Today April 5th. Sunday was to be the final meeting of our fiscal year and the election of our new officers/social. So it’s my duty and honor to pass the gavel to our newly elected President Bill Pomeranz and his board on this special day. Even though we are not allowed to gather in person, I do want to recognize this in writing.
I would like to thank my 2019-2020 club board. Going into my year as President, my goals were:
1. Maintain an active vibrant Club and grow the membership by 35 members. Thanks to my membership chair Ginny Spencer, I believe we came very close to achieving that goal.
2. Achieve a successful community vote on the Pickleball new courts project. This goal has been delayed do the Coronavirus but we are confident still that once we are able to vote, it will be passed. Our past president Garry Grey continuers to be the pulse of this project goal.
3. Continue to raise funds via EVF to build the courts. Again Garry Grey who is also a member of the EVF board has been very inspirational in obtaining EVF matching funds to our club fundraising.
4. Have the 2nd annual Pickle Up July 16th-Aug. 1, 2019. Thank you Joe Spada for chairing that very successful project. We obtained a lot of new members as a result of this program.
5. Continue to support our Pickleball Web Site. Thanks to David Cook assisted by Anahid Greg, our website has expanded into a very newsie wonderful website where you can enjoy article content, pictures and also sign up for up coming events.
6. Continue to have club fundraising projects. Thanks to Anahid Gregg and Sheryl Ruth, working alongside EVF, raised over $5,000 on a very Fun Pickleball Prohibition Speakeasy and Casino night. Everyone had a Blast at this very successful party/fundraiser.
7. Have Pickleball Club articles in every edition of the Villager. This would have been an almost impossible goal to achieve but thanks to Linda Eige, we had articles in at least 75% of the Villagers newspaper. She did a phenomenal job with great pictures and articles through out the year.
8. Hold three fun and successful tournaments. Sheryl Ruth our tournament chair would have reached this goal if we could have had our final tournament yesterday which had to be canceled due to our Sheltering in place. She created some fun new takes on tournaments and we all were winners because of her hard work.
9. The Casino night took the place of our goal for a 2nd annual Holiday Club members party and I want to thank Robyn and Sheryl our social Co-Chairs for making this a very successfully social year for our members.
10. Maintain our borrowed tennis courts 5 & 6. Frank Houghton was our maintenance guy with the special yellow tape making sure the courts looked sharp. It’s a lot of work and you did a great job Frank.
I also want to thank my Vice President Bill Pomeranz who was always there to run a meeting in my absence. He also took the newbies from the Pickle Up program and got them playing every Sunday morning. He will be a great President moving forward. Thanks to my secretary Kathi Ashby and her assistant Anahid Gregg for always making sure we had the proper minutes from each meeting. Betty Olsen my treasure who always paid our bills on time and collected and kept track of our dues and accounting. Thank you Betty. David Cook who not only is our web guy but also gave reports from the Pickleball Ad Hoc committee at our board meetings. Mike Walias is the best Pickleball teacher in our club and he did another great job teaching our new prospective members on Wednesdays and Fridays at 1:00 P.M. Thank you Garry Grey for being my advisor and sounding block when I needed it through out the year.
Finally, I would like to thank a person that I would have given the MVP award for the year! Anahid Gregg (Ms Pickleball) does literally everything for our club. She always has the clubs best interest in mind and isn’t afraid to take charge when she sees something needs to be done to better our club. You are the most energetic and talented volunteer I have ever worked with and you make us a better club!
I now Pass the gavel to our new President Bill Pomeranz and his board!
The Villages Cotton Club(house) was packed on Halloween night with 1920’s glamour. Flappers, stars and gangsters danced the night away. Bankrolls were cashed in for chips at “Pickle’s Place” and there were rumors of bootleg cocktails.