CLUB REPRESENTATIVES SPRING MEETING AND GOLF OUTING

The Spring Club Representatives Golf Outing was held at the site of the 2012 Mid Amateur Championship - Old Hickory Golf Club in St. Charles, MO.  The minutes of the Spring Club Representatives Meeting are as follows:

MWGA Club Representative Meeting Minutes

April 17, 2012

1.  MGA Alliance and WGA Intern Update
Morgan Lamberson, our MWGA Intern is looking forward to our MWGA Senior Championship.  Morgan has been working very hard to learn the TPP program for tournament administration.  Online scoring will be available.  Karen Raithel, MGA Administrative Assistant will continue training and working with Morgan at this tournament.

2.  Increasing individual and club memberships
Individual memberships are on track for this year. As expected, there was some confusion this year about club memberships given that our club applications went out with the MGA invoices.  The original MWGA application looked more like a flier and may not have been viewed as an actual invoice. The application/invoice was subsequently modified and can be found on the MWGA web site.  If your club has not yet joined, please provide your club office or pro shop with a copy of the application.

3.  WARM Meeting Update
We did not have a representative to the WARM meeting in Phoenix this year.  One of the Oklahoma representatives has graciously agreed to share information.  When information is available, we will share.

4.  Online membership and event sign-up.
Karen Johnson provided step-by-step instructions projected on the screen showing how to sign-up and pay your membership dues online.  She also demonstrated how to sign-up for an event.  Karen has posted easy, step-by-step tutorials on the MWGA web site.

5. 2012 Championship Format Changes
Sue Browning reported on championship format changes that are being made this year based on member feed back. The Mid-Amateur and Senior Championships will have Championship and Open Divisions. Any contestant may compete in the Championship Division. In addition, a competitor with a handicap index of 10.4 and below must play in the Championship Division.  The Open Division will be flighted by handicap index prior to competition with awards given in each flight. The number of flights will be dependent on the number of entries. As many members suggested the food and beverage arrangements have been altered to encourage more social interactions among the players. This change has allowed us to decrease entry fees for our Championships.

6.  Junior Championship Update
We want to encourage our membership to help promote the Junior Championship in June.  In addition, we will be Missouri will be hosting our Four State Championship this year.  The event will be contested at Sedalia Country Club.  We would love to have our members come out and support our Four State Team.  MWGA will also be part of a new Four State Cup Match Tournament which will be contested in Hot Springs, Arkansas in early August.  The states competing will be Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri and Oklahoma.  Given the lateness of the request to compete, we were unable to include this event in our 2012 budget.  Therefore, donations from our gracious members have allowed our association to send a team.

7.  USGA Team Selection
The USGA team selection committee and criteria were discussed.  These will be available on our web site.

8.  Member outings
Most of the club reps thought that member outings were worth holding. Suggestions were made to reach out to juniors to play in these events and to ask non-members to play – GREAT IDEAS!!!  If your club is interested in hosting one of these events, please contact Nancy Sebastian or Sue Browning.   Look for member outing events via email in the MWGA NewsWire as well as on the MWGA web site.

9.  Course Rating
Peg Eddy reported that we have several members who would like to become new course raters.  Four members attend the course rating seminar at Prairie Village, Kansas on April 10th and then 12 ladies plus a few from St. Louis Metropolitan who attended the course rating seminar at Old Hickory in St. Peters.  The ladies seemed very interested and eager to learn the rating process.  The plan now is to invite these ladies to join some of our current rating teams for some practice ratings.  Once they feel comfortable with the procedures, we hope to be able to send them out on their own.  It is great to have some new raters to create a couple more teams as we have many courses to rate this year.  Hope their enthusiasm continues.

10.  Online board nominations and voting
The MWGA board is interested in continuing to promote opportunities to volunteer and serve on the MWGA board and has agreed in principle to begin using the Internet as a way to take board nominations and allow for online board elections.  The logistics of this process have not yet been thoroughly thought through.  More information on this process will be provided to the membership as the details are worked out.

11. Club Rep meeting attendees
There was confusion this club rep meeting about whether the club reps could bring someone with them to play. Some club reps have to travel quite a way to attend the meeting and it is helpful and more fun to travel with someone.  There are capacity problems, however, at many of the clubs that host these meetings.  The ability for each club rep to bring another member or bring the alternate club rep with them will be discussed prior to organizing the next club rep meeting and again, will depend on the capacity of the hosting club.

Respectfully submitted,
Beth Chancellor, MWGA Membership Director