Board of Director Meeting Minutes

Thursday, February 6, 2020, 7:00pm

Panera, Cambridge, MA

ATTENDEES: Oleg Poliannikov (President), Bob Messenger (Treasurer), Andrew Hoy (Clerk), Jeff Caruso, Steve Frymer, Nicholas Sterling, Robb Stewart, and Steve Winer.

NEXT BOARD MEETING: Not scheduled

1. Meeting Minutes

MOTION: Approval of minutes from the September 19, 2019 board meeting (JC/RM). VOTE: Passed, 6-0

2. Committee Reports

Finance

Tournaments so far this year have been more profitable than last year.

Budget

The budget committee will prepare a budget and propose it at the next Board meeting.

Elections

Currently two Board seats have no candidate. If Board members know of interested volunteers, they can reach out to solicit additional candidates.

MOTION: Approve the election timeline proposed by the elections committee (JC/OP). VOTE: Passed, 8-0

Tournaments

Bob has circulated a proposed TLA for the MA Open. Based on feedback from the committee, 100% of prizes will be guaranteed, and the entry fee will be raised slightly from previous years in order to reduce reliance on donations earmarked for prizes in the Championship section. Currently prizes are slightly top loaded, the committee discussed adjusting the prize structure in the future.

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The MA G/60 is usually in April, it is now scheduled for June 13

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Maine did not submit a bid for the New England Open, the tournament committee will prepare a bid for the NEO to be held over Labor Day weekend.

Scholastics

The Board discussed changing the sections of the Hurvitz cup to align with the sections in national tournaments: the sections would be K-3, K-5, K-8, and K-12.

MOTION: Change the sections in the Hurvitz Cup to K-3, K-5, K-8, and K-12 (RM/RS). VOTE: Passed, 7-0-1

The Board also discussed changing the feeder school rule. The overall goal is to increase attendance at the Hurvitz Cup. Two options are to change the rule to allow students in the same school to play on the same team, regardless of the grades (this is covered in the motion above). Another suggestion was to allow students throughout a school district to play on the same team.

MOTION: Change Hurvitz Cup team rules to allow teams to comprise students from an entire school district instead of a single school.
REFERRED to the scholastic committee for further discussion.

The Gus Gosselin Grade Championship is scheduled for this coming weekend. In the last several years, attendance has been fairly low. The Board discussed ways to try and recruit newer players to the event. Several sections have been combined in order to avoid having sections with only a handful of players.

3. Other Tournament Ideas

   The Board discussed several other ideas for tournaments in Massachusetts. Both individual and team events were considered. One underserved market is newer players, as opposed to experienced scholastic tournament players. The experienced players end up playing on many weekends, but there are very few state wide tournaments specifically marketed for and aimed towards unrated beginners. Robb will create a proposal for a tournament that fills this need.

4. Next Meeting

   The next meeting is not currently scheduled.

   MOTION TO ADJOURN