LA Call Minutes- 8.24.16

  
  


LA Call
Wednesday, August 24th  
10:45am Mountain Time
 
  • Stefanie Larson- USAC
    •  I’d like to introduce Justin Evans.  He recently started with us here in the office full time last week.  He is our new Technical Programs Manager and will be working closely with Chuck Hodge. 
  • Justin Evans- USAC
    • I’ve been an official with USAC for 8 years.  I started as a junior and enjoyed racing ever since.  Once I got into the officiating side of things I started to race less.  Since I wasn’t going pro, officiating was a way I could stay active in the cycling community a long time.
    • I am helping to alleviate some of Tom Mahoney’s responsibilities as well as take some things off Chuck’s pate.
  • Stefanie Larson- USAC
    • Chuck is unable to join us today since he is currently in France.  If there are any technical questions please send them to Justin at jevans@usacycling.org. 
    • Next is Kelly Reyes for a Membership update on our future ad campaigns.
  • Kelly Reyes- USAC
    • Many of you have seen our current digital ad campaign.  We’ve been running a campaign since mid-July and it will wrap in about a week and a half.  It has been geared towards our Ride Membership and has been performing very well.  There has been a lot of interest.  This allows us to talk to and reach out to a new audience.  After this ad campaign ends we will pick up another ad campaign in late November. 
    • The next campaign will be a mix of race and ride content.  You will see the ads both digitally and in print (cycling magazines).
  • Stefanie Larson- USAC
    • John Whiteman is here to give us an update on our RaceClean program.
  • John Whiteman – USAC
    • I hope all of you have seen the recent press releases.  Last week we had a positive announced from USADA at one of the National Championships.  This was a USADA funded test.
    • There were also 2 positive announcements that came from our RaceClean program which are USAC funded tests.  The racers names have been announced by USADA.  The announcements will also be published on social media.  We are not trying to vilify anyone.  We are just trying to explain and educate people about the program.
    • Earlier this year I asked all of you to give us some feedback about which events you would like to see testing at.  A lot of the information and events you took time to put together ended up to be very good information for us. 
    • To put timing into perspective, we had a test in March just come through yesterday. The other positive was from a test last June from a masters racer at Tulsa Tough.  Positives aren’t coming out in order.  The legal process, TUE process..etc. are all happening  behind the scenes which dictate the timing of announcements.  We very well could end up with a test in July that comes out before a test done in April.  Athlete cooperation also has a lot to do with how long the process takes.
    • TXBRA was able to assist with testing by contributing some money to help increase the amount of tests in their region.  Because of TXBRA’s help, we were able to double the amount of testing.  One of those events that yielded a positive was in Texas.
    • We want to show you the money is going to good use and that it’s being well spent.
    • We collected a few extra dollars from surcharges than expected this year which will allow us to add a couple more events to be tested for 2016.  Please send me some feedback for any remaining MTB and CX events for the year.  I’m looking for your top events.  Please send me suggestions at jwhiteman@usacycling.org.
  • Stefanie Larson- USAC
    • I would like to bring on Joan Hanscom to discuss how we can improve scheduling within and across LA lines as well as how USAC can help in facilitating those efforts.
  • Joan Hanscom- USAC
    • This could be food for thought or a discussion for today.  We’ve been getting feedback from the smaller LAs regarding scheduling conflicts. We’d like to discuss some strategies to alleviate these scheduling conflicts.  Is there anything we can do to help you with these conflicts?
    • We are not looking to dictate what the LA schedule should be, but hope to facilitate communication between LAs.  What are the things we can do to help manage those conflicts?  What are you doing currently to manage your schedules?   
    • If you have any ideas or thoughts on that subject we are looking for your feedback.  Please feel free to e-mail me (jhanscom@usacycling.org) or Stefanie (slarson@usacycling.org).
  • Harvey Elliot- MBRA
    • I would like to add a request to the wish list for the new website.  It would be great to have the ability to do day of registration for our USAC events.  Right now it’s difficult and would be a great tool to add for the future. 
    • It would be really nice to have an automated system checking licenses.  We usually have laptops at the events at registration and this ability would save us time.
  • Stefanie Larson- USAC
    • Thank you, Harvey.  We definitely have this on our wish list.  We are unsure of what wave this can be launched and we cannot promise a date this will be implemented, but it’s definitely on our radar.  Many other people have the same request.


This Article Updated August 31, 2016 @ 12:01 AM For more information contact: