Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2004

General Meeting Recap

By Steve Hilgendorf
NBUA President

BELLEVUE – Approximately 100 NBUA members turned out for this year’s general meeting held last Thursday at Overlake Hospital. We tried to cover a little bit of everything with the emphasis being on the assigning process.

Although the assigning presentation didn’t go as smooth as we would have liked, we did get to see first hand a glimpse of what will be. There are still some glitches to be worked out and thanks to some valuable feedback, we can make adjustments to the program to best fit our needs. A second presentation will be made at the February 28 meeting. I encourage you to attend so you can be up to date. If you have any questions regarding the assigning process, please contact Leslie.

Leslie has also hired on some guy named Jack Miller to help with the assigning process for the upcoming season. Now you won’t hear him on the phones, his capacity will be one to help her make sure we have the right umpires doing the right level of games. We are very excited to have the services of Mr. Miller this season.

Scott Johnson and Dave Natali spoke briefly on the state of recruiting. Contact was made with more than 120 prospective umpires this off season. Of those, 25 are currently dues paying first-year members. Mike Brancheau then talked about the mentor program to keep these new recruits in the fold. If you are interested in being a mentor, contact Brancheau.

Johnson then demonstrated the new NBUA website, ugear! and the NBUA Yellow Pages and encouraged members to send him ideas they'd like to see incorporated into the new site.

Gary Coy presented the new evaluations system (see releated indicator article). We also came across a concern with evaluations that affected the “C” tier. Because of the voices of the membership, Mr. Coy and his committee will reevaluate (how do you like that, evaluators evaluating their program) to make the necessary changes to work for the betterment of NBUA.

We, as a board, are fully committed to making the changes necessary to have this be a successful season! Again I would like to thank those in attendance last Thursday and I hope to see many more of you at the February 28 meeting. The season is just around the corner!