I’ve been involved with ERSA for a number of years now and helping out at the races and this continues through to the national races. In 2008 I stepped back a bit from the scene as I became somewhat disillusioned with various aspects of the sport. Like any sport skiing certainly has it’s own set of unique characters, personalities and politics. How much you become involved is entirely up to yourself but in a sport that has been crying out for helpers all over the place it can be very disheartening at times.

Anyway last year I stepped back into things and regained the enthusiasm I had previously, partly due to Natasha wanting to do more and partly because I could see so many places where we could improve things. So looking around last year one of the areas which was very evident where we needed greater support was help running the races in ERSA. So that was the first aim of the season find a few more willing volunteers. Fortunately through the season this worked well and we now have more people involved and a good group of people, which in turn makes running the races more enjoyable.

Early on in the season when it became clear how things were working, what people were willing to help, seeing places where we could improve, I took the decision that at the following AGM in the October I would stand for chair of ERSA. It gave me most of the season to make sure that the various roles would be filled and we would have the right people there to support the region moving forwards. Come the AGM it was a straight forward process of being voted in and then ensuring that some other parents took up the other roles. Unfortunately the only role we couldn’t fill initially was the one of treasurer, although we have one temporarily for this year.

So this year at some point we will still need a new treasurer, hopefully someone out there will volunteer before i get there to hassle :). If you are reading this and are interested give me a shout. It’s not an onerous role in fact it is very simple and straight forward, money goes in from a few races and we pay out a few invoices throughout the year. As I say it is not a complex role very simple and you don’t even need to be at all the races.

Since taking over as chair we have been working on a few things in the background and looking at what needs to be done over this coming year and the future years. It’s going to be a very interesting year ahead as we move into a season where move racers are looking to focus on indoor only. There is a drive nationally which clearly feeds into the regions and clubs to increase participation in Snowsports and ultimately the races and at the same time give value for money. So challenging times ahead as we move into 2010. The region has been a bit stagnant in the clear 2-3 years on moving things forward for a multitude of reasons, and looking at how things have progressed elsewhere can see we have some catching up to do. But it is also clear the we will need to work at several areas over the coming months to keep things moving. Part of this also means looking at how the committees are setup and used throughout the region and how we can make best use of what is there today and work out a way of bringing more people on board and spreading the load, but this is something that will take a little bit of time.

We are very close to publishing the ERSA race calendar for this year, it’s taken a bit longer than we would have liked as most clubs were waiting on the national calendar to be published first. With so many races on the calendar now it is proving tricky to get good dates for the regional races. Some of them will definitely clash with other races but hopefully we can keep the impact to a minimum.

In the meantime if you have reached this far and have any thoughts or comments please drop me a line.