President's Blog

President’s Report

Posted July 21 2010 by tclancy

July 21, 2010

President’s Report Gary Marshall

Wow, what a great year we had playing hockey and sharing a few laughs with fellow members. It has been a pleasure to lead the club as BOHC President. Having completed my 3^rd year as President, I’m very proud of our accomplishments and I’m excited about the 2010/11 season.

We only have one change to the BOD’s this year as we felt that we needed as little change as possible, to complete our expansion to a bigger and better club. With that I will be guiding the ship during our exciting expansion year as we move to 8 divisions of 6 teams. Wow, 48 teams with over a 1000 full-time and pool players as we celebrate our 35^th anniversary as a club. Many thanks to Jim Lahey (Referee) that has served as Director for 4 years and will now is moving to a full-time player status and Convenor of our new Black Division.

We welcome newly elected director Richard Zabransky in the new role of Director Information Technology. The Web site continues to expand and be the central point of all communication through the club. This was the first year that we dropped the schedule from our booklet and relied totally on the web for this communication. Our downloadable schedules were a hit and as we found out, adjustments to games were initiated and flowed seamlessly to each division. These changes were supported by email blasts to our membership, advising of any significant changes that were to occur. Convenors enter the scores of game and the site, standings and other information is immediately updated. Participation in our Web Banner advertising program was a real hit we increased our participants by 25%. I have heard nothing but praise for our web banners used to communicate special events and happenings. Many thanks to Lino Fera and his team for their vision and efforts. We have now moved this responsibility over to the new role of Director of IT (Richard Zabransky) to lead our development, who will surly bring some exciting changes and functions on our site

At time of writing all divisions have been set and player moves are completed with most divisions completing their team drafts. Over the next few weeks (end of July) we will be releasing the team lists and posting on the web. As you can imagine we had a lot of moves this year and many thanks to all of you who understand the necessity of changes and we look forward to continued fun playing the game we love.

The 2009/10 season was another tremendous success for the Club. Continued participation by so many volunteers is nothing short of amazing. Some of the highlights of our past season include:

We continue to evaluate opportunities that will help us sustain, grow and develop our great programs. We initiated our new look sweaters and logo last year and they were a handsome addition to our play on the ice. We now look better than we play, but that’s not so bad is it? As part of a unique group of ice users we have made a commitment to pay 50% of the costs of the twinning of the Appleby Ice Centre. This move from 2 to 4 pads has been the focal point of our growth strategies. Many thanks to Frank McKeown for his efforts with the Ice User group and the City of Burlington. With our commitment to support the twinning we were allotted an agreed amount of hours that are guaranteed going forward, thus removing the restriction of ice usage that has been a cumbersome challenge over recent years.

A lot of the efforts of the board and our expansion committee have been focused on planning and implementing a recruitment drive to add the additional 96 full-time players to fill our new division. Peter Greig, VP Membership has meticulously worked to get the additional members registered.

The Club’s governance remains strong, and I have the pleasure to work with such an enthusiastic and supportive board. The clubs operations do not happen unless “a group of dedicated individuals all work together to achieve a common goal”. We welcomed our new director Wendall Ahearn as Director On–Ice replacing Rob Field who moved to the role of VP Hockey. Also joining the BOD was Mark Buchanan (Previously Convenor – Red Division) who jumped into the VP Administration position. What a tremendous job they both did, not only taking on new responsibilities but excelling in their roles. Lino Fera, VP Communications and Chuck Caruana Board Secretary switched roles and a seamless transition to their new responsibilities proved that good men can do great jobs if assigned the duties!

“Hectors” continued to serve us well, although with a tough economy and the new lower tolerance for alcohol, we saw reduced sales over the year. Outside rentals were strong and members were participating, they are just buying fewer refreshments. We welcomed Mark Buchanan’s as VP Administration and Stan Ruhl to the official role of Lounge Manager. We eliminated food preparation and introduced “Pizzaville Pub Packages” which were pleasantly received by our membership. High definition television and large projection television with computer compatibility lead our technical efforts. Wireless internet is now available and we launched Screenscape promotional & information program. Hectors has never looked better and we look forward to your continued patronage!

We continue to benefit from the positive relationship between our players and 30 member refs who do their best to keep our games flowing smoothly while keeping a lid on some of our more spirited players. We introduced the “Blue Ice” rule this year and with an adjustment period we found it worked well to protect our valuable goalies. Following the recommendation from the rules committee we will be initiating the obstruction rules that are in place in other leagues and the NHL. Many thanks to Mike Veerman for his efforts and participation in BOD meetings.

Congratulations to all of you, who “get it” and understand that our club is about fun and fellowship, and we had minimum discipline meetings. The Club will continue to be aggressive in the discipline area as the Board and Conveners view this as a critical component to the Club’s success. Bruce Marsh, Director Fundraising & Discipline Chair was the driving force behind our fundraising efforts and even managed to keep control of the few rowdies that forgot they were not going to the NHL. Way to go Bruce!

The Club’s finances continue to be very strong. We invested funds in building our exposure within the community through our new branding and player recruitment efforts. We added more structure to our reporting of financials for individual events in order to properly identify our costs and better budget for future expenses. Many thanks to Richard Krummancher who continues to bring strong accounting practices and discipline to our club’s operation.

The Club’s active support for the community makes all of us very proud. The members supported BOWSER’s and had a record contribution of over $12,000 in 2010 year. Thanks to Barb Charron and Michelle Wood and all of the BOWSER Babes for their dedication. We will be looking to make some changes to this program in 2010 and help balance our contributions to the community. The Invitational Tournament and our Ham & Turkey Roll continue to be a success and our largest fundraisers of the year. Many thanks to Rick Fox (Invitational Tournament Chair) and Dave Missons (Ham & Turkey Chair) and their teams for another successful year. Once again this year the membership stepped up and achieved record prize table ticket sales supported by a Pub Night reward for their efforts. It’s great to know that a night of fun is all that is needed to motivate our guys! We once again we made $7000 cash contributions to Carpenter Hospice who are our charity of choice.

There are many others who contribute their time and efforts to make our league the best. Special mention to the Convenors, Captains and the many others who sit on committees and volunteer their valuable time. If you would like more detail, I suggest you read the 2010 Annual Meeting Report that can be found on our website.

Our relationship with the BOSL (Burlington Oldtimers Slo-Pitch League) is growing and becoming stronger as the years progress. We have many of the same members and key people like Tom Clancy who is on the BOD of BOSL and also is our website coordinator and lends a lot of support to Stan running lounge operations.

Our future looks bright and our focus of maintaining our status as the worlds largest and finest Oldtimer Hockey Club and always striving for Balance, Fair Play and Community.

Cheers!

Gary Marshall (Whitey)