EAST LOTHIAN LADIES’ COUNTY GOLF ASSOCIATION
President: Mrs J Buchanan Vice President: Mrs J Watt
Minutes of the Annual General Meeting held on 3rd November 2016
at The North Berwick Golf Club
1PRESENT
There were 54 lady members in attendance
2APOLOGIES
65 apologies had been received.
3WELCOME
The Captain, Barbara Biggart, welcomed everyone to the 2016 AGM of the Association. She thanked the North Berwick Golf Club for allowing us to hold the meeting in their clubhouse.
4MINUTES OF THE PREVIOUS AGM
As the minutes has been circulated to members and posted on the website, they were taken as read. They were adopted as a true record of the meeting – Proposed by Susan Penman and seconded by Clare Bowe.
5MATTERS ARISING
There were no matters arising.
6JUNIOR REPORT
Wendy reported that 10 Juniors have joined in 2016.
“All the girls can be proud of their achievements for 2016 as noted below.
From North Berwick : Catherine Milne and Ruth Kowbel
Catherine was selected to play for the East Lothian team for Cuthbertson Cup.
From Dunbar : Annabel Hosie
Annabel has cut her handicap from 6 to 3 since May this year making her the lowest handicap female at Dunbar G.C. right now.Represented East of Scotland girls in a match against the Spanish National squad at Cragielaw where she beat the reigning Spanish National Girls Champion 3&1. Won the Junior Club Championship at Winterfield and was the first girl ever to contest inDunbar’s Junior Championship final. She lost to the current Lothian Boys’ County Champion (who is 18 and plays off scratch).
From Musselburgh: Sophie Bain and Lauren Lee
SOPHIE.She had the best net score at the Club’s Spring Meeting.
Lauren At Musselburgh Golf Club, she won the Spring Meeting, The Cancer Trophy, The Dales Memorial Trophy for the Lowest qualifying score for the Championship and won the club championship. She also had the lowest scratch score in the LGU Pendant and in the Final Medal.
For East Lothian Juniors she was selected for the Cuthbertson Cup. Played for East of Scotland Girls in the match against the Spanish National squad and won her match. Represented East Lothian in the Jamboree where the team came third this year. Qualified for the Junior Ryder Cup which was a mixed team of boys and girls playing against the Edinburgh Ryder Cup Team. Lauren halved her match on the 18th having been 5 down with 5 to play.
Lauren is 33rd on the Scottish Golf Girls Order of Merits and is T46 in the Women’s order of Merits.
From Gullane : Abby Nisbet, Emma Chapman, Kate & Grace Crawford, Joanne Free
Abby won the summer Meeting at Gullane and is Gullane Ladies Junior Champion
Emma won the opening Junior medal at Gullane and she was second in the Loretto Simmers cup in her age category. Won the handicap competitions in our East Lothian Ladies County Juniors’ Spring Meeting at Kilspindie and the Summer meetings at Royal Musselburgh.
Kate won the Haddington Junior Open and is the most improved junior at Gullane Ladies. Her handicap has come down from 35 to 22 this year.
Kate has been invited to join the SGU Scottish Development Academy and is going with Loretto Golf Team in February to train and compete.
Grace – who is our youngest Junior at 9 years old has had a very busy year. She has played 30 medal rounds and participated in many Junior Opens.
She won the H’cap at Dunbar Junior Open. Won our East Lothian County Juniors’ Scratch prizes at the Spring Meeting at Kilspindie and Summer Meeting at Royal Musselburgh. Won East of Scotland Girls Summer Meeting at Prestonfield and finished 3rd in their orders of Merits. Came 3rd in the US Kids European Golf Championship for her age group. Won the Stephen Gallacher Foundation U18 Girls handicap order of merit and came third in the scratch.She also won the Stephen Gallacher Foundation U10 Championships at Gogarburn, beating all the Boys in her age group. Won UK Prep School U14 Girls Championship. Played for the Gleneagles Foundation Team against St Andrews (home and away) and won both times. Grace was invited to join the SGU Scottish Development Academy at tier 2 and invited to stay in the Gleneagles Foundation for a second year.
Grace is currently T24 in the Scottish Golf Girls Order of Merit.
Joanne Free
This is Joanne’s last season as a junior and her list of achievements are :-
2nd at the Scottish Golf Winter Series Final. Finished Top 20 at the Irish Girls Open Stroke Play championship. 3rd place in the U18 Scottish Girls Championship. Finished Top 10 at the Munross Trophy. A Quarter Finalist at the Scottish Ladies championship. 3rd in the Stephen Gallacher Foundation Vase. 3rd at the Scottish Women’s Champion of Champions. 4th at the Junior Champion of Champions. Joanne has represented Scotland at both the ladies and the Girls home Internationals.
