May 22nd - Adult C Scow Education
Photo credit Melges Performance Sailboats | Morgan Kinney
In a big wind and a too-cold spring Sunday, the C fleet committee chair, Michael Barr, hosted skippers from Pistakee to Michael’s home lake for a classroom session, lunch and then a big wind session in two of the four Barr C scows. Michael was exceptional – unfortunately, briefly exceptionally poor at being a crew (In case you don’t know, Michael is a top-notch C skipper) when he promptly tipped over with his visiting skipper. But it was a great learning session for the entire Pistakee crew. The ILYA looks forward to seeing the Y boats at the MIR and perhaps the Invitational and Geneva Champs.
Pistakee is one of the original ILYA clubs and was home to the C Blue Chip for many, many, many years. Loads of champions remember Pistakee fondly. The club leadership reached out to the ILYA in the Fall for information gathering. Thanks to Jennifer Bransfield, Delavan, and Marek Valasek, Geneva for traveling to Pistakee for a question and answer session on sailing school operations and policies. Then one month later, Delavan’s Richard Beers traveled down to accompany Candace Porter for a similar session with the Pistakee YC on fleet building and other YC issues.
This clinic is part of the ILYA Safety and Education Committee’s mission. Thanks, Michael, for your expertise, time and entertainment for those of us watching the tip-over.
June 2nd & 3rd - Last chance for Coaches Counselor Course
If you missed the Pewaukee Counselor Course, Okoboji, IA will host the identical course June 2nd and 3rd. Red Tornehl and Jack Schweda travel to IA to teach at both Clear and Okoboji to conduct Parents’ Night at both sites and the US Sailing Counselor Course. The coaches course is one day and discusses responsibility, safety, discipline, lesson plans, on water operations and other topics. Click here to register.
June 10th – Coaches clinic at Lake Geneva Yacht Club
In August, leaders of the ILYA Education Committee met with our coaches in an end of year full day session to determine tasks that would improve our sailing schools. The top priority was classroom management, discipline techniques, and problems teaching a sport that is mostly on the water but requires classroom presentations. And here you go. . .
All ILYA coaches are invited to attend the full day Coaches Clinic at Lake Geneva. The morning will feature two exceptional coaches in SE WI. In addition, these two receive high marks as educators. Mark Maas, of the Whitewater School District has retired now to speak around the state and to announce athletic events at the highest level. His track teams during his tenure as head coach won the conference meet 28 times – 15 years consecutively on the girls side. He developed 17 state individual champions. But his renown is not for a winning list of accomplishments but for his coaching style and methods. The chair of the ILYA Safety and Education Committee met with Maas for the first of several pre-seminar sessions. What an experience to listen to him speak about developing leadership skills for educators. Maas always put his students and athletes first; he was successful always but it is his techniques for preparing, teaching, creating motivating environments for his students which made him successful. He is an energetic NOT-TO-BE-MISSED speaker. Members of Sailing School Boards are welcome to listen but this is created as an interactive problem solving session for our coaches. Maas will bring a colleague along with him, Chad Carstens, current Whitewater coach, who brings a reputation of athlete-centered coaching. Carstens emphasizes each student’s improvement and work ethic. Together, this duo will lead with small group sessions (as well as lecture) to get our coaches problem solving about issues they face day to day coaching sailing. – in addition the two are receiving some pre-event sailing tutorials to be well-versed in our sport.
The afternoon will feature Geneva’s Marek Valasek. Marek will be teaching rigging, instruction of the Optimist Dinghy. Nearly all our clubs utilize the Optimist from Learn to Sail, Kinderpram to high level competitive sailing. Marek was an Olympian in the Finn class. He has been on the USODA coaching staff since 2004. He runs a year round program at the Buddy Melges Sailing Center. His sailors traveled to Europe this winter to compete in high level events. Marek’s highly successful GLSS instructs students in 420s, X, Optimist Dinghy and Melges 15s. Most remarkable is his ability to teach and lead his students to always compete in the most sportsmanship-like manner.
All three speakers for this clinic are student – centered, highly motivational and are held in high esteem. They are just the type of coaches who lead, who are vastly experienced and speak and teach well.
Click here to register. The fee is $50 and includes lunch. This class is scheduled to allow our high school coaches to have concluded class. This is the Friday before most sailing schools begin in full. Most sailing schools send their entire staff.
June 11th - 12th Want to Learn Race Committee?
Have you taken a course? Did you listen to the Buoy Zone presentation? Are you interested in tips to help you set a better course? The ILYA member lakes have opportunities for on the water observation or training. Join us at WI MC Champs June 11-12 on Beulah; in July consider GLSS X, C Invitational, Quad Lakes X, Xtreme X. We will try to get you on a boat with an experienced PRO.
If you are a lake who would like assistance with any area of RC, contact the ILYA Safety and Education Committee. We will endeavor to pay you a visit.
