Attendance: Kelly Hoffman, Jim Hendrix, Bob Schafer, David King, Jane McMeekin, Shirley Neibauer, Erin Ortman, Deena Snapp, Jake Will, Jr., Doug Snapp, Janet Craycraft.
1. Call to Order
President, Janet Craycraft called the meeting to order.
2. Approval of Minutes
Janet indicated that the minutes of the April meeting were on the web site and copies were on the tables. She asked for corrections. Hearing none, she asked for a motion to approve the minutes. Bob Schafer made such a motion, Jane McMeekin seconded the motion. and the motion passed with a voice vote.
3. Treasurer's Report
Treasurer, Jake Will, Jr., gave the the report. He indicated that a financial review had been performed by Joseph L. Zakas and Co., Certified Public Accountants. Jake continued by saying that the cash balances are at the highest presently because most bills have not been turned in yet and we have received most of our league dues. The checking account is $191, the flex fund is $81,148, the junior fund is $5,485, the Mansfield fund is $1,500. The total amount on-hand as of June 30 was $88,324. Janet asked for discussion or questions. She then asked for a motion to approve Jake's report. David King moved, Shirley Neibauer seconded, and the motion passed.
4. USA Junior Team Tennis
No report at this time.
5. Women's Leagues/Champions of Champions
League Chair, Erin Ortman, gave the report. She indicated that all was running well and that numbers and money are about the same as last year. The season is moving to an end with levels finishing and getting ready for playoffs. The Champ of Champs Tournament is being organized and administered by Beth LaCorgne and Shirley Neibauer. Erin indicated that the Women's League was very satisfied with the online scoring provided by tenniscores.com. She has received positive comments from many players, and the Women's League is looking forward to administering the entire league with the scoring system next year. There was discussion as to tenniscores.com asking that we change the DNS of our web site and the possibility of using our web site for similar reporting.
6. Men's Leagues/Champion of Champions
League Chair, Jake Will, Jr., gave the report. The leagues are running smoothly. The total number of players is very similar to last year. Jake indicated that the Champ of Champs is August 19th and 20th at Champions Tennis Club. There is no rain date: if the tournament cannot be played on those days, it will be canceled. Doug Snapp will be taking the entries and making the draws. John Campbell will be running the tournament on-site. Jake thanked Fred Duy and Doug Snapp for their help with the league. Fred did all of the scheduling. Doug did all of the contact information. Jake also thanked the scorekeepers: Andy Alexander, Joel Madenwald, Doug Snapp, and Al Walker.
7. USTA Summer Leagues
No report at this time.
Janet indicated that she plays in one of the summer leagues and her only disappointment is that they only had 4 matches. She would like to see more matches.
Jake said that Bob Hilborn has requested the $3900 for the adult entries into the OVTA Adult District tournaments. Jake will take send the check.
8. Junior Wightman Cup & Junior Davis Cup
Jim Hendrix gave the report. There were 9 OVTA teams. It was played at the Racquet Club. It was a mixed format similar to a junior team tennis format. This is the first year for the format. Initially, there were complaints; but after the tournament, it seems that most people were satisfied. The Columbus Team won one flight and the Cincinnati Team won the other flight. Columbus beat Cincinnati in the finals. Steve Ryuse and Michelle Jarrett were the captains/coaches of the Columbus team.
There was a question as to the whether Columbus will get payment from the OVTA.
Doug indicated that he had not received names of players. Jim indicated that he had sent Doug an email containing a document with all of the match results and player names. Doug said he had received nothing that had first and last names.
9. Area and District Qualifiers
Jim Hendrix gave the report. He indicated that the exemption problem that was discussed at the April meeting had be resolved: if a player was accepted into a national open tournament, the player was exempt from the area qualifier. Janet said she had talked to Andrea Calvert at the Midwest Section and Dave Engle at the OVTA. Both indicated that we would be hurting our players if we didn't allow the exemption, as we did. Jim indicated that there were 9 requests for exemptions. Jim said that the numbers were about the same as last year. We did lose quota spots to the District level because of increased USTA memberships in the Cincinnati area, mainly because of a merging of the WBC OVTA area and the Cincinnati OVTA area.
There was discussion as to why the Columbus USTA membership numbers were not higher. It was felt that a number of the country clubs are not participating in the Junior Team program. These kids are not getting USTA memberships.
Janet Craycraft ran the Girls' 16's District at Upper Arlington High School. She thanked Jim Hendrix for his help with the computer work and the draw. She thanked Bob Schafer and Art Haus for their work as officials. Bob Schafer indicated that the tournament ran smoothly. He said that the tent that Janet rented was a "life saver." Janet also thanked Emily Roth and Anita Elking for their great help. Bob concluded that it was a "super tournament" with the little perks of food and a TV to watch the French Open.
10. Columbus Recreation and Parks
Kelly Hoffman gave the report. He talked positively about the numbers for the adult programs at Schiller, Whetstone and Woodward Park. He felt that the CRPD on-line registration had been a positive part of this.
He said that there were 24 NJTL sites.
The Central Ohio Tennis Tournament went well with sponsorship from Dick's and Papa Johns. 125 players took part. The tournament was administered by Alan Kinnard. It still lost money but did better than in the past couple of years. Woodward, Wolfe, and Champions were the playing sites.
Champions Tennis Club is doing well. There have been improvements to the clubhouse: new roof and patio. The club is scheduled to receive a new roller-brush, riding machine for court maintenance.
Kelly provided the following written report.
We have 3 sites this summer (Schiller Park, Whetstone Park, and Woodward Park). We have a total of 66 people registered for lessons this summer. The WP lessons begin July 24, so more people expected to register by then. There are 18 registered for Schiller, 23 for Whetstone, and 25 for WP. Total registered for summer is 66. We expect some to register at the centers as well.

