NCVA (Northern Calif) Region issues Update

[chancelucky]

This is just an update on the Parent Group's most recent correspondence with the NCVA Board. The bylaws require that board members nominate any new board members and that the board have 30 days notice of new nominations, so the group is just trying to find a way to get some parents who have been actively interested in having governance that is democratic and accountable nominated.

chancelucky.blogspot.com/2006/08/letter-to-ncva-re-board-nominations.html

[Go Iowa]

25% board members should be parents? That's not a board I would want to sit on!

[chancelucky]

Some context.
1) Juniors are some 80% of the players in our region.
2) parents are currently supplying more than 80% of the region's revenues
3) for several years the board has not shared minutes, agendas, or even the time and place of its meetings. It has never volunteered budget information.


Is this the way it works where you are? We're very open to suggestions and learning about how other regions make it work, Several other regions appear to post bylaws, minutes, have direct contact information for board members, and have open board elections. They also have public meetings.

[Go Iowa]

Juniors are 80% of my region as well... and 95% of the problems.

Our bylaws are available for all to see, and meetings are open for all to attend, but they generally aren't publicized like they probably should be. Our region is run like a business, just like the various club programs, and while parents are paying to be part of the business and we appreciate their feedback on our products and services, the only way to become a board member is to become a Region member (and then you can run for a spot, but you have to be elected). So, we do have some parents involved with the board if they are a director, coach or official, but that certainly is no where near 25% of our board.

The biggest problem I have with such a hefty number is that the overwhelming majority of parents who I have run into (and hopefully it's way different in your area) live vicariously through their children. Instead of signing them up and supporting them where ever their cards fall, they think they know how to coach and develop a team, how to run the business, how to market their kids properly to colleges... the whole nine yards. Yes, they are paying the bill. But they're also paying the bill for a lot of other things where they don't get to sit on the board.

All that said, I could see having 1 board spot reserved for a parent (assuming he/she was a registered member of the organization as a chaperone or whatever). I think there could be good insight provided by the parent to the board, and they would then have a voice on the board.

[BearClause]

Well - since you're here, maybe I can ask a question.

There's a mention in the 2006 Cal VB outlook that Kat Reilly is injured. I imagined she'd be the most likely to play the 2nd middle after Ellen Orchard. So do you suppose that Mindi Wiley is ready to contribute immediately at starting middle? Cal has other options at middle, including Natalie Smart, Morgan Beck, or Hana Cutura. Of course some of the walk-on DSs could hit in a pinch, including Carly Bouza and Kristen Kathan (oh how would I love to see that).

So how that for hijacking a thread? I've been learning from the Hawaii fans.

[chancelucky]

Go Iowa,
thanks for your response. We'd like to see an open election system for board here. Currently, the board self selects and the nomination process is not open to the public. One reason for the suggestion of 25% parent membership was to ensure that at least 2 members of the current 5 member board (the bylaws allow for 15) came from outside the closed circle of the current board. who technically are the only "members" with rights within the region. It was our sense that 1 lone member from outside wouldn't be effective.


I've looked at the business-customer analogy.
1) if a regular business operated the way some regions have, that business would likely be bankrupt.

2) in large publicly held corporations, shareholders have clear rights to information etc. Shareholders who have more than 51% of the stock have even more rights than that as in they can often depose management, etc. Even non-shareholders have surprising informational rights for publicly held companies.

3) if the analogy is a public utility. Utlities have extensive public oversight and are subject to clear, numerous, specific regulations in the way they set rates, provide service, etc.

I've actually been pretty impressed with the parents who have pursued this actively. No one's mentioned anything about playing time, how teams should be coached, college recruiting.
They have had some concerns about safety, hygiene, etc. at facilities, and I suppose not having a working woman's bathroom at a tournament might be considered telling someone how to run their "business" (so to speak), so we're probably guilty of that. Also asking for an accounting for a 2 million dollar a year organization may seem a bit nosy, but when so many things get said about where money goes or may go we just want to be in a region where everyone knows everything is above board.

[chancelucky]

bear clause,
Mindy is one of these players who potentially could do most anything on the court. She's willing to work is certainly nice enough (at least at the level of saying Hi, etc. which is as well as parents get to know kids not on their own daughter's team).

I'd say that college is a big adjustment for any kid both on and off the court. That part is impossible to predict.

[Go Iowa]

Chance,

Just to spur the debate...

I guess my point is that this is NOT a public company, and you are making a choice to participate in that Region, just as you have a choice to participate for XYZ club. When you decide to pay and participate, you're not only paying for their services, you're paying for their rules and regulations. I say this because I hear, as a club director, WAY too many times... "We aren't going to do XYZ because we're PAYING for this."