Joanne is the Junior Captain for Gullane Ladies and she was selected to be captain of the Scottish Team in the European Team Championship.Joanne has been accepted for Minnesota University in America on a full scholarship.
The ladies at East Lothian Ladies County Golf Association are so happy and proud to learn that her golf achievements were recognized with her award as EAST LOTHIAN YOUNG SPORTS PERSON OF THE YEAR for 2016.
A message from Margaret MacPherson, the chairman of East of Scotland Girls’ golfing Association, was read out listing Joanne’sachievements and it finished off with
“how delighted they were when Joanne was selected to represent Scotland in The Girls Home Internationals and in the European Team Tournaments.”
She sends Joanne their best wishes for her future golf and hope she continues to play well and enjoy her golf.
Joanne was invited to show us the plaque for her East Lothian Young Sports Person of the year award which she did and gave a gracious speech. She regrets not having the time to play in any of our competitions this year due to all her other tournaments and thanks the committee for our support.”
Joanne Free extended her thanks to all of the Committee for their hard work throughout the year with special thanks going to Wendy our Junior Convenor
7 TREASURER’S REPORT
“Good evening ladies. You should all have received a copy of our accounts, together with supporting notes which I hope were self-explanatory. I have also provided further copies today which have subsequently been signed off.
This has been my first year in office and I have thoroughly enjoyed working with my colleagues on the committee, even though it often demands many extra hours! And 12 months on, having pulled our accounts together, it was satisfying to see we had made a handsome surplus of just over £2000!
This is very good news indeed, however, I was quick to remind myself that we are of course a non profit-making organisation and that this surplus was not planned. So, I will now take you through some of the main points as to why this has happened and what we plan to do going forward.
First and foremost the 100 Club has been our biggest cash generator. However, we did make additional income this year from a number of areas.
- The well-negotiated terms we pay for each of our events which this year netted us £862 which was £112 more than last year
- This is the first year we have never had to pay a separate subscription to SLGA which last year was £250
- We enjoyed a reduced fee of almost £100 from Club 2000, which is the system we employ to manage all our scores and handicaps at the events
- A decision was made to cancel the Saturday night accommodation for the Jamboree as the venue was held locally at Mortonhall. This resulted in a saving of £923 as the Saturday night was the most expensive. Next year however, we will be at Stirling.
- And just a final note on one of our main areas of income which is of course membership fees. For the first time in about 15 years, these were increased last year but we have maintained a stable membership base of approximately 200 ladies, resulting in increased receipts of £918
Each year the dynamics of our income and expenditure can be quite different. For example, the cost of the particular events booked in the year, and equally the number of participants that attend at each event.
So, as explained we have made additional income and we also had a higher expenditure than last year, as detailed in the accounts. The net impact this year, left us a surplus.
So moving on as to how we plan to utilise this surplus, the committee have already earmarked some important areas of required spend this year, including:
- The proposed enhancement to move towards online booking. This may well require a need to update our website platform and domain name which could cost as much as £1000 but please be rest assured that your committee are working hard to minimise this amount
- We will soon require a new laptop
- We do of course want to, and need to, retain some surplus for future expenditure, eg when the team get to the county finals of the next Jamboree! Equally, we are hosting the inter-county Jamboree in 2018
- The committee is also happy to announce that we have agreed to increase the prize money, starting right now, so tonight’s recipients may get a little more than expected! Just one point I would like to add, is that we are introducing a 6 month timescale for the prize vouchers to be presented
So, that is a quick, high-level summary of where we are, and if there are any questions, I will be happy to take them now”.
There were no questions from the floor. The Accounts were proposed for adoption by Carole Ross and seconded by Mary Lou Watkins.
8CAPTAIN’S REPORT
“The second year of my captaincy has been as busy and enjoyable as last year. All the events through the year have been posted on the web site so I will briefly touch on the events of the year. The first match was at Archerfield against Lanarkshire. We were fortunate to have a good ay and a very friendly drawn match. Thank you to Archerfield for giving us courtesy for this match and the Lanarkshire girls enjoyed the course. In January we had a very lovely evening for Clara and her family when Clara was awarded Honorary membership of East Lothian.. It was also very much appreciated that Catriona Mathews took time out of her busy schedule to attend the presentation and there was a lovely photo of Clara and Catriona featured in the Scotsman.
