Editor, The Gazette:
Boundary Youth Soccer regrets to announce that our president, Tim Carson, has stepped down effective immediately. Tim stepped up from his role as vice-president to take over when Jeff Olson stepped down. He's one of the original BYSA board members and has poured an immense amount of energy into youth soccer in our region over the years. We are grateful for your efforts Tim, and we wish you the best. You will be missed.
Chantel Lovegrove has agreed to take on the role of interim president at least until our AGM in the fall. Chantel has done an amazing job at coordinating our Kicks for Kids program (four and under) over the past year and has generously agreed to step up to the plate as president.
This raises the main point of this letter. We need your help! We are proud to provide soccer to over 300 kids in the Boundary year in and year out, but it is becoming increasingly challenging to do so as it requires an immense amount of work.
We anticipate that there will be more turnover on the board leading up to the AGM. At a minimum, we are confident there will be vacancies on the board for the roles of treasurer and vice-president and general directors. We've also been short of non-board volunteer positions such as equipment coordinator, volunteer coordinator, and head coach. Beyond that we are in need of general volunteers for duties such as running the equipment table, barbeque, general tournament help, etc.
Given all this, we are uncertain whether we can offer fall soccer this year. We had planned to offer a five-week session on a once a week drop-in basis with no practices and no tournament. This would be offered free of charge to spring players and at a nominal fee to cover insurance for new players.
It would be a fun session to keep those keener players going, and the drop-in format would be much easier to coordinate in terms of the lower registration of players and coaches we get in the fall. But we need the help of the membership to make it happen.
We've identified that we need at least 12 coaches throughout all age groups to be able to go ahead with a fall session. We also need people to sign up to volunteer for either the board, as coaches or general volunteers. Please visit our volunteer registration page online at www.boundaryyouthsoccer.com. If you want to volunteer for something other than coach or board, please select "other" and use the text box to detail how you're willing to help. You may also leave a phone message at 250-443-5045.
We have an amazing association and we want to continue to provide a great experience to all our kids. Please join us to help make that happen.
Thanks for your support.
Ian Mitchell
Communications Director
on behalf of the BYSA Board