This is NOT to say that I disagree with making things publically known, such as bylaws, meetings, etc. I really know nothing about the N. Cal Region, but I've had to do a lot of research on other regions as we've been doing due diligence on our own. You'd certainly be a pioneer in making reserved spots for parents. I've found that some of the regions have open votes for paid members (and the cards lie where the cards lie... meaning you could have a board of all officials if that's what gets voted in). In our Region, which I've found to be pretty typical of most our size, you have Player Reps for Juniors and Adults, Officials Reps and then the executive committee (which typically are people not affiliated with a club). Again, we do have an open vote, but not all members get a vote (we do it per team, per age group). In the Ohio Valley Region every paid member gets a vote, and they might even have a proxy and mail-in system in place.

Why is it that N. Cal separated from SVCA? I remember that there was drama, but can't remember what it was.

Anyway, I think I just might set up a Parent Board for my organization. Of course I'll pick the parents I want on the board, and other parents can go through them to me, but you've opened my mind to potentially playing nice with the parents, at least for today.

[chancelucky]

Actually, to spur the debate, one of the concerns is that there are no choices assuming one wants to play competitive indoor club volleyball in Northern California. It's a bit like saying you have a choice of operating system with home computers because anyone can get into the operating system business. In theory it's true, but in practice it's somewhat divorced from reality to claim that. As I mentioned, regional sports organizations are much more similar to a utility than a private business in that sense. Most people recognize that there is some good in having a single provider but the tradeoff is generally some form of public regulation and a voice for customers.

It sounds like you know the answer to this? Could clubs split off and form their own region with USAV blessing and get bids to JOs? I personally don't know why regions are regions or the process for getting a USAV franchise. In fact, I didn't even know that SCVA and NCVA were one region at one time. I know that NCVA was incorporated in 1982, so I assume that means it was before 1982. What's the mechanism to say, heck we want to operate there too give us sanction and bids too?

NCVA has a 5 member board currently without representation of any group per se. I would say that because juniors ( though I believe they too should participate on the board in some form) make up such a big portion of any region, it's helpful to have parents there to represent their interests. This started partly because parents recognized there were some holes in the system where coaches and the region weren't necessarily prioritizing the kids.( a safety situation and various tryout rules)

As I was looking into this, it looks like USAV didn't adopt mandatory background checks until 2003-2004. Is that right or was there some other system in place? It seems strange since the sexual abuse issues started coming up in 1995. It's also odd to me that the due process provisions were so late in coming. I understand what happened in the Chicago case, but why did it happen again in Utah? Does that mean I"m telling people how to run their business if I ask the question? And is youranswer to tell me if I have a problem with it, just go form my own national volleyball and regional volleyball system instead of finding ways to work with the ones that exist?

[Go Iowa]

Actually, starting your own region within USAV would be difficult. However, you can petition to be in another region, and you can leave altogether and either start your own organization, or go to another existing organization (ie AAU).

NCVA is only a 5 member board? Really?? How many members does it have? That seems sooooo small. Most Regions I've found have 5 person Executive Board, and then the Rep board underneath it. Hmmmm... I wonder why that is.

Anyway, per your examples above, I'm not sure what you're referring to regarding tryouts. I understand the facility issues, but I think USAV covers that. We've had a couple of facility issues here and I THINK that USAV rules took care of it... I don't think it was our own Regional rules. As far as the background checks, yes, they started a couple of years ago. That came down from headquarters, though, not the regions. If you dive into the bylaws of the Regions, you'll find that a lot of them, if not most of them, are the same bylaws as USAV.

Why do we have Regions? Sometimes I'm not sure either. But other times I feel it's because our sport and membership have grown so dramatically that if we didn't have governing bodies in place, we'd be in a heap of a mess. It's much like have the Federal Govt vs the State Govt.

[woody]

Go Iowa, the thing is the NCVA is a monopoly and there are no other legitimate choices for indoor volleyball. Sure the kids could play AAU but that really isn't a viable alternative when USAV dominates the post season and the other regions hold premier events.

You mentioned you had coaches and club directors on your board? NCVA has never allowed them to participate. You intimated you had some kind of a sub-board? Now that's an idea to have a parents advisory commitee, perhaps a competition committee, etc. each with an elected board member from their committee. But that assumes regional admin wants any input or participation to begin with.

The NCVA is the fourth largest region in the US and comprises large urban areas with crowded traffic and long drive times so it is very hard for 95% or so of the folks to make it to a board meeting in San Francisco, especially if you live in Sacramento, Redding, Reno, Fresno, much less the east bay or San Jose, Salinas, Santa Cruz, Marin, etc. It would be nice if the board posted minutes so we could all see what is going on or have some offsite board meetings or even solicited input from parents, players, coaches, directors, etc.

