The Ohio Hawks Organization
has secured an ASA 'A' National Birth tourney
bid thru the Dayton ASA Region!
This means that an 'A' level
team can qualify for the ASA 'A' Nationals directly and
not have to go thru an Eastern Qualifier. There are only
a few of these tourney's in the Midwest each year.
We announced it this week on
OFC and already we have some big name teams coming ...
it is for 10,12 and 14u 'A' teams only this year. This
will be held at Kettering Fields in Dayton. Derek
Jacob's and Chris Bower will be the TD's on this
tourney. It will be held May 29-31st with the finals on
Monday, Memorial Day. Several Hawks teams will be
participating against the best of the best. To
give you an idea of how strong this is, a couple teams
pulled from tourney's they has already scheduled and
lost their deposit just to play in ours and get a chance
at the bid.
We are also still running
our annual Hawks Early Bird at Smith Park, Middletown.
It is an 'open' tourney - we will have 'B' for 10,12,14
and 'A'/'B' for 16/18u teams. Curtis Carpenter is our TD
on this tourney. Dates are May 29/30.
This is a big undertaking -
running 2 tourney's at the same time/same weekend. We
will have help from both facilities, we are responsible
for vendors, umpires, registration and general staffing
/ help. Fields and trash are not our responsibility. We
will be enlisting each team's parents to help out in
some way both before and during the tourney's. Our
organization could easily net over $15,000 from these
two tourney's. We will use it to help fund families
World Series costs, keep our costs down for families,
and fund the HIT Center and Smith Park usage.
This takes us to a new level
of respectability - our goal is to grow the ASA National
Tourney and move it into June in 2011 and keep the Early
Bird in May.
Additionally, we signed
an agreement with Smith Park for 2010, that allows us
the following:
1. Priority use of 2
diamonds every day for practice. That gives us the room
for 4 teams a weekday to practice for 90 min or more
each weekday.
2. Use of the fields for 3
tourney's each season. We can charge a gate fee of
$5/car per day. This should bring in several thousand
dollars of revenue in each tourney.
3. Fields to run a summer
league should we choose to do so. Smith Park will drag,
line and prepare fields for us.
With 13 teams, practice and
field time is tough to find, this eliminates that
problem for us and is a great step forward.
It has been a tremendous
fall for the Hawks. We are blessed that things continue
to fall into place and we are quickly becoming the
premier organization in Southwest Ohio for girls
Fastpitch. We have great coaches and board members that
are passionate about the sport.
Lastly, I wanted to briefly
touch base on something. We have a check-and-balance
accounting system between myself and Amy Carpenter - we
make sure all monies taken in are disclosed to both of
us, counted, verified, logged in our accounting system
and deposited. Our board has access to all of our online
financial records at all times as well as our coaches
have online access to their teams financial records. We
try to be totally transparent in our operation.
As a 501 c3 organization our
books are open. If at any time a family would like to
review our accounting we would be glad to do so. We are
going to have to hire an accounting firm this year for
our IRS reporting due to the growth we have undertaken -
it is all a part of the process. I just wanted all of
our families to know that we recognize the trust and
investment you personally make in the Hawks and that we
will not betray that trust.
Sincerely,
Doug Lenos
President, Ohio Hawks
Fastpitch
November 30, 2009
Parents and coaches,
The Hawks board has had discussions about how best to use
the internet to promote our organization and players. Our number
one goal is to provide a high quality environment which is safe
for the girls and does not put them at risk. The organization
itself is known in the softball world as one that does things
right and is well respected among other teams and organizations.
With that we are going to be very selective about how our 'image'
is portrayed on the web.
Our plan is to provide several great internet platforms in
which to promote the Hawks, the players and our successes. We
love when our players use the Hawks logo and name on their personal
web spaces/pages but we ask that they please do not alter it
or the colors, they are our image! Also, if ANY
players family does not want their image used online please
let us know. We will be posting player photos and first names
on the web site on the team pages once we get our photos done.
We will ask that each parent sign a release. We are very protective
of our players. Their player bios will be only behind a password
protected page. Visitors must request access to the pages and
be approved.
Please understand that as we grow and go through this season
our teams will garner much attention from other parents, players,
and college coaches in particular. We want to present the best
possible image about the organization and players to the college
scouts that visit our web site(s) to learn more about us and
our players. We are meeting later this week with a recruiting
firm to discuss a partnership what will automatically enroll
all Hawks players into a recruiting program to assist them in
getting collegiate exposure thru player profiles, coach connections
and more. No other softball org in this part of the state has
such an agreement. We hope to announce this partnership later
this week...
