08/21/08:
It has been a
long off-season. Now we're hard upon the start of the 2008 season.
In the interval since the end of last year and now, we've had several
developments. While
most of these are merely evolutionary, they are nonetheless significant:
1. The new board has settled down to business. Building on the successes of
Richard
Garner's tenure as president, Frank Reed has offered up several initiatives
that seem
destined to further strengthen the association and ease the administrative
burden on
both folks running our programs and on the individual members. Most notable
of these
are the advent of the "Mentor" program and the pending implementation of
"The Arbiter"
as our primary game-booking vehicle.
2. We revised
the summer's training program to focus less on rules training and more on
mechanics training. Individual members are being given more responsibility
to read and
understand the rules while being given greater help in understanding how to
call a game.
Our 3 x 3-hour on-field training sessions were some of the best sessions
we've run in quite
some time.
3.
We had a largely successful recruiting season for the year. We have added
about 15
brand new members to our roles. This is almost twice what we experience in
an average
year. What's more, based on early results through the training sessions and
scrimmages,
the talent level of our new members as a group is also some of the best
we've had in
years.
4. We've established an enhanced evaluation program for all our officials.
The goal of
this program is to be as sure as we can be that those officials who advance
to the playoffs
are the best at their positions and, even more importantly, that the crews
we put on the
field in the playoffs are the very best MCFOA has to offer. We're quite
serious about
making a commitment to excellence in how we do our jobs. This evaluation
program is
an integral part of how we measure the success of that commitment.
This weekend marks the end of the purely preparation and training period.
Next weekend
we jump right into our full fall schedule. We've an an 80-game regular
season lined up
and a substantial workload at the sub-varsity and middle school levels, as
well. All
members are reminded of the need to be on-time to all events and in the
appropriate
uniform. We'll be doing ALL our games in knickers this year, even at the
middle school
level. Shorts will NOT be worn in any MCFOA-officiated contests.
As you might have guessed from reading to this point, we're anticipating a
really good
year in 2008. Have a great year as an individual, yourself, and you'll go a
long way
toward reaching the association's goals for the year. Let's get started! |