At our AGM last night we voted in our executive for 2015. Their main focus for 2015 will be improving the quality of our competitions, with a particular focus on the number of entries.
President: John Garelja
Vice-President: Eric Buisman
Treasurer: Linda Boyd
Secretary: Oliver Agnew
We'd like to thank the outgoing executives Johann Ryu (Treasurer) and Heather Claydon (Vice-President) for their work this year.
We also changed our affiliation fee structure to better communicate the value you get from affiliating. We have created two tiers, students and non-students. Fencing North have set the affiliation fee for students to $0. Non students will pay the same fees as they did through 2014 ($30 for associate membership, $40 for full membership). Reminder that this is separate to the levy charge by Fencing New Zealand.
With this system students will be paying $50 for a full membership to Fencing North ($0) and Fencing New Zealand ($50). This is the same price they paid this year for an associate membership to Fencing North and Fencing New Zealand, and assuming that Fencing New Zealand's fee does not change for 2015. However we will be pushing them to introduce a student rate too!.
In 2014 with the associate membership, students were only able to enter regional secondary school circuit events, but in 2015 for the same fee they can enter absolutely any event nationally or internationally! This will attract many fencers who previously didn't want to affiliate to only fence at one set of competitions. Through this strategy we will see more fencers at competitions, particularly our regional age group championship events which have been lacklustre through 2014. Additionally, more competitors means more ranking points earned by our fencers, which will give our fencers better national rankings and a better seeding when they compete at national events.
Additionally we'd like to announce that we've made some large cosmetic changes to our website. The site is now much cleaner with a flat design. It is also fully optimised for mobile devices! Go and check it out.
Currently the majority of the content on the site is catered towards existing fencers (results/event info/calendars). Moving into 2015 we will be loading the site with all sorts of great new content to cater towards other groups like non-fencers/potential fencers/friends or relatives of fencers. We also want to use the site as a platform to communicate the opportunities you get through fencing across different age groups (such as travelling/representing NZ or your city/attending events like World Championships or Commonwealth Championships). We will highlight lots of these with anecdotes from current fencers.
Also this weekend three of our fencers are off to Australia to represent New Zealand at Australian National Fencing Champs. We'd like to wish Stephanie Wyllie (North Harbour Fencing Club), Oliver Agnew (New Zealand Academy of Fencing) and Michael Claydon (Auckland Swords Club) the best of luck!
Finally, our AGM minutes are available on our site here:http://www.fencingnorth.com/useful-files/meeting-minutes/item/250-fencing-north-agm-minutes-2014
Have a great holiday season! See you all in 2015.