We have started to create facebook pages for all our teams
that would like to have one for each team. So far the Hawks
99 Gold and Hawks 98 Black teams have their pages up and going.
Feel free to join in as fans, let's work hard on build "Hawk
Nation" on facebook!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ohio-Hawks-98-Black/299596545042
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ohio-Hawks-99-Gold/122965913266
Coaches:
Please contact coach Kepple (coachKepple@OhioHawks.com)
if your team would like to start a facebook page. He will get
you started.
Again, if you or your team has some ideas about promoting
the organization on the web please let me know before you do
proceed. We may already have something similar in mind and in
the works or we may love the idea and help you with it - either
way please let us know up front.
Hawk Power!
Oct. 28, 2009
Hawk families, we are finally
ready to head into our winter indoor training time. Our
teams will be going into training mode, practicing once
a week or so. It will be good for the girls to go play basketball
and other sports fulltime, just working on their stroke
once a week at the Hawks Indoor Training Center (HIT
Center)
BUT BEFORE WE GO
INDOORS....
We will have 1 last
outdoor Hawks get together this Sunday, Nov. 1st at Smith
Park in Middletown. We would like to have every team participate.
We will have fun skills contests for the players - fastest
runner, home run/long ball and others. We will have eats
and Hawks spirit wear for sell. Some teams will practice
and scrimmage each other. The weather is supposed to be
great, the Bengals are not playing so we would like to have
as many families come out as possible. Your coach will be
in contact soon with more details for your team.
We will be taking a
photo of all the girls in the organization at 3pm ...
we will post this photo on our web site and make it available
to show potential sponsors just how many girls we have in
the organization.... the skills competition will
be held at 3:30 pm - after the 3 pm photo session.
PLEASE HAVE YOUR
DD wear her GRAY Jersey and black shorts on SUNDAY
!!!
We will also have a
photo tent set up to take your DD's player photo for the
web site, just come up to the concession stand area when
you get to the park on Sunday....
Our board met last night and
I have a couple updates for the parents to pass along:
Land of Illusion Parking
Update - So far this year, with 1 more Saturday
remaining to park, we are running about 40% below what we
did last year. We have parked almost 4000 less cars this
year. It is probably due to the economy and the number of
other haunted trails, etc that have popped up this year.
We also have more families parking this year.
Each night that a family is
represented, they got 1 parking credit. We take the total
amount earned from parking and divide by the total number
of credits to get a per credit dollar amount. As of today
that amount is $49 per credit. Normally, the organization
allocates 10% of the money earned for the general fund,
we voted to waive that last night so 100% of the money earned
will go towards our families. That adds $5 back into every
credit. With 1 night remaining the total credit amount will
be right at $50, +/- a dollar or so. Again, Amy will post
to our accounts on Tuesday when she has it calculated.
Next Payment Installment
Date: With the shortfall at LOI and our other fundraisers
just getting in high gear, we have moved the next $150
payment installment date back 1 week to Nov 22nd to
give families more time... On Nov 22nd all players are to
have $300 in their account. This includes any Kroger monies,
Land of Illusion monies, sponsor monies and money from the
upcoming pizza, ESPN and spirit cups fundraisers. Our Hawks
treasurer, Amy, will have all the players accounts up to
date with Kroger and LOI monies by next Tuesday, Nov 3rd.
Your coach will be emailing your account standing soon after
that. If you have any questions about your account, you
can email
amy@OhioHawks.com at that time.
An example: Let's say you paid
$150 up front, you have $61 on Kroger money earned, $49
LOI, and a $75 sponsor. You would have a balance of $335
would not owe any additional monies until the next installment
date after the first of the year.
Hawks HIT Center Update
- Our indoor
training center is nearing completion. Teams will begin
scheduling 90 min weekly training sessions starting next
week. Our Hawks hitting and pitching trainer will also begin
to use it and we will have 'open' hitting dates/times for
your DD to get in extra work if desired. This is going to
be a great facility for us. We will have an 'open house'
in a couple of weeks to have everyone in to see it and also
to get sized with our summer uniforms. We will be
wearing very nice white with black pinstripe uniforms next
season. They will have sleeveless vests and black under
shirts. the Hawks name and logo will be sewn on - they will
be very, very sharp. We expect them to last 2 seasons for
most every player and you will want to take care of them.
Look for the open house/uniform sizing date to be announce
soon.
Kroger Cards -
we still have a bunch of Kroger cards that are
unassigned to families. In order to get credit we need to
know what families these card numbers belong to. Open the
attached PDF and see if any of the card numbers in
YELLOW match
your card numbers you have. If so, email me back the numbers
and you will get credit for the monies earned.
Hawks Spirit wear
- we are adding some new, cool Hawks spirit wear online
at
www.OhioHawks.com/spiritwear ... including a cool
Hawks flex-fit cap.
We will have a big table set
up at Smith Park this Sunday from 1:30pm - 5:30pm
with ton's of spirit wear for sell. We will have Kroger
cards there as well for any families needing additional
cards.
Thanks,
Doug and the Hawks Board