Greetings
It’s mid-February, it’s 30 degrees out, and there’s still snow on the ground. Which, of course, means it’s time to start thinking about …… Tennis at STC!
We held the club’s 2024 Annual Meeting Sunday night. The primary order of business was to elect the new Board of Directors. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to the 2024 Board members. First, our returning members:
Dan Smith (me) – President, former Treasurer
Susan Purdue – Treasurer
Ace Brown – Secretary
Eduardo Nilni – Former President
And our newest member, a name well known to all of you: Scott Zenack, returning for his second stint on the board as Member at Large.
A special thank you to Dmitry Litvak, who retires from the board after four years of service.
My first official act as President was to increase the font of the newsletter.
Annual Meeting. At the annual meeting the above named directors were elected. I reviewed a few aspects of the club’s position entering 2024:
The club’s financial position is stronger now than in recent years, as a result of the dues adjustment last year and also due an exceptionally low cost in 2023 of required maintenance (We do have some outstanding maintenance and investment items that we will need to address in 2024. More on this later.)
We lost a net total of 12 memberships last year, from 192 in 2022 to 180 in 2023. Please help us promote the club! Our only significant source of revenue is dues. If we want to minimize future dues increases, we need to maintain our membership.
We also discussed activities at the club. Members present at the meeting expressed support for the tournaments, which had a record level of participation last year (thank you again Scott Z, Umesh B, Ram C, and Ace B) and for Walk On Doubles. One member brought up a possible new activity, SPEC tennis, which he would like to introduce to the club. More on this later.
Member Survey. Please keep your eye out for a member survey in the next few weeks. We will probably use MailChimp (the service that delivers this email) so you can fill it out on-line and we can quickly compile the data. This is a great way for you to share your ideas and feedback. Expect me to nag you repeatedly to participate.
Opening Date. We will make every attempt to open the club as early as possible. I have already spoken to Cape and Islands, the company we use, to make sure we are at the front of their list. The principal determinant is weather. The courts must be firm enough before they can be set up. Last year, the weather cooperated, and we were able to open in April. In 2021, if you remember, we opened in May, and it was still too early. The result was poor court conditions for the season. So we will be eager, but patient, in order to ensure court conditions are as good as possible once we open.
Website. The club website is down right now. It has been increasingly unstable over the years, and, let’s face it, it has a bunch of problems (confusing membership renewal, limited payment options, incorrect info, etc), so we had already planned to port it to a more stable platform and rebuild it for 2024. We may or may not bring the old website back up first, depending on the severity of the current problem. I will keep you posted on our plans.
Help Wanted. Speaking of fixing the website, if any of you has experience with website layout and design and would like to volunteer your services, or if you have a high school or college-age child with those skills who would like a nice addition to their college application or resume, let me know.
Similarly, we would like to start promoting the club on social media (Facebook, Instagram). If you or your progeny would like to help out with this, again let me know. Director of Social Media for Sharon Tennis Club is a pretty sweet title and will practically guarantee your child gets into Harvard.
Your Plans for 2024. One last request: Please, if you were a member in 2023 and are planning NOT to renew your membership this year, send me an email to let me know. The earlier we can forecast our membership for the year, the better we will be able to plan and budget.
Email Address Update. Finally, don’t forget to update your address book if you have Eduardo’s name linked to the email address: info@sharontennisclub.org. We’ve had a few embarrassing incidents in the past where a member has thought they were sending a private email to a former president and wound up sending it to the whole current board instead.
We are all looking forward to another exciting season of tennis at STC. My email door is always open, for your ideas and suggestions, or to answer any question. I look forward to meeting as many of you as possible over the course of the season.
Dan Smith
President
dsmith9.stc@gmail.com or info@sharontennisclub.org