• Senior Club Member Unions elect nine members to represent Executive Committee, five standing committee chairs paired with four administrative officers.
• Chair positions will lead senior club community across five standing committees including Eligibility, Discipline, Competitions, Training & Development and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.
• Created within the Senior Club Terms of Reference, the administrative and committee roles will next move to election of a USA Rugby Board of Directors representative, standing committee nominations and development of Community Service Agreement with the USA Rugby National Office.
  
  
  See document below for more details. 

Due to COVID-19 the 2020 Mid-America GU AGM meeting will be on July 12th from 12pm-3pm via Zoom.   Please remember that each team, that belongs to the union, will need to have one representative at the meeting. 

Zoom Meeting Information:

 For the zoom meeting each team will only be allowed to join the meeting with one representative.  Each team will need to respond to this email with the email address the team representative will use to join the meeting.   A private invite will be sent to that email address only before the AGM.   There will also be basic etiquette rules sent out for the AGM this year to help the meeting proceed in the most efficient manner possible.

Nominations for the Mid-America GU Executive Board:

 All nominations for the executive board positions will need to be submitted in advance this year.   

The positions on the board are as follows:

President- Currently Sean Cox
Vice President- Currently Andy Wenge
Treasurer- Currently Kj Abel 
Secretary- Currently Nichole Reiske
Women's Club Representative- Currently Jody Lawrence
Men's Club Representative- Currently Alex Antal
Women's College Representative- Currently Rachel Pate
Men's College Representative- Currently Doug McCauley
Members at Large Representative- Currently Matt Finney
Congress Representative (changed to Senior Club Rugby Council)- Currently Sean Cox

If you have any nominations for any of these positions please respond to this email with the name and club of the nominee.

Voting:

This year we will be voting via Google Forms.   The same email address submitted for the Zoom invite will also receive the Google Form. Only the email address submitted will be able to complete the form and the form will only be able to be submitted once per email address.   If the voting form needs to be sent to a different email address please submit a second email address and distinguish which is which.  

In summary what is needed from each team before the AGM is:

1.) Email address that will be used for Zoom (due July 1)

2.) Nominations for Executive Board Members (if applicable, due July 1)

3.) Email address that will be used for voting (if different from Zoom email, due July 1)

Lastly, you will find attached the minutes from last year's meeting. These were sent out following last year's meeting but it's been a whole year so please have whomever will attend the meeting review the minutes before the meeting.

As always please let me know if you have any questions.

Nichole Reiske

Secretary

June 11, 2020

To all GU member's,

As we start the summer I wanted to give an update as the the state of the GU and USA Rugby. 

   We continue to be effected by Covid-19. I am sure you have all seen the  World Rugby And USA Rugby “Return to Play Guidelines”.   Please make sure your admin and coaches read through these  and take the World Rugby Covid -19 course. 

https://playerwelfare.worldrugby.org/covid-19-courses?fbclid=IwAR1fgSCof8sXfJSxGbGQ4Fc7nJoXm8EdB_be29kHMOc4qeW1T4vVl4l3Tf4

      Step 1 of the “ Return To Play” is to check your State and Local Health Guidelines to ensure your are within their guidelines.  If you have any questions please contact the Women’s or Men’s GU Directors, Jody Lawrence or Alex Antal.  ( Emails were sent out by each of them at the end of May ) 

       USA Rugby is still in the midst of Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, and all indications are that this will be concluded in July. The new USAR By-laws are in place and procedures are going well with the Councils being formed. The College and Youth Councils are still finalizing their Terms of Reference (TOR’s). The Senior Club Rugby Council is in place and has finalized their TOR's.   

2020 Senior Club Council

Chair-  Kirk Tate ( Texas ) 
Vice Chair - Ken Pape ( Empire ) 
Secretary- Rick Humm ( N. California ) 
Treasurer - Jill Williamson  ( Pacific Northwest ) 

The Council is currently working on guidelines for the Executive Committees. These committees will have a Committee Chair and then will be made of a diverse equity representation of 5-9 members. 

The Committees are:

1) Governance and Operations ( chaired by Vice-Chair according to TOR's - Ken Pape ) 
2) Audit and Risk ( chaired by Treasurer according to TOR's - Jill Williamson ) 
3) Diversity and Inclusion 
4) Competitions
5) Eligibility
6) Discipline
7) Training and Development

If you,  or if you know of someone from Mid-America,  who would be a good nominee for Committee Chair or member of a committee please let me know.  It is the Club Councils plan to have these in place by the end of June but nominations for Chairperson will start this week.  

Please continue to be safe.

Cheers,

Sean Cox
President Mid-America GU