Minutes: There was a correction to the Gatlinburg minutes regarding the GNT – the report given in Gatlinburg was not a final report, and the minutes should state that 50% or more of the teams will qualify. Susie Clayman moved that the minutes be approve as corrected, Larry Rich seconded and all approved.

Treasurer’s Report: Judy Nolan handed out a single sheet showing some last minute transactions as well as a report showing budget versus actual expenses and all transactions for the year. Liz Swanson pointed out that the GNT income is net of Liz’s $300. Judy reviewed the account balances, pointed out that we have new CD’s and indicated that everything she has received so far has been paid. Eldon pointed out that as of July 1^st, 2002, MABC funding will be changed: it used to based on table count but now it will be based on membership plus table count. Eldon would like the board to temporarily approve the budget; the Finance Committee should have a special meeting at the Atlanta Regional to revise the adjusted budget and make a recommendation to the Executive Committee. The budget was approved.

Appointment of District 7 Board of Governor position: The 3 positions are currently held by Jack Feagin, Eldon Clayman and Reba Jernigan; Reba does not want to continue in the this position when the current term expires (12-31-02). Eldon summarized the responsibilities of the Governors and said that he had 2 candidates in mind and wanted the board to decide between Jerry Vaughan and Harold Winecoff. Bob Heller asked if the loser of this vote could then be on the MABC Board of Governor nomination.

Tournament Coordinator: While the votes were being tallied, Bob Heller presented the current tournament schedule and stressed that tournament chairs must plan further ahead! Sanctions should be submitted even if all the details are not finalized. Bob also pointed out a change in the schedule: the unit 160 STaC has been changed to the week of Feb. 10 through 16^th. In reviewing the tournament attendance Bob commented that you couldn’t always explain why some tournaments are up while others are down. So far this year 14 tournaments are up and 14 are down; in terms of tables tournaments were up 395 tables and down 372 tables.

Harold Winecoff was announced as the winner of the vote for the District 7 Board of Governor position.

EasyBridge Report: Priscilla Smith passed out a flyer covering factors leading to ACBL’s decision to stop running the EasyBridge program. Priscilla pointed out that an analysis by a mathematician showed that units and districts running EasyBridge programs were growing while those not running EasyBridge programs were not, and there is anecdotal evidence to support the success of the EasyBridge program (for example, the latest Atlanta tournament had good attendance from EasyBridge.), but that due to problems tracking memberships generated from the EasyBridge programs, ACBL felt that the cost of running the EasyBridge programs was not justified by the new members generated. Although ACBL will no longer administer EasyBridge, it will continue and will be run by Marti Ronemus. Marti and Edith are currently experimenting with offering 4 free weeks and allowing presenters to charge students for books. There is still $250 in co-op advertising available from ACBL for EasyBridge programs run in the future. Priscilla indicated that there is still a lot of interest in running EasyBridge programs and she feels that the District should continue to offer accreditations. The accreditations should pay for themselves; there is a maximum exposure of $150 to $200 per regional if not enough people show up for the accreditation. Bruce Reeve was in Memphis when ACBL decided to cancel EasyBridge funding and he stated that he believed in EasyBridge. The Masterpoint Review Committee had sent a survey to club owners and managers asking what ACBL could do better for the clubs, and many responded that they were concerned about the possibility of EasyBridge going away, but there are currently no plans to ask ACBL to reinstate EasyBridge. There may be a push for this at the Washington NABC. At this point George Retek presented a Certificate of Appreciation to Priscilla. Bruce mentioned that Priscilla taught a director training course in Raleigh with 20 people attending. Guillermo Poplawsky is working on a new director training class. We need to do more in our regionals. Mike Kovacich said that we had cut back because attendance was low and we were losing money. The director course at Raleigh was very actively promoted. We want to do director courses, but only if we don’t lose money on them. It was pointed out that Hendersonville just ran a director course taught by Kathy Whidden. Spencer Hurd asked: What exactly are we asking the District to do relative to EasyBridge? Bruce proposed that District 7 guarantee up to $250 per EB accreditation at regionals. Mike suggested that we might not want to do this at every regional, but when Bob Heller pointed out that all the MABC flyers already printed include EB accreditation, Mike withdrew his comment. Len Case seconded Bruce’s motion and all approved.

GNT Report: Liz Swanson stated that Morganton will be the site for the District finals next spring. Morganton will cost more, but more goes back to the players. Over the years 1998 through 2002, we have made a profit of over $10,000. Liz would like to see a "GNT Reserve Fund" created so that when the Nationals are far away we can give the winners additional without having to go through the typical debate. Larry Rich moved that in light of the profits this year, we give the winning teams $2000 each this year. Ray Coleman seconded. In the ensuing discussion, Mike Kovacich stated that the NAOP is a companion program to the GNT, but the NAOP is negative. Mike feels that the 2 programs should bee looked at together in terms of determining profit. Larry’s motion carried. Liz also said that we need to look at the format of the District Finals where we have a KO, Round Robin or Swiss on Saturday, with 4 finalists on Sunday. This year there were 20 B teams, but points were only paid for 4 places. If we did Swiss both days, then the number of places receiving points would depend on the original # of teams; a Swiss qualifier on Saturday would advance 40 to 60% to the Finals on Sunday. Chuck moved and Carol seconded that Liz should develop a format of various possibilities. Motion carried. Liz wants the board to vote on what the District wants for the Championship Flight; Wayne Hollingsworth said that the Oversight Committee should set the policy. The sites for next year’s area level qualifiers will be Raleigh, Columbia, Hendersonville and Alpharetta.