In the spring, we operated 4 sites, the 3 mentioned above along with Antrim. For the spring, we had 4 at Antrim, 22 at Schiller, 12 at Whetstone, and 36 at WP, for a total of 74 participants. This was more than double the numbers the previous 4 springs!

We are now doing on-line registration! People can go to our department’s web site, and register (they go to the home page, click on the sports tab and then the tennis tab and scroll down.) Cost for lessons did increase from $15 per person to $24 per person. We have to pay $4.00 per person to Active.com for the use of the on-line system. We decided to not charge the GCTA fee due to the incompatibility of having 2 different charges on-line. What we will do is for each person who registers, we will take his or her $10 GCTA fee and it will be subtracted from the end of year payment by GCTA to CRPD. Last year, if someone registered for all 3 sessions (spring, summer, and fall) they would have paid $45 to the City of Columbus and $10 to GCTA for a total of $55. This year, they will pay a total of $72, of which $12 of that will go to Active.com, leaving us with a total of $60 received per person. Our revenue will increase by $5 per person per year, thus saving GCTA some money!

Our instructors are this summer is Dave Motta (Schiller Park), Steve Seeberg (Whetstone Park), and Chris Althouse (Woodward Park). Dave and Steve come from the OSU Club Tennis Team and the others we have had in the past.

The youth tennis program is doing great, with sites all over the City. We have over 20 sites doing the 4-5 yr. Tots, 6-8 yr. Tots, and the 9-14 yr. NJTL programs. Wolfe Park and Whetstone are the sites for the weekly NJTL matches. We also have a few of the senior centers doing tennis as well.

We have held 3 tennis camps this summer, Whetstone (June 19-23), Wolfe Park (July 10-14), and Champions (July 17-21). The Whetstone and Wolfe camps averaged 55+ for each camp and we have 6 for the Champions camp. The Champions camp is for the middle school and high school age players. The camps have done really well and the instructors have been very good.

We concluded the Central Ohio Tennis tournament last week and it went well. We had over 80 matches played at the 3 sites (Wolfe Park; adults, Woodward Park; youth, and Champions; seniors). Dick’s Sporting Goods and Papa John’s Pizza sponsored the tournament for the 2nd year in a row. Each player received a t-shirt, water bottle, and Dick’s coupons and the champs, finalists, and back-draw winners all received trophies. Dick’s gave us a little more product $ and we are going to get the COGP Players of the Week (Adult and youth) an award. We did have some defaults, but in all, the tournament went well.

Champions Tennis Club is going well. We have over 60 registered members along with people taking classes and coming up for open play. We will be receiving a new roller/brush combo in the next few weeks and that will be a huge addition, as the current roller is down and we have to roll and broom separately. We will also be installing a new canopy over the front porch of the tennis hut. This canopy is beautiful and will be an extremely nice addition to the club.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at Woodward Park, 645-3158, or e-mail me, kmhoffman@columbus.gov. Thanks!

11. Umpires
Doug Snapp praised the efforts of the umpires at the USTA/ITA tournament run by Harvey Beahm. Doug talked to Harvey Beahm and Harvey had praised Art Haus for his work as the tournament referee. Bob Schafer echoed Doug. Bob gave a general report on the actions of the umpires at the event. There was one player who was reprimanded and defaulted.
12. Ohio Valley Tennis Association
No report at this time. Janet did indicate that mailings from the OVTA go to Carol and Andy Alexander's address. Janet asked if the GCTA has its own mailing address. The post office box address was given: Greater Columbus Tennis Association, PO Box 21482, Columbus, OH 43221. However, it was indicated that certain information, OVTA Girl's 16's Tournament information, for example, needs to go to the specific address of the person involved. This is likely why materials have been sent to Andy and Carol. It was suggested that Dave Engle of the OVTA should be able to change the addresses to the correct ones.
13. Awards Ceremony
Deena Snapp gave the report. The date is September 24th. It is set for Upper Arlington Municipal Building. A meeting is scheduled to determine this year's award recipients.
14. Old Business
Doug Snapp indicated information for to the web site needs to be given to him. It is not possible for him to go to each event. He is willing to add anything to the web site, but he must be informed as to what is to be added. He added that the number of visits to the web site is close to 70,000. This has been the same for the last couple of years. Prior to that, the number was in the 50,000 to 60,000 range. Doug indicated that the GCTA's ownership-lease on its domain name and address (gcta.net) was due for renewal on November 1st. If not renewed, it would be put back on the general market where anyone could purchase the lease. It was indicated that he should take steps to secure the renewal of the lease.
15. New Business
Janet indicated the chairs for the September meeting: Doug Snapp for the Budget Committee; Shirley Neibauer for the Nominating Committee. As already indicated, Deena Snapp will be heading the Awards Committee.
Janet stressed that we need "new blood" for general involvement for our organization.
16. Adjournment
Janet asked for a motion to adjourn. Such a motion was made, seconded, and passed.
Next meeting: September 24th at Swim and Racquet.

Respectfully submitted.
Doug Snapp
GCTA Secretary