In January Elaine and I attended a meeting for all the Counties and Areas. This was a Forum for Open Discussion about the way forward for Scottish Golf and organization of Counties and areas. Sadly I did not feel Scottish Golf had considered the heritage of the areas and Counties so much of the discussion was fruitless. Many of the County Captains felt the same and we are awaiting the result of the new management Committee’s review. Presently we are continuing as before running the County and have been promised our coaching grant for next year and County Finals but I am not sure about the way forward after that. My impression from speaking to the Management Committee that the systems are working and so the Areas and counties will carry on as before.
I also attended the Lothians Dinner as a guest and had a meeting with the Lothians Captain and Midlothian Captain about how we could work together. This year the Lothians have provided us with referees and we also looked at holding a joint tournament but are awaiting the outcome from the management committee before arranging further meetings.
The match versus Gullane men was as always a very enjoyable day out. I am delighted to say we regained the Percy Vere trophy back from the men. Sadly Percy had gone missing but I am glad to say has been rediscovered by Robert Dick in the past month.
The Borders match was played in March at North Berwick Golf club. The Borders had slighter higher handicapped players so we played a greensome on handicap and were successful in all matches. The Borders team really enjoyed North Berwick in remarkable weather.
The Spring Meeting was at Musselburgh Golf Club. We were fortunate this year with the weather especially for the final when the sun shone. Congratulations to Jane Herd who won the Championship beating Keren Ward in a close match. Janette Laing also had a close match against Anne Blundell winning the handicap event at the 18th.
The Commonwealth Spoons at Gifford was not so lucky with the weather but congratulations to Elinor Blair and Janice Reid ho emerged as the winners. 5 couples went forward to play in the areas Finals but sadly no winners from East Lothian this year.
The Jamboree was held at Mortonhall. I was really proud of our team-Joanne Free, Lauren Lee, Mary Lou Watkins, Keren Ward, Stacey Cameron, Jane Herd , Susan Penman, Lesley Johnston. I felt there was a great team spirit and camaraderie and this was helped by those committee members helping and also to all our faithful trolley pullers. Midlothian were the winners and deserved their trophy playing excellent golf and some superb short game shots. Our team worked so hard and the match play at times produced great golf. Mary Lou had a great win over Alison Rose and Joanne Free had a great game against Hannah Scott both girls playing some superb golf halving on the 18th. We did have fun as well and laughter and that is what is all about.
We had 82 players for the Summer Meeting at Dunbar and well done to Liz Dunn Butler winning the silver scratch. We had a beautiful day for the Autumn Meeting at The Glen and it was lovely to see everyone wearing their Summer clothes.
The Babe Zaharias was a great success. Thank you to Janice McLeod for contacting Gullane Golf Club and to Nicky for arranging courtesy of Gulane golf club. The committee of Liz McLelland Gwen Stewart, Jan Gray, Barbara Gibb, Elaine , Nicky and myself worked well and we managed to host an Open Competition which was full and with a waiting list. Everyone enjoyed the hospitality and course and we were lucky to have generous raffle prizes from Archerfield Spa, Merry Go Round and Blackhouse so in all the day raised £3,400 for Macmillan. We were lucky to have people competing from all over Scotland and England and the standard of golf was very high. We have the competition at Gullane next year and at Luffness in 2018.
The meeting with the East Lothian Lady Captains was well attended and it was a good forum for all the Captains to express their views. For some clubs falling membership has resulted in problems in producing teams for the 5 a sides. We lost Longniddry this year and with falling participants and also with many clubs having only a few low handicap players there was a feeling they could not compete. It was agreed that Elaine and I would meet with Carol McLeod and Carole Ross who presented the trophy for the Division 2 to discuss how we could progress . They agreed that the present format was not working and not inclusive enough. After the 5 a side Captain’s meeting it was agreed they would take this matter up with their committees and report back to Elaine.
All these events and my time in office as your Captain would not have as enjoyable without the support of my hard working committee and the support of the members – a big thank you to you all. Also my sincere thanks to our County team for giving up their time to represent us. Elaine has been a great vice captain and a marvelleous help to me – I am most grateful to you Elaine – thank you.
Also a special thanks to Dorothy who comes off Committee this year – you have been a great help to us all.
The last 4 years have been a real learning curve for me. I have met so many lovely people from the man who opens the club up early and gives me a coffee at Gifford to lady members of our East Lothian Clubs who ask who I am to all the fun that we have at the Jamboree. I was away on holiday last week and read a book about the 8 man rowing team that won gold at London. It was called “Will it make the boat go faster” but you could really relate a lot of their thoughts to life in general. I have a copy for Elaine but hopefully she won’t be pushing the team on their pulling power. I wish good luck to all the committee and thank you once again for asking me to be your Captain – it has been a great honour. Good luck Elaine and thank you”