Election: The results of the election of the 10 MABC Governors was announced: The 10 Governors are: George Bloomer, Susie Clayman, Bob Heller, Nancy Hetsko, George Nichols, David Klein, Larry Rich, Chuck Whidden, Bob White and Barbara Winzurk. Len Case is the 1^st Alternate and Emory Whitaker is the 2^nd Alternate.

Oversight and Insert Committee: Joe Sherwood reported that there are no tournament conflicts currently and moved on to discuss the Insert situation. In Raleigh, we voted to allow each district to be in charge of their own advertising. It is up in the air whether the ACBL will change the bulletin and the insert. If ACBL doesn’t change, we will stay the same. We will need a committee meeting during the Atlanta regional if ACBL does decide to change the bulletin. If we have to go with a new format, it will cost us about $15,000 for publishing and we are not sure about production costs. Barbara Doster asked why we couldn’t use Internet advertising; this would not be effective as only about 30% of members are on the Internet. Bruce Reeve interjected that the ACBL CEO Jay Baum may be recognizing our difficulties with this and we have to be ready for whatever happens, so we should support the committee. Bob Heller stated that we want to continue the spirit of advertising as we have done it in the past because we have the most successful tournaments in North America. District 7 is approximately $1500 in the black the way we are handling it now. Bob’s best guess is that it would cost us $36,000 for a 32 page supplement every other month which would be up about $6000 from last year. The calendar for dealing with tournament ads when we switch to every other month would change and would be based on the date of the tournament. Mike Kovacich said that during Raleigh, the MABC changed the allocation giving District 7 approximately $6-7 thousand additional (based on Bob’s estimate), believing that the bulletin change was definite. The Finance Committee has discussed this and will recommend to the MABC tonight that we leave the new allocation in place so that District 7 will be covered. The allocation change is effective 7-1-02 even though the bulletin will not change until 1-1-03. Joe also indicated that the ACBL might be getting out of doing flyers for tournaments.

NAOP Report: Wayne Hollingsworth said we must encourage players to participate. Coordinators are not always running things past Wayne. Sanctions are on-line, but are not always going to Wayne. This year’s District Final will be in Columbia Nov. 16^th and 17^th.

Entitlement: Nancy Hetsko presented a request to the entitlement committee for a total of $100 for 2 teachers who will run an experimental teaching program at the Alpharetta Bridge Club starting in September. The program will be a combination of Mini-Bridge (used in Europe to teach bridge to school children) and the Audrey Grant Club series for Bidding and will be done in a format similar to EasyBridge which gets the students involved in duplicate bridge games as part of the learning process. The first lesson will be offered free, and the subsequent 13 lessons will cost participants $3 for each lesson. The $100 requested would be to compensate the teachers for the first free lesson. There will be both a daytime and evening program offered. Bruce Reeve moved that the Board approve this request, Dick Myers seconded and the motion passed.

Education: Barbara Winzurk reported that the Education Committee met on Friday.

MABC Report: Mike Kovacich primarily talked about scheduling conflicts between the World Championships in Montreal scheduled opposite the Hunt Valley and Atlanta Regionals. George Retek asked Eldon, Barbara Heller, George Bloomer, Mike Kovacich and Pat Seiler to wear baseball caps promoting the World Championships.

District Director’s Report: Bruce asked the Board’s opinion on a couple things that would be discussed at the Washington Nationals. The first was the movement to rescind the announcement of NT opening ranges. The board was approximately 50-50 regarding whether this should be rescinded. The second item concerned Florida’s request for 2 additional regionals per year. Every district in the ACBL is entitled to 4 regionals per year. District 7 has a bonus regional, Gatlinburg, which is a permanent site regional. Districts are entitled to an additional regional at 10,000 members and 15,000 members. Florida currently has 6 regionals plus Marco Island, an offshore regional. Florida’s request for 2 additional regionals will be voted on in Washington. The consensus of the Board is that because most of the Florida regionals are less than 1500 tables, we don’t believe they should get additional regionals. Bruce also reported on the Masterpoint Plan Committee. They are against bracketed knockouts. Five years ago they reduced the # of points going to the top bracket and gave more points to brackets 2-6 and according to Bruce this has about killed morning knock-outs because there are now fewer points in the top bracket. The current proposal will reduce points awarded to brackets 2-6 but the top bracket will always be given credit for having 16 teams regardless of where the natural breaks are. Bruce also talked about an item from the Club Survey asking club managers about the impact of bridge on the Internet. The survey results indicate that club managers are split on the impact on their clubs. Bruce supports additional points for bridge on the Internet.

ACBL President: The ACBL President, George Retek said that he considered District 7 as his adopted home, and that we have a great District Director. He encouraged the Board to ask any questions we were concerned about. Liz Swanson said she felt there was a big problem with Memphis and wanted to know how Memphis could decide to do away with EasyBridge when it was a project that the ACBL Board had voted on. George answered that the ACBL had asked Edith to compile info of the number of new members generated by EasyBridge and based on the information they received it was costing ACBL $232 for each new member generated from EasyBridge programs. It was pointed out that ACBL had similar problems with Audrey Grant regarding tracking her students. Liz stated that the EasyBridge became 49ers, then 199ers, etc. Mike Kovacich said the problem was that complete information was not received-budgets, numbers, etc. In answer to Liz’s original question about Memphis’ right to cancel the program, it was stated that the ACBL board gives management in Memphis the authority to manage.

Old Business: None

New Business: There is a raffle to benefit the BridgeAtSchool program. Tickets are $10 each.

The next District 7 meeting will be Saturday morning, December 28^th in Charleston.

There was a rising motion to adjourn.

Respectfully submitted,