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Fencing North Meeting - February 2020

Fencing North Committee Meeting

3rd February, 2020

 

Meeting Opened: 7:04pm

Present: David Elder, Katie Logan, Amanda Hopkins, James Harwood, Peter Butler, Maja Saran, Rhys Greensill, Ryan Yan, Sunnie Sun.

Apologies: Judit Fliszar.

Confirmation of the Previous Minutes:

November Meeting: David moved that the minutes for November 2019 be accepted as correct. Maja seconded. Motion carried.

December Meeting: David moved that the minutes for December 2019 be accepted as correct. Sunnie seconded. Motion carried.

Treasurer’s Report: The Treasurer’s Report was deferred due to time constraints. Fencing North has not made any significant financial transactions since the previous meeting.

Competitions: There is one regional tournament in the upcoming month: the W Dawn on the 23rd of February.  

Competition Organisation: Maja and Peter reported on the current status of tournament organisation. The main points were:

  • The W Dawn competition details and entry form are already online. This competitions and others this year will be using RegisterNow, an online event registration service. All payment will also be online, with RegisterNow charging a small (3%) fee to each person who enters.
  • For the W Dawn, entries will close on the Wednesday before the competition and there will be a late fee after that. The timetable may be changed closer to the time based on entry numbers.
  • Peter and Maja have created a tournament terms and conditions document or entry agreement, which all competitors must agree to in order to enter competitions. This document is available on the Fencing North website (Useful Files section) and is intended to be a living document, changing to reflect improvements to procedures and expectations of fencers.
  • The committee discussed the current state of the Fencing Time system. Currently our Fencing Time database is very messy, with many fencers entered multiple times. This causes issues between Fencing North competition results and Fencing New Zealand rankings, and is not easy to fix with the current database. To begin enforcing consistency, Maja has asked for all fencers to sign up to RegisterNow using their passport name; this also brings us in line with international standards. Rhys pointed out that a database ID would be the obvious way of ensuring that there was only one version of each fencer. Katie and Maja will investigate possibilities for resolving these issues.
  • Currently there is no one willing to act as head referee or referee coordinator for this year. It is vital that someone put their hand up to help resolve issues with referee motivation and payment this year.
  • The committee discussed the Oceanic Juniors competition, which is coming up quickly for the end of May. David has accepted the role of organiser for this competition, and is planning to put together a subcommittee.
    David has currently secured a preliminary booking at the West Wave Recreation Centre; however, he is still exploring other venues such as the Diocesan School Gym.
    There was also discussion of the need to provide or find skilled referees, with the conclusion that we will likely need to either require that regional fencing teams contribute referees, or increase the entry fee to cover flights.
    David, Peter and Maja will meet to discuss the tournament requirements and talk to the NZ Officiating Commission.
  • For President’s Cup we have a booking at Te Pai Netball Centre, although it may be possible to get a booking at Diocesan if it is suitable.

Club Competitions:
James presented the committee with his plans for the 2020 Auckland University Fencing Epee Invitational. This will be held on Easter Saturday and will be a fun, informal competition with prize money available.
Sunnie and Ryan presented their plans for a Massey University Fencing Sabre competition, likely to be held on Easter Sunday. They plan to give every person who enters the competition a new electric sabre to encourage further participation in regional competitions this year.
Both of these competitions will be advertised on the Fencing North website and Facebook page.

Referee Development Course: The first two sessions of this course were very successful, although it has been on hold for a while due to Anya being away. It should start up again soon as a feeder for our regional competitions.

FeNZ News: David and Amanda reported the news from Fencing New Zealand.

  • Fencing New Zealand has introduced new membership requirements for clubs in order to better capture the number of fencers in the country. This year, instead of asking individuals to sign up for free affiliation tiers, their club will sign them up by providing information to Fencing New Zealand. This is very important for building up the infrastructure of the sport. For more information, email Amanda Hopkins (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).
  • Neil Young has resigned from the position of Health and Safety Officer for FeNZ.
  • The FeNZ AGM is approaching on the 15th of March. There are no positions up for re-election, but Hamish Bulmer has put forward a national mask design for approval.

Other Business:

Setting of Meeting Dates for 2020: David set the meetings for 2020 to the last Monday of the month (at the executive’s discretion).

Fundraising: Rhys and David reported on the current state of Fencing North’s funding applications.

  • Our application to the Trillian Trust was rejected because we could not provide a current Tax Exemption Certificate. David has applied to the IRD for one and we will apply to Trillian again when it is available.
  • Our application to The Trusts Community Foundation is currently being considered and should be answered in the next two weeks.
  • The NZ Community Trust now has a single funding cycle in August/September.
  • Other possible options for funding are the Four Winds trust and reapplying for the Auckland Council Grant.

Promotion: David mentioned that there was a possible chance for fencing to be played on Sky Sport Next, which would be a huge advertisement for the sport.

Meeting Closed: 9:00pm.