Southern Badminton Association

Minutes of the 1999 and 2000 Annual Meetings

Miami Lakes, FL (1999)

San Antonio, TX (2000)

The annual meeting was called to order at 8:30 PM on 30 April 1999 by Jim Daniels, VP, in the absence of the president.  The cast of Directors was a shifting miasma (that is NOT a misspelling of Miami) of characters from around the South.  When the topic drifted to something boring, the bored Director would find urgent business elsewhere and wander back to the meeting when it looked interesting again.  Enough of them hung around at any time that the VP felt he could press on with the business.

Treasurer Richard Juday gave the financial report.  It was moved, seconded, and passed that the report be approved.  Then things broke apart in the Southern fashion.  Lots of discussion, many actions assigned, lots of things approved.  Here followeth a year-later transcription of the events.  (The scratchy notes from the meeting were temporarily misplaced by having been put into the most likely spot – the Treasurer’s notebook.)

Moved and passed that the Secretary is assigned to maintain the mailing list.

Moved, seconded, and passed that San Antonio will be graciously permitted to host the Southern in 2000.  It is getting harder and harder to find a group that is innocent as to just how much work is involved, but the Alamo Badminton Club of San Antonio has offered and we accept the offer.  

Atlanta bid for, and is allowed to host, the 2001 Southern regional tournament.  They too have forgotten how much work is involved, and for so little glory!  The Miami crowd did a superb job of this tournament, so it will likely be a while before they want to take it on again.  The crew includes the Graham family, Linda Harvey, Don Shula’s Hotel and Athletic Club staff, Dudley Chen, Rose Lee Fatt, John Grata, Vicky Balser, Terry Harte, and Fernando Carasusan. 

Lots of noisy discussion of how to fill out the officer slate.   The Miami crowd was pushing for Armando Del Carpio as President.  He has expressed a desire to do the job, he knows the world players, can bring a lot of energy to the Southern.  Tom Carmody suggested that Del Carpio spend a year as VP before being put into the P slot, and this notion prevailed.  Moved, seconded, and passed that the officer slate put before the Southern would be Jim Daniels, P; Armando Del Carpio, VP; Phil Ayoung-Chee, Sec’y; and Richard Juday, Treasurer.

Jim Greenlees gave an impassioned description of the Special Olympics and its need for badminton coaches and umpires.  The event is to take place 26 June – 3 July at N. Carolina Central University, Durham.

Phil Ayoung-Chee has set up a Web page and URL:  SBABadminton.org.  Moved, seconded, and approved that Chee will bill the Treasurer for the $35/yr to maintain the address and another $50 for forwarding.  (Whatever “forwarding” is in this context.)  By the way, go look at the site… it is quite cool.

The Southern became entangled with the Pan Am Games as a result of approvals issued at this meeting.  The Treasurer (who is writing these notes, by the way) held the eminently reasonable position, as conservator of the Southern funds, that tournaments should be planned so as to be self-supporting.  (The annual Southern Open tournament is a permissible exception, by that view.)  But the random other tournaments, such as the Southern Classic (properly a national tournament held at local venues) and the Pan Am Games, should not be organized in a way to be a financial drain on the SBA.  The fact that a tournament might be held within the Southern region is not itself a reason that the SBA should become financially involved.  Nevertheless, the SBA decided at this gathering to support the Pan Am Games with as much as $750 toward various tournament fees including umpire’s traveling expenses, etc.  (Note added later:   they consumed the whole $750, and more.   This business of supporting umpires and their travel expenses – somewhat new on the badminton scene – is adding a considerable strain on tournament budgets.)

David Zarco put his plan before the entire SBA to seek sponsorship from Bacardi for their sponsoring a tournament event.  He wanted to use the SBA’s imprimatur and seek $10,000 ($2K for prizes, $8K for camera crews) from Bacardi to produce an event that would be shown on the Sunshine Network (a Florida cable network).  After much discussion at the board of directors’ meeting and the Southern group assembled at the banquet, Zarco was allowed to use SBA’s name in his approach to Bacardi for funding.  The hotly debated issues can be boiled down to the following positions:  (put @ here) “Any badminton publicity is good, and that justifies using any source for the necessary funding.”  (B) “Alcohol is a damaging drug that the SBA should not publicly associate itself with; this is true especially as we do junior development.”  Somehow viewpoint (put @ here) carried the day, by a vote of 23-4 at the banquet.

