Parent |
| Report (summarised, combined and not necessarily in the right order!) | |
| 1. 2003 Review | |
| The club has had a very successful year in competition with lots of club members winning cups & medals. This is a huge achievement for a club with no ‘senior’ members to help encourage the beginners to greater things. Club membership numbers have remained roughly static over the year. The website has been successful in helping communication with a high percentage of members receiving online news. | |
| 2. Parental involvement and communication | |
| This is still a struggle – see list of attendees for an indication! There are a few issues here. First, parents helping at competitions. We must have these to compete, but it’s currently down to a few people. Hannah, Jo and Dianne recently completed a judging course – many thanks to them for giving up their time to help. Others had expressed a willingness to come along, but couldn’t make it for various reasons (illness, other commitments). We’ll try to get another course as soon as possible. | |
| We can however get people to help in other roles that need very little training – marshalling and recording. This is also a good introduction for parents who know little about the sport and for whom the prospect of judging is somewhat daunting. To help with this, the club will run a ‘mock competition’ during one the January sessions. This will also help any trampolinists who haven’t competed yet. | |
| The second place that parents can help is at club sessions. With about 5 minutes training, anyone can help by spotting, timing routines, observing moves etc. It was noted that many other sports clubs discourage parents staying around during a session and that the fact that we would appreciate them staying around may not be widely known. It was proposed that we try running a ‘parent’s rota’ (rather like they do at Cubs & Brownies), so that each family would be provide a parent for a session once every 8 weeks or so. Parents who do stick around for the session, generally find it quite rewarding. | |
| A parent’s bouncing evening was suggested – this would be best done with the children present, as otherwise they’ll all have the excuse of needing babysitters. Some of the parents must be secretly wanting to give it a go! | |
| Finally, in order to improve communication and involvement, we will aim to have a meeting every 3 months or so immediately after one of the training sessions and encourage parents and members to join in. | |
| 3. Membership, Coaches and Trampolines | |
| We currently have around 30 members attending one or two sessions per week. This is limited by the number of beds and coaches we can make available for each session. Since September, we have only had 2 coaches and two trampolines, limiting us to about 10 people per session. | |
| To address this, we have 2 people currently undergoing coaching training (Lisa and Chris). There is another person (Louise) interested in coaching, who we will try to get on a course soon. Rachel is due to start her Club Coach course in March, enabling her to move up to coach more advanced moves. | |
| We also have a third trampoline being transferred from Victoria Leisure Centre in January. An ‘Awards for All’ lottery grant application has been made for more funds, but it is uncertain whether this will be successful. | |
| The extra bed and coaches should enable us to extend the Friday evening session and possibly the Monday session too. This will bring in more membership funds that should help towards new equipment. | |
| 4. Accounts and Fundraising | |
| The club accounts were reviewed. The club had a reserve of around £500 at the beginning of September when fees were increased to the current level. We still have some of the lowest fees in the country, but feel that our current income of about £3600 pa should be ok, especially if we are successful in increasing numbers. We currently pay hall hire fees of around £1400 pa and coach’s fees totalling about £600pa. Maintaining the equipment, training courses, leotards etc has to come out of the remainder. It costs about £100 for each trampoline’s annual inspection. Repairs / replacements in November cost £700. | |
| In order to improve the training facilities, we need to do some fundraising. The following ideas were suggested: | |
| 1. | ‘Kingsmill Kit for Clubs’ - Chris has registered the club for this. We need LOADS of tokens, and with everyone on the Atkins diet this isn’t something we can do alone. So, we need everyone to ask relatives, schools, employers etc. to help as much as possible. |
| 2. | Bag packing – ASDA have paused this for a bit, but Morrison's may be worth a try |
| 3. | Sponsored Bounce-a-thon – either a marathon 12-hour bounce, or individual targets. The latter was preferred as it is easier to book with the centre and likely to raise just as much money. |
| 4. | Fashion evening – these can raise a few hundred pounds |
| 5. | Running a trampoline competition at Harvey Hadden – possible, but heavy wear on equipment and we only make money from any stalls /raffles we can run. Also, loads of work for the usual 3 people! |
| 5. Club kit | |
| Looking into tracksuits and tee-shirts again. We want to keep the cost down, but have proper ‘stitched’ logos on them. We can still do computer printed tee-shirts, but there hasn’t been much take-up yet. We would need to put an initial investment in to get the tracksuits (probably £500+) and would sell them at a slight mark-up in order to cover the cost of keeping some unsold stock. As an example though, the gym club sell their tracksuits at £45 and virtually everyone has one. | |
| Meeting concluded 22:30 | |
| Postscript – 14th December | |
| 1. Chris & Lisa have both passed their coaching exams | |
| 2. We didn’t get the Awards for All grant, so fundraising is more important than ever. | |
