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CYC Junior Committee Organizational Meeting

April 1, 2009

Report by CYC Director Michael Cenname

Thank you to everyone attending our first CYC Junior Committee Meeting of 2009 last night. I feel that we had a lot of very positive suggestions, arrived at a consensus, and identified some achievable steps. I have put together a general purpose statement that we can continue to refine. I hope that junior activities we promote will support this purpose.

Junior Program Purpose

The purpose of the CYC junior program is to get kids out sailing and racing in current and new club programs. This program is a benefit to current and future club members with children as it will provide activities for entire families. This is a benefit to the club itself by building the youngest segment of our membership pool. Junior activities by their very nature of involving parents and kids will add to the sense of community in the club.

The purpose of the junior program is not to compete with the offerings of other clubs in the area.

Immediate Action Items

• We need more data on the juniors in the club today. Specifically we need to do a census of the club membership and determine how many children exist with our current membership and what the age distribution is.
• Another data point for the census is how many "kid" boats exist in the club today (i.e. Optimists).
• Work with the Team Racing group (Rusty Lhamon) to plan and hold a parent/child (adult/child) dinghy regatta. The idea is to get CYC members to bring their children and go racing with them. We could invite juniors from other clubs (SYC esp.) to bring their parents to race with them as well.

Longer Term Activities

• Add a youth regatta to the local schedule, possibly focused on Optimists. The goal here would be to provide a large Optimist Green Fleet opportunity so members with children could have their kids try it out. I liked Rusty's suggestion of a Washington State Optimist Championship regatta. If we hosted an Opti only event it would go a long way to position us as a leader in the promotion of Opti sailing in the region. If the timing of the event was right we could use the older juniors, especially the Opti graduates, as volunteers helping to run the event. This would provide a great opportunity for that group of kids to give something back and be involved in ways they normally don't have.
• Continue to work to build our junior membership pool from groups who routinely enjoy the benefits of CYC, but are not members (SYC, SSP)

Next Steps

I will be working on a plan to accomplish the short-term objectives. I also have a few more names of members who are potentially interested in helping build junior sailing. I will start to expand the distribution and see if I can generate more volunteers. As noted in my outline of the CYC junior program, I will talk to some of the other area program administrators. This will be an opportunity to begin to float the long-term concepts by some other folks. I will submit a Junior report to the board prior to the next board meeting.

Next Meeting

I will come up with a schedule for future meetings. Last night was great, but obviously Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are not going to work for the next several months. If we have a weekend meeting I would suggest a morning meeting, but I'm not against a Monday evening meeting either. If you have a preference let me know.

Finally, thanks again to Bruce, Rusty and John for attending last night. And thanks to Dan Falk. Even though he couldn't be there the two of us have sunk hours of thought into this project over the years.

Respectfully,
Michael Cenname