President Update November 11, 2020

Hi Everyone,

First and Foremost, on this Remembrance Day, we take the time to honour all the women and men who gave their lives protecting our Country and protecting our values as Canadians.  We also honour all military personnel who have served, and our serving be it domestically or abroad, we Thank You!  

Secondly, I would be remiss if I did not thank every member of our SMRA family!  Your continued support, your ability to follow the protocols (as annoying as some are, yes I said it!), your flexibility, but ultimately your dedication and passion to the sport of ringette which is allowing all those happy faces each and every time we are at the arena, Thank You!

The SMRA Executive met on Monday evening and I just wanted to mention some of the highlights:

• Thank You
• If you see a member of the SMRA Executive, please reach out to them with a heartfelt thank you.  Many of our volunteers are working three or four hours a day, on top of their full time jobs to ensure our players remain safe and continue to be on the ice for both practices and games.  Also, please don’t forget to thank your coaching staff.  Coaches and managers are giving so much of their time and energy this year to keep our season going.

• Lottery
• The lottery tickets have been printed and will be delivered to your groups this week/weekend. The lottery this year will be a little different though as we will be hosting a virtual draw.  It will take place on December 21, 2020 @ 7 pm at Joe's Diner.  The draw will be live-streamed virtually (probably Facebook Live).  Also different this year, there is no need to hand in the ticket stubs.  Traditionally you would drop them off in the SMRA mailbox or give them to your managers. However, due to COVID, we needed to limit person to person contact as much as possible.  We will therefore be doing a “bingo type draw” with all the numbers, 1 through 5000, placed into a drum.  The numbers will be randomly drawn from the drum to find the winners.  We have a master list of our families with the specific ticket numbers you have been provided.  When the winning number(s) is selected, we will contact that family who sold the winning ticket, and they/you will provide us with the winner's information.  So no need to return your stubs, but you do need to hang on to them and we will contact the family to see who in their ticket package won the money.

• Bottle Drive
• After a hugely, no HUGELY successful bottle drive last year, we are doing it again this Holiday Season!  Mark your calendars as we will be collecting around town on Saturday, January 9, 2021. This year it will be curbside pick up, or residents can drop bottles off at 599 Queen St W, the next drive after the beer store (same location as Elmira Chicken fundraiser pickup). Information will be distributed to managers in December on what area of town their group will be covering.  So tell your neighbors, friends, and family to start hoarding those beer and wine bottles as we will be coming.

• Facebook Live
• This past weekend, a couple of our games were streamed live on Facebook.  This is a great way to allow that second parent, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles, or whoever, to watch your star player participate in the sport they love.  We understand many of you are quite passionate when you are watching a game.  We ask that you are mindful that the event may be live streamed, and just like the disclosures on tv with many live events, microphones pick up just about everything!  So as parents and players, we ask you to be mindful of that.  I will also be notifying our bubble associations to advise them of our live streaming.

• Second Registration Payment
• We are very fortunate that we were able to defer the full registration cost into two seperate payments. We hope this helped many of you.   We knew at the time, we would be running a deficit, and as I explained earlier in the season, with all the uncertainty as an association with ice time and quite frankly, life in general, we knew it was the right thing to do.  Traditionally, due to scheduling and availability,  ice time was scheduled to provide additional opportunities for some divisions, while limiting ice time for others.  This year we have moved away from that practice and all groups are getting the same amount of ice time regardless of division.  With the unexpected 20% increase in ice fees for the 2021 year, we knew our projected fees were not going to be an accurate reflection of our costs but wanted to be as close as possible for the sake of our members while maintaining equity.  
• Therefore, fees due on December 15, 2020 are as follows: 
•  Fun 1 - $200
• U10 to U19 - $300  
• This will ensure 12 weeks of ice beginning in early January.  There will be a complete two week shutdown over the Christmas Holidays.  We are still operating at a slight deficit, and we are still minimally subsidizing the Fun1 program. Payments again will be via eTransfer to:  treasurer@stmarysringette.ca so if you can please get that in as soon as possible it would be greatly appreciated. In the message of the eTransfer please include player name and division.  

Thank you so much Everyone!

Michael Lynch, President

St Marys Ringette Association