The annual Juday’s Leg Award this year went to the following recipients.  First was Peter Beckford, whose legs must deliver a larger amount of momentum per match than anyone else’s.  (Momentum, you recall, is the product of mass and velocity.)  Robert Lassiter was the recipient for having the largest amount of internal leg metal, what with his two knee replacements.  We are not getting older, we are just accumulating more and more spare parts.  Finally, Valerie and Lisa Fiore won the award for the greatest family total of fine feminine legs.

There were a number of highlights from the tournament itself.  Jim Greenlees reminded this historian of the musicians that conduct from the keyboard.  Jim can umpire his own match from the very court – and match – in which he is playing.  What a widely talented guy!  Dudley Chen was the man of the hour; he was running the tournament, stringing racquets, and beating everyone in his spare time.  John Obara needs a volume knob…  There were few Yankees, and no Canadians, in the player list.  This historian thinks it is because all the Canadians who have come to Southerns before have melted down in pools of sweat and drool before the first game was half over.  By reflexive symmetry, your faithful historian  reckons that a Southern player will freeze up solid at any Toronto tournament.

Ebeneezer was ‘awarded’, if that is the correct term, by its incumbent holder Phil Rogers to Jim Daniels.  No doubt the award was made partially on the basis of ol’ Eb’s travelling spirit, and since Jim lives at just about the antipodes of the Southern region from Miami, ol’ Eb got a bunch of frequent-flyer miles out of that award.  Phil had done a really fine decoration on Ebeneezer – far more decorative than either Richard Juday had done in applying daubs of primary paints or Nathan Montague had done with feeding shuttlecocks to Eb.  Ebeneezer’s current resplendence beggars the descriptive powers of the English tongue.

Your faithful historian has so far seamlessly merged the three meetings together – the one held on 30 April 1999 in Miami, as noted above, and its resumptions at 8AM on 1 May and at the banquet that evening.  Just watch how seamlessly we continue to the 25 March 2000 annual Southern Regional tournament in San Antonio…  hardly felt the jerk at all, now, did you?

The Alamo Badminton Club hosted the 2000 version of the annual Southern, and next year it is to be held in Atlanta.  This reminds your Faithful Historian of a time in the early 1970s when he worked on the same floor as most, or maybe all, of the astronauts at the Johnson Space Center.  A number of those astronauts were donations to NASA by the military after their own planned manned orbital operations – the Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory, or MOL – had been cancelled by Congress.  A wag of a military astronaut one day posted a handwritten sheet of paper on his office door:  “Remember the MOL”, it said.  The posting was too tempting.  A day or so later, modified in a different hand, the sheet read “Remember the ALAMOL.”  And a short time later, with yet a third writer, the sheet read “Remember the pie ALAMOL.”  But we digress…

On 25 March 2000, President Jim Daniels called a meeting to order.  Recall that during the Napoleonic Wars, that the British Navy was staffed through the efforts of press gangs?  Something similar happened here; sergeants at arms were sent around to gather what passed for a quorum of geographically disparate folks from around the Southern region.  The minutes from the preceding year were read by the Treasurer, standing in for the Secretary at both the writing and the reading thereof.  The Treasurer also read a financial report (more on this later).  Both were approved.

President Daniels stated that Atlanta’s offer from last year to host the 2001 Southern was conditioned, among other things, by their not providing food, but only the facility.  This information was supplied by Bob Lassiter, but the rationale was not mentioned so your Faithful Historian can not recount it here.

