District 8 now four Units instead of five

by Georgia Heth

Last summer, at its Annual Meeting, the members of Unit 154 (Northern Indiana) voted overwhelmingly to pursue transferring from District 8 to District 12 (Michigan and northwest Ohio). They obtained petition signatures from about 75 percent of the Unit’s members (only 50 percent is required.).

The stated reasons were geographical proximity to District 12, where they played in more events. They also stated that District 12 members played more in their Northern Indiana tournaments than did members of the other units in District 8.

The national ACBL Board of Directors usually rubber-stamps requests for transfers to new districts. This transfer was approved, but only after much discussion and a split vote. District 8’s objection to the transfer centered on concerns that it would make District 8 the smallest district in the ACBL.

Our new map is shown at right with four Units -- Northwestern IL (Unit 239), Central Illinois (208), Southern Illinois-Paducah (223) and Greater St. Louis (143).

I do not think this change will result in any risk to District 8. Even with Unit 154, we were one of the smallest districts in ACBL. There have been ongoing discussions for the past few years about reorganizing the Board of Directors, but at this point, no one is suggesting that the district boundaries be changed in any way.

The ACBL Board has been discussing changes in regional allocation for at least a year but has not acted. There may be changes in the future, but for now, losing a unit will not affect our regional allocation. We currently have four regionals a year. In recent years, they were held in Champaign IL, St. Louis MO, Fort Wayne IN and a split regional (same dates) in Effingham IL and Crystal Lake IL. In future years, Fort Wayne will not be in District 8 and we will not have to have a split regional. Crystal Lake will keep its June dates and the Southern Illinois-Paducah Unit will host a regional in September in Effingham or another Unit location.