By-Laws, USATF, Web Site, Winter Banquet

Winter Banquet and By-Laws Update

By now you’ve seen Caitlin and Kelly’s invitation form to the Winter Banquet. This will be held on Saturday night, March 5th, from 5PM-8PM at the Village Tavern in Salem. If you plan on attending, please submit the form so that we can get an accurate count for the food. As mentioned previously, the club will provide light appetizers combined with a cash bar.

We will certainly have a fun evening at the Winter Banquet, but there is one business matter that we want to attend to, which is updating the club’s By-Laws. The club has a set of by-laws which form the basis of our governing model. The 2022 board of directors has been reviewing these by-laws and we see the need to make some updates to them. The by-laws themselves describe how they can be amended: by a 2/3rds vote of the board at a special meeting, with 14 days notice to all club members. The special meeting will be at the Winter Banquet, and this email update serves as notice to club members. The changes are mostly minor but there are a few I want to call your attention to:

Requiring the board to establish an annual budget.
Allowing the Treasurer to make payments against expected budget items without the need for a board vote.
Shifting some regulatory responsibilities from the Treasurer to the Secretary.

We believe these changes are in the best interest of our club. Attached to this email are a copy of the by-laws which have been marked-up with changes highlighted. Please let me or any other board member know if you have questions or want to discuss these changes.

First USATF Race!
Today, Wicked attended the first USATF race of the 2022 season, the Super Sunday 4 Miler in Bedford NH. Under the leadership of USATF Captain Chris Nolin, we presented scoring teams in 5 divisions! Thanks to Erich O’Neil, Mick O’Conner, Bradley Gates, Matt Adams, Amy Chruniak, Nicki Rice, Rick Kee, Ashley Springett, Deneen Habarta, Christine Cronin, Rich Tabbut, Mark Everett, Suzi Clements, and Deb Everett who formed a Sea of Red at this fun event. Erich came in first for the club with a 24:29, and Amy was the first female at 29:31. Nicki set a PR with 30:06! A great time was had by all, check out the pictures on our Facebook and Instagram pages. Here’s a group shot:

Want to participate in the next race? Read on.

March Grand Prix Races!
Anyone looking forward to warmer weather? Did everyone enjoy the 50-degree weather we had this last week? I’ll bet you all are. Turns out, we have two Grand Prix Races for you to consider in March that I guarantee will have great weather:

Wicked Grand Prix Race: Sunday March 6: Claddagh Pub 4 Miler
USATF Grand Prix Race: Sunday March 20: New Bedford Half Marathon

Set one or both of these on your calendar! It’s a great way to set some goals for March and be with your fellow club members!
Wicked Web SiteOne of our goals for this year has been to update our web site. The current web site, www.wickedrunningclub.com, has gotten a bit out-of-date. We looked at updating it in-place but due to technology changes, we decided to start from scratch and have a new site stood up. The web site is under a second domain that the club owns: www.wickedrunningclub.org. This new site doesn’t have all the nice pictures from previous years, but it does have up-to-date information on what the club is all about. It also has a new online membership system (not enabled yet) which will auto-renew memberships annually as opposed to our current scheme which requires emails reminders etc. We will have a transition from the old site to the new, including, at one point, pointing the .com domain to the new site. For now though, you can start referring to the new site for the most up-to-date information on club business. Some particularly useful items on the site are:

A club calendar of events.
Club news (these emails, but in blog form).
Running information (USATF, WGP, etc).
Club organization.

If you have feedback on the site, please email Tom at wickedpresident@gmail.com.

February 17th Board Meeting As mentioned earlier, we will hold a special interim board meeting this Thursday, February 17th, at 6:30, to cover some items we did not get to at the board meeting on February 2nd. One of those topics will be MOTM 2022! This will be another zoom meeting, please let me know if you want the meeting link.