ACBL Director's Report

     by Georgia Heth, Morton IL

     District 8 Representative on the ACBL Board of Directors
 

The weather was wonderful for the first weekend of the Atlanta NABC in July, which was a surprise and a treat. Attendance was up the first day, but I was told, you can’t predict the final results based on the first day. I saw our District 8 players in the Grand National Teams and our Flight B team made it to the quarterfinals, where they were eliminated by the team that eventually won the flight. I also saw the names of our GNT players who were eliminated earlier showing up in the results of other events.

We handled the regular business of the board meeting in the first three days, and spent the last day in a strategic planning session. We discussed the future of bridge, clubs, online play and member recruitment among other things. Various guest speakers were brought in, and I think the time was well spent.

Various motions were passed to make ACBL regulations match the new New York Not-for-Profit laws and to clean up issues with masterpoints and conditions of contest. Two national events were eliminated effective in 2019 -- the Women’s Board-a-Match Teams and the Senior Knockouts -- because of declining attendance. The requirement that Sectionals-at-Clubs be scored across the field and have duplicated hands common to the whole field was postponed for two years as the technology is not yet ready to handle the scoring.

Two motions that were not passed are still worth mentioning. A request for the ACBL to have a fragrance-free policy was not passed because of fears it would be unenforceable, but announcements regarding the issue will continue to run in the Daily Bulletin. There was also a proposal to rework the Masterpoints Committee to no longer be a Board of Directors committee. The Board agreed with the principle of the motion, but it was decided that the details needed more work.

We also had a session discussing programs that could be delayed in order to balance next year’s budget -- never a fun thing to do, but necessary.

I am on the search committee to select our new Executive Director. Joe Jones, our CFO, is doing a fine job as the interim ED. The ads for the position first went out this month, although we received various applications in June. We do not expect to be ready to submit candidates to the Board until next year. 

Good luck at the tables,
   Georgia Heth
  

If you have questions or suggestions about ACBL Board actions or other bridge matters, please contact me at gkheth@hotmail.com or 917 S. Main St., Morton IL  61550-2419.