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November 2015 Newsletter
Affiliation with Table Tennis South Australia
For the last 10 years Southern Table Tennis (STT) has not been affiliated with Table Tennis South Australia (TTSA) due to a dispute which arose with the state body back in 2004. Times have now changed and recently the executive committee voted to affiliate with TTSA for the 2016 calendar year. The reasons for this include a desire to once again be an active participant in the wider South Australian table tennis community, difficulties in obtaining grants from government organisations for clubs not affiliated with their state bodies, difficulties in keeping up with legislative requirements and the requirements of our coaches and other officials to be registered with TTSA.
The impact of affiliating on our club and players will include the following
- Adoption of TTSA policies such as Code of Conduct, Child protection, Social media, Hot weather and other applicable policies.
- Registration with TTSA of all players who compete as full time players in any of our 2016 competitions. (Excluding players who will be playing in the TTSA winter competition with another club as they must be registered by that club.)
- The cost of registering players will be met by STT and no extra registration fees will be introduced.
- Registered players will be able to compete in TTSA sanctioned tournaments.
- Southern Table Tennis will be looking to run a TTSA sanctioned tournament.
- The ability for Southern Table Tennis to access TTSA and Table Tennis Australia (TTA) resources.
- The ability to enter teams into the TTSA winter competition.
- Insurance coverage for registered players.
- The ability to expand our junior program and hold events with other clubs.
Southern Table Tennis affiliating with Table Tennis South Australia should be a positive move for both organisations and hopefully we will all benefit from the possibilities that affiliation can bring.
Annual General Meeting
The 2015 AGM will be held at 7.30pm Monday the 30th November 2015 in the meeting room at Southern Table Tennis. We invite all regular players at Southern to attend. There are a couple of vacancies on the executive committee which we would love to see filled and all positions are up for nomination. Being on the executive committee involves attending a meeting on the last Monday of each month and the meetings normally go for around 2 hours. If you do not want to join the executive committee but would like to get more involved in any other aspect of the club please approach a member of the executive committee. It would be great to have some new faces helping out to run the club and provide some fresh opinions.
First Aid Station
Thanks to a grant from the Department of Recreation and Sport we now have a first aid station accessible to everybody at the entrance to the corridor. The first aid station includes a defibrillator, asthma kit and epi-pen. We encourage everybody to make themselves familiar with where this first aid station is located.
Theft of Equipment
During October we had a fully stocked first aid cabinet and other equipment stored on the desk in the meeting room waiting to be installed. This property was stolen from the meeting room before it could be installed and from what we have been able to work out this probably occurred on a Monday night. Unfortunately this area can be accessed from both the stadium and from the eastern entrance door of the South Coast Social club so there is no way of knowing who may have been responsible. We ask everybody to be aware that this has occurred and to report any suspicious behavior to the on duty supervisor.
Discussions about having a bye in the competition
One of the more difficult tasks we face each week is trying to organise fill in players for our competitions. On average we have about 12 players missing each week. We also have problems with players leaving the competition with 6 people dropping out in the first 5 weeks of this season. The competition committee has been considering how we can make this task easier for coordinators and the obvious solution is to have a bye and use the players from the bye as fill in players.
The format which we are currently considering is to have 3 seasons per year with 7 teams in each division who play each other twice with a two week final system. This means that each season would go for 16 weeks and would have 2 byes. This concept is only in the discussion phase at the moment while we consider all the ramifications some of which are
· The need to play continuously for the whole year as the 3 seasons will take 48 weeks. There would be a 4 week break over the Christmas period and we will be playing during the other the school holidays.
· 36 weeks of minor round play plus another 6 if you play on the byes compared to the current 35 weeks of minor round play. So there is more table tennis.
· All the seasons being the same with no major season like the current winter season.
· The mid-year tournament will have to be moved to a weekend.
· Will probably still need to find some reserves.
· Players could request at the beginning of a season to schedule their bye on a particular date.
· More players in each division. How will this affect the composition of the competition?
· Less players competing on each night. Can have more players in the competition with the same number of tables.
· The minor round becomes more important as 3 teams miss out on finals instead of 2
· Seasons don’t get interrupted by having a 2 week break for school holidays
As this is only in the discussion phase at the moment please feel free to let any of the competition committee members (Marcel, Alvan and John) know of your opinions.
Marcel STORKEN
President Southern Table Tennis
Last Updated: 12 Nov 2015 02:43 PM