Greetings State Presidents, USRA Board Members and volunteers, This is the most important e-mail of the year. If you have a tendency to

> junk it - and sometimes I don't blame you - please read through this one. I have a lot to share and you are the most important

> people that I know. First and foremost - Happy Holidays. I can't believe it is that time of year again. I guess when you turn 40 - which I did this year - your memory and (obviously) concept of time - is the first thing to go. Yikes!

> Penn State Ball Program Participants (I know that many states are still slated to come on board and I have attached the request form for your convenience.

> Please take a minute to complete and return it before you begin your last minute Christmas shopping. I plan to place these orders soon with Penn and it is easiest to do them in one batch. This is the confirmed list below:)

> Alaska

> Arizona

> Arkansas

> California - per HEAD/Penn Racquet Sports

> Colorado

> Hawaii

> Kentucky

> Louisiana

> Maryland

> Massachusetts

> Minnesota

> Missouri

> Nebraska

> Nevada

> New Mexico

> New Jersey

> Ohio

> Oklahoma

> Oregon

> South Carolina

> Texas - per HEAD/Penn Racquet Sports

> Utah

> Washington

> West Virginia

> Wisconsin

> Wyoming

I had the opportunity to work at the Choice Hotels US OPEN in Memphis. I can honestly say that it was an awesome event. I know

> that many of you were there and my only regret is that our visits were brief. We had a record number 816+/- participants this year which kept the volunteers and staff on their toes most of the week. Hats off to Kane and Rhonda for exhibiting some true athleticism, as well as Derek and Christie. The grandstands were packed for the finals. I returned from Memphis on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, ate a turkey, caught the flu, missed 1 day of work, discovered that we had a cat and hit the ground running once again..

> Sanctioned Events Now is the time to file your event sanctions for the balance of 2004. If you don't delay you can still beat the $100 sanction fee (but don't tell anyone that I am encouraging you to do that!). But, if you file your sanctions now you are exempt from the fee until Jan 1, 2004.

> Once the program manager is up, you may take advantage of the online features for $50 if you wish. We are still maintaining the current rankings system and will maintain it through the season. Report your event results and memberships - promptly - as you have in the past.

 Rebates Many of your states have outstanding rebates due to your association. We are still applying memberships to the rebates owed the

 states. In addition, yesterday, I pulled the absolutely final rebate report from the USOC database. I will be compiling the fourth quarter rebates over the next week and if you have not submitted a newsletter (and printed one) then please submit to qualify for your state withholding. .

 OXL Membership Card Well, at the Summit in September, all the state presidents and USRA board members in attendance received a nifty plastic membership card. Unbeknownst to many, the cards, carrier envelope and carrier letter were not issued to our specifications. The problems that I discovered and relayed to the OXL group in New York turned out to be enlightening for all of the NGBs using the card program. Since then, they have addressed and corrected all of the problems. Unfortunately, we could not hold up the processing of membership cards and diverted several runs to the old style paper card as this is the heaviest renewal period. Well, I ran a small batch of approx. 400+ cards yesterday at the USOC and will not be printing another paper membership card again. In the past, we printed membership cards twice a month. It is important for you to know that we are limited to one printing per month. The first scheduled printing of the new plastic membership card will be on Jan 10th.

> Online Membership Update On Thursday, Dec 11 at 3:00pm we suspended data entry for memberships and downloaded the 76,000+ records into the new online membership system. If you haven't been to the test site recently - well, it's done. No more testing, the system is live. I was reluctant to sign in but did and honestly can't believe that the data transferred over - for the most part correctly. Ther> are bugs to be worked out but the migration of data was successful. Here is how the launch will unfold. Phase 1 - staff testing through the weekend +

> Monday Phase 2 - general membership will see an access link on the USRA website Monday or Tuesday with instruction for access; this includes state presidents as well and all current and expired members; Phase 3 - state president features will be added later in the week -including search and download features. We want to make sure everything is functioning properly before it is activated especially for you because of the many expanded features. Also next week, a mass e-mail will be sent to all members with specifics of how to access the system, etc. This will accomplish two things, 1) we will be able to determine the bad e-mail addresses and 2) get people to the site. I suspect that once we go live and we begin to generate users, there will still be glitches to work out. It is critical that you do not bombard me - I always love to hear from you - with problems or questions, immediately. But the best way for us to address any snags will be for you to be very specific with your findings -- a screen shot of the problem, along with description sent via e-mail is the best way to go. The little details are currently in the works but will take time for manual updates to occur -- like the correct labeling of associations (the "North Dakota Amateur Racquetball Association" versus "ND Racquetball Association" for example; referee certification expirations (important in NC), adding web addresses for the state sites, etc. The system that we used through the USOC for so long had so many limitations it will take some time to get our data tight.

 Rankings The baseline ranking data has also been incorporated and appears on roughly 1000 male records and 300 female records. Currently, the "match" results from the US OPEN are being evaluated from the TMS system for incorporation into the baseline - and will be the first official event to shuffle the ranking while adding new members who did not appear in the baseline. Wallpaper Mailing I am preparing another mailing of the Wallpaper to include the fourth quarter rebate amounts, a more formal update on the online project, 1 set of state labels and state tournament calendar. Yes, labels one final time. If you'd like more than one set let me know asap. Special thanks to Curt Rettke (VA) for his expert advice and ideas on future projects. In closing, thanks for reading this and have a nice weekend.

 Yours truly,

 Kevin Joyce