MACHA ANNUAL MEETING

3) Western Illinois University represented by head coach Sam Martino, here to request probationary status for WIU.

4) Teams were informed that Lindenwood, DePaul and RMC-White were no longer part of MACHA as confirmed per emails sent to Greg Killoran.

5) Greg Killoran said that Clarence Edwards of Wheaton College requests that Wheaton be placed in an inactive status and not part of the current structure of MACHA. Wheaton will continue to schedule with teams on the side as an independent.

6) Greg congratulated SIUE-Gold and DePaul for winning the MACHA championship in their respective division and thanked EIU for doing an outstanding job in hosting the tournament.

7) Greg reviewed the ranking process from the past, a process in which each member team would submit a power ranking of their judgment, ranking all MACHA teams from 1-14. Greg suggested two – seven team divisions due to three teams pulling out of the league.

8) Prior to the power ranking, Western Illinois University was asked to plead their case for inclusion into MACHA. For the 2005-2006 season, WIU had played a great many of the MACHA teams. Those teams reported favorable opinions of the WIU program. WIU was then asked to leave the room as a vote was taken by the member teams to allow WIU into the league. A motion was made by Larry Thatcher of SIUE and seconded by Mike Coleman of Iowa to allow WIU into MACHA. A vote was taken and the result was 14 yea and 0 nea votes.

Discussion then began about the fee structure for WIU. After much talk it was decided unanimously to charge WIU the initial 500 dollars toward their escrow fee, 350 dollars for the 2006-07 MACHA league fees, with the 2005-06 “probationary league fee” being divided into two installments, payable the beginning of the 2006-07 and 2007-08 season, respectively.

9) To ensure teams were playing in the division of their preference a poll of the teams was taking prior to the power ranking. The results were as follows:

10) The member teams were then asked to rank the 10 gold team selections from 1 to 10, with the top eight going to the gold division and the bottom two to the silver division. After the votes were tallied, EIU and Palmer were selected to go to the silver division.

The divisions now looked like this:

Gold Silver

SIUE – Gold SIUE - Silver

Bradley McKendree

Marquette Palmer

RMC – Springfield Northwestern

University of Missouri Western Illinois

Missouri State Illinois State

Iowa Eastern Illinois

Northern Illinois

11) Greg Killoran opened the floor for ideas to establish an executive committee. Bill Misiak spoke about effective communication, how communication must be private, and that all attempts should be made to avoid using email. Bill also suggested identifying the reason(s) that JD Power and Tom Wendlandt resigned. Larry Thatcher spoke saying he thought that email was a very effective source of communication for our league, especially since we only meet one time a year. Mike Coleman suggested that part of the reason of their resignation was due to Iowa’s dissatisfaction with JD and Tom’s lack of response to a situation with a locker room at their home rink being vandalized by another MACHA team and how Mike had questioned their leadership ability on the open forum and through email. Larry Thatcher spoke and said that in his opinion it might be because Larry had suggested expanding the MACHA board of directors and that Larry had requested board minutes and treasurer’s report during the past two MACHA league meeting. The representative from Northwestern added that he thought it had been since the member teams had serious objection to the league meeting date being moved.

Terry Grimm made motion to elect a board of directors consisting of seven non-playing board members and one non-voting player rep. The motion was seconded by Ben Alexander. Motion passed with a vote of 14 yea and 0 nea votes.

The floor was then opened to nominees for the seven non-playing board positions. Those interested in serving were asked to stand. Those people were, Craig Buntenbach, Larry Thatcher, Greg Killoran, Bryan Chamberlain, Bob Hughes, John LaMond, Dr. Robert Martinez, Ben Alexander and Cameron Estes.

These 9 nominees were then asked to leave the room as the teams were to vote on the seven positions with a written ballot. The results of the election are as follows: Craig Buntenbach, Larry Thatcher, Greg Killoran, Bob Hughes, John LaMond, Ben Alexander and Cameron Estes

12) Mike Coleman made a suggestion that the newly elected board establish disciplinary board ASAP. Many suggestions were proposed verbally of what type and number of members the disciplinary board should consist. After much discussion it was decided that Mike will make a formal written proposal.

13) Next point of discussion was that the board needs to institute a policy to require the teams to submit their stats. While nothing was ultimately determined, one suggestion was that MACHA find an official league statistician. Another solution was suggested by Craig Buntenbach that we implement the same system used by the ACHA on their official website. Craig will look into the costs of implementing this service.

14) Larry Thatcher, MACHA treasurer, was asked to establish a yearly league budget after reviewing the current financial status of the league.

15) SIUE offered to host the MACHA tournament for 2006-07, but withdrew their offer after learning that Northwestern would like to host the tournament. Northwestern plans to host the tourney at a new rink in Romeoville, IL. A motion made by Bob Hughes and seconded by Mike Coleman to have Northwestern host tourney on February 23 and 24, 2007. The motion passed with 15 yea and 0 yea votes.

16) Terry Grimm suggested an expanded playoff format because the tournament teams often travel long distances to play just a single game.

17) Bill Cloin of SIUE-Silver made a suggestion that another MACHA forum be started but one monitored by a board member. Craig Buntenbach, MACHA webmaster, said he would take the action to look into Bill’s suggestion.

18) Stan Melton of Missouri States told us that Web Sports Radio (WSR) is interested in doing a web broadcast of the tournament again for 2006-07. EIU said that they incurred no cost to have WSR broadcast the 2005-06 tourney as WSR was compensated with advertising and accommodations.

19) No teams attended the meeting to request probationary status

20) As Bob Hughes of Bradley was not present in the room when the teams were giving their request for divisional placement, Bob spoke up to request that Bradley would actually like to play in the Silver division for 2006-07. It was suggested that Eastern Illinois take Bradley’s place in the Gold division and Bradley go to Silver. A motion was made by the representative from Northwestern and seconded by Bill Cloin. The motion passed with a vote of 15 yea and 0 nea votes.

After this vote the new divisional alignments are as follows:

Gold Silver

SIUE – Gold SIUE - Silver

Eastern Illinois McKendree

Marquette Palmer

RMC – Springfield Northwestern

University of Missouri Western Illinois

Missouri State Illinois State

Iowa Bradley

Northern Illinois

21) During the meeting, the discussion of bylaws was introduced. Larry Thatcher handed out to each team representative a draft template of bylaws that he had used before. Teams are to look over the bylaws and forward their suggested changes and/or additions to the MACHA board of directors for consideration at a later date.

22) Discussion also took place involving two incidents involving vandalism by MACHA teams. The first incident involved damage to a hotel room by players of the DePaul team during the tournament in Danville, IL in February 2005. To this date, no restitution has been made yet to the hotel by the DePaul organization.

The second incident was damage to a locker room at the Palmer Arena in Danville during the tournament. It was unclear of who might have done the damage or exactly when it occurred. The Palmer Arena has prepared an invoice for the damage. It was determined by league membership that the invoice be paid with league funds.

23) Final discussion of meeting was on the topic of the placement of the MACHA patches. A motion was made by Cameron Estes and seconded by Mike Coleman to put them behind the neck, above the nameplate area. Vote was taken – 11 yea and 4 nea votes, motion passed.

24) Teams then divided into two groups, gold and silver, and began league scheduling for the 2006-07 season. It was decided that the teams schedule in order of the tournament champion going first, with the remaining teams following the order of their finish in the regular season standings. If a team was new or had switched divisions they would go last in the rotation.

1) Greg Killoran called meeting to order at 10:02 am

2) ROLL CALL

Present

RMC-Springfield