Gwinnett Senior Golden Olympics Meeting Minutes

January 16, 2006

Our President, Al Sandham, called the meeting to order. He announced that he is pleased that our sessions for preparing for the 2006 Olympics are under way and running smoothly.  All schedules are final and the application booklets are being printed.  Thanks to Eileen and Susie for their efforts to revise it, update our pictures and get it to press.  It will be ready for mailing in February.

Eileen gave the treasurers’ report, $7654.22.  Walton EMC has been added to the pledges and their advertising is included in the 2006 brochure.  Eileen and Bob donated $100 to our 2006 Olympics. Thank you for your donation. Don’t forget to ask for gift certificates from the stores you patronize. Al handed out sponsorship envelopes to those who wanted to take them.  Every sponsor and donation is greatly appreciated.

We welcomed a new member to our meeting today.  His name is Walter Mitchell. It is always nice to welcome new seniors to our center.  Welcome Walter!

We now have all our venue managers chosen for each sport.  However, we always need volunteers to help them run smoothly.  So if there is any sport you would like to help us with, please let us know.  That includes opening and closing ceremonies.  Elaine Shiver is in charge of the Opening Ceremonies;  just contact the center for her number.

We still have openings for the Activity Coordinators; the Publicity Chairperson, the Outreach Chairperson and the Sponsorship Chairperson.  If any of these positions interest you, please give us a holler.  Al mentioned the signs Bob said we needed for advertising our sponsors.  Al is going to see if the County office will make them up for us.

We discussed giving out participating ribbons along with the medals.  The State competition gives out ribbons for 4^th thru 6^th places.  We took a vote and agreed not to use ribbons, the ribbons were an added expense and all agreed the medals were enough.

The dates again for our 2006 Olympics are Friday April 21 to Friday May 19.  If a sport is rained out, it will not be cancelled and rescheduled.

Judith Eubanks will organize the door prizes for opening and all items that members get for donations should be coordinated with her.  We have received the first of hopefully many donations to use for door prizes. Chateau Elan has donated a complimentary night and breakfast for two!  Thanks to Dana Dow for his contact.  Publix in Snellville has offered $10 gift cards that can be used for refreshments at our meetings or we can retain them for door prizes.

Diane Knight will be responsible for goodie bags.  You must come to opening ceremony to receive a goodie bag, tee shirt and a gift.  We will not be able to carry them to the sporting events to hand out.

Al mentioned our entertainment.   We told him Emily Sheffield was mentioned, we voted on her performing and asked Al if he would contact her.  He said he would get back to us with her answer.

New Business…….The Atlanta Senior Olympics would like us to assist them with Shuffleboard and other games.  Bob and Al have agreed to do so.  It will be May 23 and May 24.  Anyone that wishes to help with shuffleboard contact Bob. For more information about the Atlanta Senior Olympics read our December meeting minutes.

For our serious senior competitors, if you win a silver or gold medal at state level, you could go on to compete for National medals.

Al mentioned that our 5 year probation period for our Senior Olympics is almost up. He will have to review the 501 c 3 requirements for the next years and submit accounting for approval. He will take action to receive our $13,000 a year budget.

Bob showed everyone a magazine called Geezerjock.  He said it has great information in it for seniors and you can subscribe to it for free.  Just go to geezerjock.com and fill out the name and address form.

Our next Olympics meeting will be February 20^th.  PLEASE NOTE:  THERE WILL BE A SHORT MEETING FOR ALL FIELD VENUE MANAGERS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE OLYMPICS MEETING.  WE MUST COORDINATE THE GAMES SO THAT THEY WILL RUN MORE EFFICIENTLY THAN LAST YEAR.

Our Senior Sports Society met on Wednesday 1/18/06 at the Bethesda Senior Center.  The attendance was good and everyone had a good time. Our next meeting will be February 15^th.  Please come join us.

There was no more business to discuss so the meeting was adjourned and Al shared photos of his fabulous trip to China with us.

                                                            Respectfully Submitted

                                                            Marie Hickman, Secretary