WTTA Board Meeting

October 7, 2008

The following Board Members were in attendance:

DIRECTOR: Susan Cippele

AUSTIN COUNTRY CLUB: Cathy Present

AUSTIN TENNIS ACADEMY: Valorie Doyle

AWTA - Karin Foster

BALCONES: Stacy Vaughn

BARTON CREEK: Karen Cosentino

BERRY CREEK: Gina Curry

CIMARRON HILLS: Vicki Jones

CIRCLE C: Moira Cornyn

COURTYARD: Nor Represented

GREAT HILLS: Cathy Painter

GREATER WILCO: Mia Martin

LAKEWAY: Susan Schoenbaechler

LOST CREEK: Not Represented

ONION CREEK: Chris Poole

POLO CLUB: B.J. Bryant

RIVERPLACE: Susan Hochstatter

STEINER RANCH: Lori Cuteri

SWAT: Laura Gore

WESTOVER HILLS: Not Represented

WESTWOOD: Jana Wash

Meeting called to order @ 1230pm

August Minutes were approved as posted

Old Business:

WTTA Director, Susan Cippele, left the room while the Board handled her annual performance review and discussed the salary for the position. A motion was made by Cathy Painter to raise the director’s salary to $20 per team per season. The motion was seconded by Cathy Present with all in favor and one abstention.

The Board recommended that should Susan Cippele anticipate leaving her position, a plan of transition should be put in place. It was also felt that she may like to have a volunteer assistant to the Director from the Board.

New Business:

Placement of Teams:

During placement for Fall 2008, there were several instances of inconsistency in placing teams with the old rule limiting teams to no more than 3 players from lower flights. Since the new rules provide that less than 5 returning players constitutes a new team, many new teams are reviewed that have 4 returning players and 4 new players. In those cases, often the team needs to be placed in a flight between that of the four returning players and that of the four new players. This can create a situation where the only way to place a new team appropriately is to grant an exception to the rule on 3 players or less from lower flights. This happened in two instances this past season during placement.

It was proposed that since all new teams are reviewed by the Placement committee anyway, this wording has become obsolete under the new definition of a returning team. Moira Cornyn moved that the placement rule involving no more than 3 players from a lower flight be removed. Susan Schoenbaechler seconded the motion and all were in favor.

Susan Cippele also explained to the Board that the bottom flights are becoming essentially full. The next Flight to be split will need to be a higher flight, as we do not want to split Flight 10, and Flights 7-9 are already split. With this in mind, the Fall 2009 season may be a time to make adjustments to flights to move extra teams up to make more room in the bottom flights. During the Summer of 2009, a survey may be done with teams and clubs concerning day changes and the willingness of teams to move up This would potentially involve all teams, or at least many more teams than the typical 3^rd and 4^th place teams normally asked.

Sandbagging:

Karin Foster presented a request from an AWTA Championship captain concerning rules for order of play. There was discussion of various methods to establish order of play and to limit sandbagging which have been tried in the past. .There was also discussion as to whether separate rules should be considered for Championship, or whether any rules imposed should be for the league as a whole. It was suggested that, per our rules, the AWTA team do additional research with other captains and then present a formal proposal, prior to the February deadline.

Announcements:

Meeting adjourned: 210pm

Admin Committee Meeting to follow at 2:10pm, to review formal complaint in Flight 6

November 4, 2008 12:30pm Board Meeting, Westover Hills