Letter to the Parents

Good morning Woodside Ultimate players and parents,

Well it has been an interesting year and our season is quickly coming to an end. Our last event of the year will be the VA State Championship Tournament held annually in May at LC Bird High School in Chesterfield (Richmond) VA. This year States is on May 14-15th and currently the organizers are looking for different fields on which to play, they are having problems with their fields. We will keep you informed on the blog (www.woodsideultimate.blogspot.com) and by email. Everything we do now is to get ready for States which leads me to my next two points;

· USAU (United States Ultimate) high school registration/membership for all
players
· Request for extra funds/dues due to our financial situation

· USAU Registration: First let me say thank you to all those who have paid spring dues and for jerseys. Bringing up the subject of asking parents to pay more money is always difficult however Ultimate is still a fairly inexpensive sport to play. One thing that is required every year for our players to play in States is for them to become USAU members. The cost is $29 for high school players per calendar year and this membership mainly covers players under USAU’s insurance in any USUA sanctioned tournaments. They will receive a USAU membership #, magazines, stickers, etc. Since States is organized and run by our governing body, USAU, all players need to become members in order to participate. Have your kids show you the site, www.usaultimate.org, and click on membership information under the membership tab, then click the join online link. If everyone can pay on line it would expedite our process to prepare our roster. Let me know if anyone cannot pay on line and we will work it out. This needs to be completed by May 11, 2011 and your child needs to tell us the USAU Id number then are assigned so they can be added to the appropriate roster. If this is not completed your child can not play at States per USAU guidelines.

· Now as for our club’s financial situation. We do not know the exact amount that we will have to pay for States because too many players have not paid the $25 spring dues. As of now, Richard and I believe that we will be significantly short funds to pay for States; which includes entry fees, rental vans/gas, and hotel rooms. There are two reasons for this situation. The main reason for this is because of the jersey fiasco. Briefly, we ordered varsity jerseys through a company, Rep Ultimate, who messed up our order. They printed wrong color jerseys, messed up numbers and fonts, and were not on time with anything. This put us behind in our other jersey orders. After receiving the reimbursement from them, we found a company, Spin, who could do the jerseys (a white and purple and shorts) for about $12 more per set ($62 instead of $50), this was the lowest price amongst all other companies. Richard and I initially tried to absorb this extra cost with proceeds from our tournaments but we did not make enough for this to work.

The second reason is reduced dues for the spring season. In the past dues have ranged from $35-45 for the spring season to help cover the increased expenses of tournaments, this year we only requested $25, again with the though that the increased number of tournaments we were hosting would help offset the difference. With the failure of our spring HS tournament to come together this idea did not work.

One way to help solve this situation is to have everyone pay their spring dues ($25), allowing us to make accurate estimates of how short of funds we are. Looking back at my receipt book, I see a lot of players who have not paid. We have tried to contact everyone, but everyone needs to come see me to double check, there is also a list attached of all players we believe owe money. We need everyone to pay as soon as possible. In addition, we are asking everyone, if possible, to pay $15 extra dues/jersey fees to help recoup expenses. Anyone willing to donate money would be greatly appreciated. We do understand that this could present a financial hardship for some families, and we will accept whatever anyone can give. We are simply trying to make States weekend as enjoyable for our players as possible.

As for the financial breakdown for States, we are going to need money for hotel rooms, transportation, and tournament entry fees. Our first thought to reduce costs for States this year is to put together a carpool to States and eliminate the need for vans. Usually two vans cost us about $350 and the cost of gas which is incredibly high. If we get enough parents to car pool then we could avoid that cost and use the funds for hotel rooms. The parents staying would also help reduce the number of hotel rooms we need.The one thing we do not want to do is take away the hotel stay. This is something the kids enjoy, swimming in the pool and the hot tub, etc. and has been a tradition since the first year of the program. If everyone pays the spring dues, many people pay the extra $15 and we have enough adults to car pool to Richmond then we should have enough funds for the rest of the year.

Please understand that myself and Richard take full blame for our club’s financial hardship. This is our first year dealing with the financial component of the team and it has been a major learning experience on the fly. We had large aspirations for our increased tournament hosting offsetting costs but with the failure of our HS tournament in the spring we did not meet those aspirations. This is a situation that will not occur again in the future thanks to the learning experience of the unfortunate situation we are in right now. We could have stayed with the first jersey company until they fixed all of their mistakes but that we believe that would have taken too much time. Richard and I are doing and will continue to do the best we can to make the end of our spring season a good one.

My emails are not reaching all of the players and parents. Please everyone do me a favor; text, facebook, email everyone possible and ask them to send me their emails (especially parental emails) and cell numbers. Send the info in a text to my (Greg) number 757-952-7067, just include your name and any info you can find for me.

Also please get in the habit of visiting the blog (www.woodsideultimate.blogspot.com) regularly for updates about the team and things like tournaments, dues, etc.

Thank you very much for all you do for Woodside Ultimate!