APRIL 14, 2014 SRC MEETING MINUTES

Go to Meeting (online)

SRC Committee Members Present

Chair Ken George

SRA, SYRA, Paul James

SDI Jim Carpenter

SAC Cliff Clement

SDA Ernie Fisher

NCASA President Bob Kepner

NCYSA President Keith Price

NCASA/NCYSA At-Large Herk DeGraw

NCSRA Operations Manager David Hall (non-voting)

Excused Absence

Rene De La Cruz NCASA At-Large

Demp Bradford NCYSA At-Large

Call to Order

Ken George called the meeting to order.

Determine Quorum

A quorum was determined to be present.

Approval of Minutes-December 19, 2013

Motion to approve minutes, Paul James. Seconded by Jim Carpenter. Motion carried.

Financials

Motion to approve financials by Bob Kepner, seconded by Paul James. Motion carried.

Reports

SYRA/SRA – Paul James

2015 Referee Grades & Requirements
The Area Referee Administrators and NCSRA State Administrators recommend the following referee grade standards be implemented for 2015 in conformance with USSF adopted grade restructuring.
Grade 8 - This grade will remain essentially the same. One accommodation to allow an increase in officials was suggested. That change is to allow a new referee candidate to be certified eligible to officiate but only at the lowest rating level immediately upon completion of the online portion of the entry level course. Upon completion of the corresponding classroom session successfully the new referee candidate would be re-ranked at the level appropriate for their age level. The minimum age would remain 14. If a new referee candidate did not for any reason make the in class session before they came up for recertification they would not be allowed to be eligible for the next year until they had completed the in class and on line portions of the re-cert course.

Recertifying referees with less than 3 years continuous registration experience or less than 5 years total registration would be required to complete both an on line portion and an in class portion of the re-cert course in order to recertify as a grade 8 referee.

Recertifying referees with 3 years or more continuous years of registration experience or 5 years or more non-continuous years total registration would be allowed to complete recertification by completing an on line only course if they so choose.

Grade 7 - The requirements to become a Grade 7 referee would be 3 years registration as a grade 8 referee and 17 or older and completion of the grade 7 on line course. (NCSRA may, in its discretion for good cause shown, waive the time in registration requirement in exceptional cases).

Grade 7A—Advanced -The requirements to become a Grade 7A Advanced referee would be 3 years registration and 17 or older. Attendance at the state clinic and successful completion of the state test passing with 80%. (NCSRA may in its discretion for good cause shown, may waive the time in registration requirement in exceptional cases). Pass a PFT interval and sprint test at the state level requirements. Pass a formal assessment by a referee assessor or above on a sufficiently competitive 40 minute half match or above. To become a 7A you must have a game log showing 75 centers and at least 15 of them must be at U15 or above.

A Referee must declare to NCSRA that he or she wishes to attain or remain at this level prior to June 1 of the year before registration by completing registration for this level. The registration for this level will close on June 2 of the year prior to the registration year.

Grade 6 - The requirements to become a Grade 6 State Referee would be1 year or more registration as a Grade 7A and 18 or older. Attend the state clinic and take the state test passing with 80%. Pass PFT sprint & interval FIFA test as set by state level. Pass 2 formal assessments by 2 different state referee assessors or above on a sufficiently competitive 40 minute half match or above, and at least 1 must be on an adult division (not Pro) match. To become a 6 you must have a game log showing 100 centers at U15 or above and at least 15 of those games must be adult games. Referee must declare to NCSRA that he or she wishes to attain or remain at this level prior to June 1 of the year before registration by completing registration for this level. Registration for this level will close on June 2 of the year prior to the registration year.

NCSRA PFT Test standards
8 seconds for 40 M sprints x 6
Interval 150 M in 40 seconds x20 (10 laps)
50 m in 45 seconds recovery x 20 (10 laps)

Motion to accept/approve need grade requirements by Bob Kepner, seconded by Jim Carpenter. Motion carried.

NCSRA Computers and LED Projectors
Assuming current budget & cash reserves are correctly stated (and at this point NCSRA income is exceeding expenses at approximately $50,000 per year and we presently have on hand approximately $140,000 in cash reserve not including 2014 profit/loss which is on track to be roughly equivalent to 2013’s $50,000 surplus) The NCSRA Admin staff recommends upgrading the computer allowance to ARAs and State Administrators from $500 per to $2000 per administrator. Any computer purchased would remain the property of NCSRA (or if the purchase price was greater than $2000 NCSRA would own $2000 worth of the instrument). If an administrator left their position for whatever reason they could either return the computer to NCSRA or could purchase the NCSRA share minus the cost of depreciation. This step is recommended due to the increasing use of high end video and cloud interaction and on line databases, as well as the use of streaming video in teaching and presentations.

Motion to approve need by Bob Kepner, seconded by Ernie Fisher. Motion carried.

Team Xtreme Video Service
This is a cloud based video library service which allows for unlimited game film and game clip uploading and also allows for easy user editing and distribution. The annual unlimited usage fee is $1500. It would be used by our instructional staff to create video presentations and course segments using video from MLS, NASL, collegiate matches, DA games, and any other game films we choose to upload, including video created by NCSRA, NCYSA, and NCASA. We recommend purchasing this for 1 year and evaluating our ability to effectively utilize it. We also can make contract arrangements with a videography service to have matches at various tournaments where we have sent referee training crews with assessors to create film of NCSRA referees in action for use in assessment and instruction.