The problems with the region are many and diverse. Sometimes the policies don't make sense, most often they are not followed or inconsistantly applied, and there is NO method of redress of grievences. This is what you get with a monopoly... no accountability, no choice, no pressure or incentive to improve.

I am mystified as to why any service organization, much less a non-profit that involves children in large numbers, would ever choose to be so secretive and defensive. If you truly have the best interests of the kids in mind then why not be open and honest? What happened to the concept of continuous improvement?

We have a region where at any given tournament known convicted sex offenders have been granted special rules by the NCVA to attend to their teams and have unlimited access to hundreds of young girls. We have courts that are the wrong size and have been that way for years. We show up to facilities that are over 120 degrees, or have glass walls forcing the kids to stare into a rising sun, or have no bathrooms and are in isolated areas. At one tournament this past year we packed nine girls in a van and drove them to a coach's relative's house to use the bathroom at each break in the tournament. We had old warehouse facilities that were dark and allowed rain to fall on and pool beside the courts.

Isolated problems? No, not hardly. Known ahead of time? Certainly. Easily rectified by a caring regional administration? Good luck.

[Go Iowa]

Gotcha. Didn't know it was run like a monopoly.

That said, and this is not the response you will get from me directly, but one you will hear from many in this region... if you're not happy with the tournament facilities, don't attend the tournaments. $$ talks and when those establishments don't have the revenue, they can't hold their events.

I'd suggest looking into the USAV rules and regulations on facilities... I know there are a couple of places in our region where our board shut them down due to facility restrictions. The rules here are very clear, and I doubt that we made them up. I'm quite sure that it came from USAV somewhere. If what you say is true and there are rules being broken, you go straight to the national office and bypass your region.

Good luck!

[FUBAR]

goiowa said:

Gotcha. Didn't know it was run like a monopoly.

That said, and this is not the response you will get from me directly, but one you will hear from many in this region... if you're not happy with the tournament facilities, don't attend the tournaments. $$ talks and when those establishments don't have the revenue, they can't hold their events.

I'd suggest looking into the USAV rules and regulations on facilities... I know there are a couple of places in our region where our board shut them down due to facility restrictions. The rules here are very clear, and I doubt that we made them up. I'm quite sure that it came from USAV somewhere. If what you say is true and there are rules being broken, you go straight to the national office and bypass your region.

Good luck!

If you check the blog linked in the first post in this subject the entire history of this parents movement is there. It is long, maybe tedious reading, but if you're interested in understanding all that is going on it's worth reading. Click on the NCVA tag on the right of the screen amongst the del.icio.us tags. There is more on the PrepVolleyball board also if you search.

As far as boycotting events... It's not like living in Chicago where if you don't like the GLPL you can go play the events in the Wisconsin or Indiana regions. NorCal is a little more isolated than that. We want to play volleyball and there is an abundance of high level volleyball right here - we don't want to have to drive 8 hours to play in Southern Cal or Oregon. If you boycott the NCVA tournaments that's all you are left with...

The NCVA has been ignoring the USAV for years with no penalties. The NCVA is at best an overworked organization, at worst an incompetent/crooked organization. The parents in this group are working in a very professional way and they will get results if they continue this path. It is the right path. Hopefully in the end the parent group finds out that the NCVA is just overworked and can find ways to get them help.

[woody]

Everyone's getting the picture now. The real problem is there is no quality control, or any control for that matter by USAV. The director of regions is impotent and again, there are no means of redress of grievances, even at the national level.

I remember once registering several of my teams at a boys JOs a couple years back. Since I had had experience with the NCVA hierarchy I had come prepared. The registrar reviewed my documents and was duly impressed but said I had not paid my entry fee. No NCVA official was required to be in attendance but we were able to finally get the Her Holiness on the phone.

Being somewhat of a jokester I held the canceled check up in front of the registrar while she was speaking with the commish on my speaker phone. Her Magistrate proceeded to tell the registrar that I couldn't be trusted and she had never gotten my check.

By this time all the registration people and all the people in line were paying attention and just howling. So I held the check up for all to see. So the registrar says to her loveliness, "would that be check number ###, drawn on ##### bank, dated #####, in the amount of $$$$$ that you didn't cash?" And you've got to know the commish and anyone who does knows this is true... when she replied "it is!" "Thank you, we'll handle it from here" and the crowd went nuts.

There are many more like the time I threatened to hire a process server to deliver my registration papers as the regional commish had accused me of sending an empty package register received. I had told her "I've got the receipt right here, you signed for it on ##### day at #### time." And she replied, "that doesn't prove anything was in it." Gotta love it. They found it! Surprise.

Everyone has a sad NCVA story to tell but after a year or two they can be really funny. Get a bunch of NorCal parents together and they can keep it going all day.

[BearClause]

Wasn't there some entry fee debacle with one of the City Beach teams?