The meeting was called to order at 7:15pm by President Eduardo Rodriquez. Eduardo welcome the members and introduced the SRA/SYRA guest speakers. The minutes from last months meeting, March 20, 2001 are posted on the VCRA web site. The treasury report indicated that there was $1423 in checking and $829 in savings. Eduardo announced that contract negotiations with ECRSL were completed and the fees will be $.95 a minute for three (3) referees in the fall.

Fred Margy provided a presentation on referee Assessment. The role of Assessment is to help you the referee get better. He encouraged all the members to have an Assessment and step up to grades 7 and 6. Eduardo stated that it is the goal of the VCRA to have all of its members Assessed this year. Fred went over the items that are evaluated in an Assessment. He outlined the steps of how to obtain an Assessment and who was available to do an Assessment for grades 8 to 7, 7 to 6 and 6 to 5. The grade 8 to 7 Assessment is done on U19 full-length games. A question was asked from one of the members, since a large number of our games are done on the Youth level U10, U11, U12, U13, U14, U15, U16, U17; How does a referee get Assessed at this level and improve. Fred recommended that a Friendly Evaluation be done using the Assessment criteria by senior referees in the association and we use the Buddy system to evaluate each other in games.

Bob Hope provided us a briefing of the problems with referee registration at the state and federation level. At the state level the registration form must have the re certification form and check before it is entered into the state database and sent on to the Federation level. At the Federation level the registration is done in batches. The Federation uses Bulk mailing, which is non-profit 3^rd class mail. Third class can easily get lost. One suggestion is to increase fees by $2 and sent everything First class mail. Some of problems that occurred in past years were discussed, i.e. Instructor never sent in paper work after a clinic. Bob recommended that if you are a grade 8, send in the Federation paperwork even if you don’t have re-certification paperwork. Bob set up individual one-on-one interviews with all members present at the meeting that had problems with their registration. This was a great help in straightening out member problems.

Heros Baghoumian briefed us on the issues that face us as referees. He stated that all Problems –we solved together. He will make himself available to help the VCRA with anything we need. We as referees need to commit ourselves to the VCRA to help it improve. One of the issues is that last year there was 2000 new referees and this year 1500 of them disappeared. We need to improve our mentor program and support new referees. There are 40 Referee Association in CYSA-S. The largest is the Inland Empire with over 450 referees. They have their own Mentor program. We as Referees have to be our own Assessor and Mentors and help each other get better. Don’t criticize a fellow referee in public. Talk to each other in private. We have to do our own recruitment for new referees. The Best source for new referees is the colleges and junior colleges.

The Santa Barbara Tournament is May 12, 13 2001: Members were asked to sign up or e-mail Joe Campisi with their availability.

Next meeting scheduled for 3^rd Tues. of May 2001 at the same location in Oxnard.

Meeting was adjourned at 9:12 pm.