Hello athletes and parents,

I hope this email finds you all healthy and safe and adjusting to our current "normal".  I am writing today to provide you with an update on the 2020 volleyball season. The Board of Directors met on Monday to review the current state of things, and with the government’s recommendation to continue social distancing until April 30th, we made the difficult decision to cancel the remainder of the season for Local, Regional, and Select teams. We are as disappointed with this as you all are, but in the end it was the only decision we had available.

With that in mind, we are currently finalizing all of our outstanding expenses, including paying our coaches, gym rentals, refunds to teams that entered in our hosted tournaments, etc. We are also starting to review the player fee refunds and determining what is fair and equitable.

There are a lot of factors to consider here, and please know that we are doing our best to provide appropriate refunds. There are many expenses that have already gone in to the season. While the local season had a little more than a month of practice and some teams had one tournament, our director and coaches have been preparing for the season for much longer and there are costs associated with that. Please also keep in mind that your fee does not cover 100% of the costs to run your season/team. The teams are subsidized by the two tournaments we usually host each year, and all of that income has been lost, further impacting the finances of the club.

Our goal is to review our financial status after we have finished gathering all expenses and then determine a final plan for player fee refunds. We plan to review this on Monday, April 6th, and once approved, begin refunding those fees. All payments that were scheduled for March 31st were stopped, and we anticipate refunds being issued in mid-April, but this is subject to change.

USA Volleyball Fee

We have received some inquiries about the USAV fee that was paid and if this will be refunded. Here is the message directly from NCR:

USA Volleyball has received requests from Region members for a full refund of their membership due to the season unexpectedly changing course. Our Region has responded consistently and clearly.  Membership refunds, if they were available, would be greatly less than $50.00.  This is due to:

•    Membership Benefits – online education, educational tip of the week, recruiting tip of the week, workouts from Art of Coaching, Court Connection, local-regional assistance, and more are going strong

•    USA Volleyball secondary liability insurance covers tryouts, meetings, practices, and tournaments

•    An investment into each member has already been made at the time of purchasing a membership which include but not limited to the National Governing Body’s administrative costs, educational resources, and local region support USA Volleyball our National Governing Body (NGB) and North Country Region (NCR) continue to provide a wealth of administrative support and educational resources to individual members, your club leadership, tournament directors, coaches, parents, and  anyone who contacts us

•    North Country Region will continue to provide support across the volleyball community and provide additional resources to assist members, club leadership, and tournament directors during this slowdown

•    Commitment – our office has changed course but our commitment has not. We have ramped up our content sent directly to you and remain the team behind your team

•    Simply, refunds are not available because payment has already been remitted to USA Volleyball

Again, I want to reiterate that we are doing our best to expedite refunds, while still ensuring the financial security of the club. If you are financially able, please consider a donation to the Club, either in cash or by turning your refund into a donation. We may also consider a fundraising event of some kind this summer, so please look to support that when we are able to schedule it. We also intend to do some summer programs, as we are able to, and more information will be provided as those plans progress.

If you have any questions, you are welcome to reach out to me directly at rrivpresident@gmail.com. We thank you for your patience and understanding, and we hope we are able to get back to volleyball and all the other things we love to do very soon!

Sincerely,

Anna Miller, Board President