Arbiter Sports Computer Services
The NCSRA Administrative staff recommends for the 2015 registration year that we utilize Arbiter Sports to provide all cloud based services for assigning, instruction and registration. Arbiter Sports now has its own internal on line course creation ability as well as the ability to integrate and automatically monitor referee registration and course completion to determine eligibility. They will shortly be releasing a new feature enabling the scheduling and tracking of in class course attendance as well. As soon as the technical specifications are released by USSF for its new database Arbiter Sports will also have the ability to upload registrations directly to the USSF database. In addition the company now offers an integrated background check which is an integral part of the referee eligibility module and will prevent any referee from being eligible for assignment until the background check has been run and the referee cleared. The check is also virtually immediate, taking usually only several minutes to return the results. By using this integrated service we will close the rather gaping coverage hole that currently exists and which potentially could allow a sexual predator to be working for several months before it might be discovered. The anticipated cost of these services would be as follows:
For 3000 referees:
$4.00 per referee for assigning services
$1.50 per referee for registration services
$2.00 per referee for on line course creation and enrollment
$1.00 per referee for testing services
$1.00 per referee for in class event scheduling*
$5.00 per referee for background check**

*for contracting for all of these services Arbiter Sports would give us one or two of these services for free (assume one for budget purposes).

**the $5 charge is only for those officials for whom a background check is actually run. Background checks are presently run every 2 years and only on referees 18 and older. For this past year we ran approximately 650 background checks and for budget purposes I would use the number 700 resulting in a total background check charge of $3500. NCSRA paid NCYSA $4900 for the same service.

Taking into account the asterisk information the per referee cost for all the Arbiter Sports services will be $8.50 times 3000 referees results in a total expected cost of $25,000 + $3500 for background checks resulting in a total of approximately $29,000 annual cost (not including assignor licenses).

In comparison this year past we paid Arbiter Sports $5.50 per referee for 4000 referees (which was simply the contract number we picked) resulting in a fee of $22,000. We then paid Game Officials approximately $10,445 for on line course use and registration uploading and we paid NCYSA roughly $4550 for background checks. This resulted in a total comparative expense of $36,995. (In fairness a similar cost comparison should now be based on a contract number of 300 rather than 4000 and if that number is used we would have paid $16,500 to Arbiter but the other expenses would be the same resulting in a total of $31,495.00)

The primary advantage to having Arbiter Sports provide all of the services is to decrease the confusion amongst our officials and to eliminate the need to manually cross-correlate the data in three separate databases. Using Arbiter Sports will mean the officials only have to go to one place for all of their information, courses, registration, and other requirements and if they are high school or college officials this is the same place that they go for those groups as well.

Ken George / Keith Price to look into this opportunity.

Restocking NCSRA flipping coin supply
To replace our current supply of NCSRA logo flipping coins we have obtained a quote from Wilson Trophy Company to provide a larger coin (1.5 inch diameter) with color on both sides for the price of either $1.03 per coin for $1000 or $.89 per coin for 3000. We recommend purchasing in bulk at the cheaper rate. By comparison for our last coin order of 1000 coins we paid roughly $2.25 per coin.

Motion to approve by Bob Kepner, seconded by Paul James.

PFT Electronic Timing Gates
USSF has changed the required Physical Fitness Test to an interval and sprint test. This is the same test as has been administered for the last several years at the USSF RTS seminars to test the professional division referees. Use of the electronic timing gates are required by PRO and USSF National in order to conduct any tests whose results they will accept. The states are now being required to conduct this same test for all state referees and state referee candidates. The NCSRA Administrative staff feel that purchase of two sets of these gates would be beneficial to our state in being able to effectively test our referees and train our staff in the use of this equipment as this requirement appears to be here to stay. The cost of these gate sets is approximately $1500 per set. We would also need to purchase protective shipping containers to allow them to be shipped around the state safely as needed.

Dave & Alex will get actual details of the costs and needed equipment and the SRC will evaluate and vote by email.

Increasing Funding of Regional Delegation as needed
Due to the much longer stay now being required of those officials who are selected to represent NC at the USYS Regionals we recommend that the SRA be authorized to increase funding of the delegation by a reasonable amount in his discretion based on the perceived needs of the delegation and the arrangements we are able to make for the delegation. An exact dollar figure is difficult to determine at this time but should be able to at least roughly be determined prior to the event. We will tentatively approve up to an additional per diem of $25/referee up to $4500.

Motion to approve by Paul James, seconded by Keith Price. Motion carried.

NCSRA Support of National Referees and National Candidates
Paul recommend continuing the program of providing reimbursement the incurred expenses associated with attempting to certify or recertify as a National Referee under the same arrangements as last year which is that in order to qualify for reimbursement each applicant must have worked at least 4 qualifying events for NCSRA and then have submitted receipts for their expenses. Successful candidates will be reimbursed up to the total amount of their expenditures on a pro rata basis from a total allocated pool of funds of $10,000. (For example if 12 people are successful and each of them has $1000 worth of expenses they would each be reimbursed in the amount of $833. If only 2 were successful then they would each receive $1000 and NCSRA would have $8000 to be returned to the general fund.

For the 2014 year two candidates met the prescribed conditions and we recommend they receive full reimbursement of all documented expenses. Those two candidates were Chris Spivey and Abbes Mansour-Haffifi. Their reimbursement amounts are somewhere in the range of $2500 each.