There is general agreement that we need more umpires in the region.   Ian Counter noted that any umpire can “test down” – that is, a National umpire can test and approve at Regional.  Greenlees is a National II umpire, as is Ian.  Dudley Chen and John Obara are National I umpires.  Mike Gamez stated that the local San Antonio enthusiasm is high and that he would have his juniors begin umpiring themselves.  Daniels said he would contact USAB or Paisan to see about getting a national umpire for either the upcoming Baylor (15 April) or Austin (22 April) tournaments.  Secretary Chee will do an article for the newsletter.

Mike Gamez of San Antonio asked for a Southern statement about what constitutes a “college” player, since some 28-year-olds were entering as college players.  It used to be an SBA rule that you were a “B” player until you won an event, and then you had to move up to “A” and not compete in the “B” event any more.  ACC rules state that you lose “college” eligibility at age 25.  The decision:   SBA will find out what the USAB rules are and conform to them.

President Daniels wants to have a list of Directors published in The Smash, along with their contact information.  The list should occur in every issue.  The Board should be up on places to play in their vicinity and be a general resource for the local players.

Daniels is setting up the following committees and determining their functions.

            Tournaments

            Rankings

            Grievance

            Junior Development

Daniels said very nice things about Len Harris, the tournament director for this year’s Southern.  Len came 1000 miles to guide the San Antonio crew through the process of running the tournament, after the Alamo Badminton Club had done most of the dog work involved (venue, trophies, food, T-shirts, banquet arrangements, etc.) with a lot of help also from Dutch Schroeder and Jim Daniels who made the trip from Waco to help out. 

Some items of discussion were (put @ here) dues, (B) the date of the next Smash (newsletter), (C) inter-city play, and (D) that tournaments need to be financially designed to be self-supporting.  The results of discussions at the meeting and at the banquet were, respectively,  (put @ here) Dues shall increase to $15 per year, and that President Daniels is going to put the actions into place so that the members will see the value for the expenditure and to collect the dues, too.   (B) Phil Ayoung-Chee will put together the next Smash in May.  (C) Inter-city play will be encouraged and facilitated by the Directors as part of their duties.   (D) The necessity of self-supporting tournaments is widely given lip service, but your Faithful Historian is not sure the lesson has settled in yet.  The reality that SBA has lost $3800 on the San Antonio tournament – or about half the holdings – should help bring that into focus, however.

It was requested that in addition to the necessity of making a tournament be financially self-sustaining, the tournament organizers throughout the SBA take heed of some items.  The rules of the tournament should be clearly published in the tournament announcement.  E.g., what are the age/student classification requirements for entering “college” events?  What are the age limits for other events (e.g. combined-80 for mixed, or requiring each player to be over 40)?  Tournament results should be forwarded to Phil Ayoung-Chee for the Secretary to publish in the Smash and post on the web-site. 

The Alamo Badminton Club arranged for the banquet to be held at a local hot spot and good eatery, Rosario’s.  Possibly the most illustrious speaker there was Jose Menendez, local representative to the State Legislature.  Menendez had very complimentary things to say about the program of youth development being carried on by Mike and Rita Gamez.  At the banquet, Richard Juday continued his tradition of making his “Juday’s Legs Award”.  There were several categories of winners this year.  Alberto Camioni won the “crypto-legs” award.  The term “crypto” has its roots in secret or hidden things – cryptology is the science of hiding your writing, and cryptosporidium is a hard-to-find bug.  Alberto never took his warm-ups off.  No one ever saw his legs!  Maybe he remembered that he did not have his gym shorts on, or something.  Matt Fogarty, in absentia, won the “aspect ratio” category.  Engineers are wont to describe things in terms of their aspect ratio; for an airplane, a wing’s length divided by its width is the aspect ratio.  Juday figures that if you divide sheer overall athletic prowess by the visually apparent muscularity of the legs, Fogarty takes the prize.  He is not quite in the class of Babe Ruth, who was described as “a barrel on stilts”.   But Fogarty is pushing Ruth.  For overall energy and enthusiasm, Ruth Menchaca (shall we say) ran away with the award in this category.   What a competitor!

That is about it.  Faithfully submitted:  Richard Juday, Treasurer