Completed Courses below:
ILYA-Designed Club Officer Course
The ILYA will host two NON-CERTIFICATION Classes led by John Strassman. Mark your calendars for a day-long, in-person course Saturday, April 9 at Harken Headquarters or Saturday, May 7th in Clear Lake, IA.
These seminars with John Strassman are designed for yacht club race committee teams that want to know how to get organized and run great regattas and races. This is NOT the seminar for US Sailing certification that is based on the rule book. (but still, bring your book!!). This seminar will also be great for RC teams that want a spring refresher before the opening race of the season. There will be hands-on exercises and lots of time for questions and deep dives into your situations. Bring the entire team, from the PROs, to timers, recorders, mark set personnel, and including the big guy who hauls the anchors. For more information on the course content, contact John Strassman:
CLUBSPOT VISITS ILYA REGION FOR TWO DAY SEMINAR
APRIL 9-10 Eleven Signed up!
Dear ILYA member clubs,
Many of our clubs in addition to the ILYA are utilizing Clubspot to manage club functions: dues, social event registrations, scoring and regatta management. There are certainly a myriad of means to address all these issues. However, those in your club who have handled these functions have found it advantageous to utilize ONE platform to handle all these tasks. It optimizes your staff and time. It develops a cadre of volunteers who can cover all the functions of your club electronically. Lastly, it a luxury to develop a network of support amongst our nearby lakes to learn together whether it be website ease, ideas for parties, dues structure and categories. Local support and sharing – because we are all so similar – is invaluable.
Clubspot, located in San Francisco, is coming to Harken (Covid conditions permitting) April 9-10 to provide individualized instruction, introduction or support. Clubspot was developed by sailors so they understand the aspects of running regattas. This will be held in conjunction with a Race Committee course conducted on Saturday. We invite you to bring several of your club’s integral personnel who handle the administration of your tasks – social chairs, sailing chairs, treasurer and website managers. Clubspot will have individual sessions for all these tasks so you may send the appropriate person at the designated time. It will be easy to also have one person take the information back for those at your club. This program is intuitive, easy to administer and quick to implement. All clubs are invited to come to hear and meet individually with the Clubspot CEO, programmers and salespersons to give you the time you need to review this company. You do not have to be a current user to attend --- ALL ARE WELCOME!
Personally, the ILYA has been utilizing Clubspot for four years and Lake Beulah has been with them since its inception as the product known as Regatta Toolbox. Here are the advantages now utilized by the ILYA and Beulah. --- Delavan, Geneva Lake Sailing School, Pewaukee are also utilizing this platform. Others of you have reached out but I have not taken the time this year yet to count how many are now on the Clubspot platform. The USODA and the 420 class utilize them as their class administrative platform. Below are the functions. You may utilize all or some. For instance, Lake Beulah does not utilize today the website but uses all the other features. You may keep your old scoring system and dump PDF’s or links into that area.
- Membership dues collection – intuitive setup; full amount or partial payment collection capability;
- Social Event registration and promotion – individual chairs of social events now have immediate access to reservation lists and other data; cutoff dates, multiple selections in menu choices
- Point of Sale – POS – Bar items are listed now making recording payment, tracking inventory easy. Your store can be managed through Clubspot– the ILYA utilizes this feature.
- Scoring – can now be performed on the water on mobile device; no retyping of registration entry, exportable lists, easy categorization for the MC or Opti multiple subclasses. Of course, you may score on land also. Scores are posted automatically when publish button is hit. No copying links over with every additional race.
- Credit card processing with instantaneous viewing of payments made. Easy refund processing. Registrations may also be applied to house accounts for later charge or check payment
- Text or email ease for those entered in a regatta or to those reserved for social events
- Capability to assign multiple admins so treasurer, social chair, bar manager and accountant may all see data
- Sailing school (camp) registration with ease – collection of fees, again a means to text or email registrants
- Accounting – automatic invoicing at your desired frequency, deposits within 48 hours depending on your bank, processes ACH (.08%) and credit card payments (2.9% for non charitable). Rates are set by banking system. Easily accessed reports and filtering. Syncs with Quickbooks online through your bank and Stripe processing. With some added labor, you may have more automated deposit info into Quickbooks.
- Website – the ILYA website is Clubspot. View here. Adding events into the regatta or reservation system results in an autogeneration of a calendar eliminating duplicate copying of links and dates.
Two Day seminar – attend one or two days
Saturday, April 9th
8:30 – 10:00 Regatta management
10:15-12:00 Club membership tasks
12:-1:00 Lunch with RC and Clubspot attendees. The lunch will be ordered from Panera and delivered onsite. More info later as registration is received.
1:00- 2:30 Point of Sale – your bar, store and other products you sell
2:45-4:15 Website management
Clubspot will host a casual after-course reception with light refreshments.
Sunday, April 10th
8:30 – 10:30 Accounting
10:45 – 11:45 What do you need, what features will enhance your experience, individual consultation with Clubspot or a review of prior sessions with those with experience in their local clubs with your questions.
12:00 Lunch windup for Clubspot informal questions.
Check out the Clubspot website