Mr. Juby,
And I am calling you that because there are lots of Mikes out there.
You are trying to make me the bad guy here and that is wrong. You had the opportunity to post EVERYTHING immediately after it was decided. In fact, isn't it prudent to post that this season's cards will be $35 before the date they are to go on sale? You show me where I have stepped out of bounds with any question or made any comment, given the facts and lack of public disclosure. It is sad that you "don't care" what the rank and file members of your organization wonder and think.
This year USA Wrestling increased the cost of a competitors card to $21 while coaches remain at $20.
Club registration fee was increased from $40 to $55.
Tournament Sanctions were increased from $25 to $40.
To me it would have been a no brainer to allow those latter two increases to pass on through to our membership. To a club a $15 charter increase would be much less than a $1 per competitor.
The sanction fee is paid when a club operates a tournament as a fundraiser. $15 more dollars is 15 people at the gate for $1 or 15 more $1 raffle tickets or simply an increase in expenses. When clubs are making thousands of dollars from their volunteer efforts the $15 is not going to make a meaningful impact to their bottom line. I would guarantee that not one club would decide to discontinue hosting a tournament over this $15 increase.
This brings us to the USA Cards.
The fact that everyone needs to understand is that a USA Wrestling Card is only $20 for a coach and $21 for a competitor. The additional $15 and $14 go to USA Kansas wrestling. In effect, you are paying for a USA card and a Kansas card but it is delivered as one. Given this, we will pay, based on last year's estimates posted by you, $218,700 for coach and competitor cards to USA wrestling. Kansas will retain $148,800 to use for our programs or to be allocated to whatever. These figures are based upon the use of the present spreadsheet system. One where clubs complete a spreadsheet, email them to Kathy, Kathy reviews them and assigns card numbers, and then uploads this data from Excel into the USA Wrestling database.
All states add on to the cost of the USA card an amount determined by their state organization. The overwhelming majority of states use themat.com to sell their cards online. USA wrestling tags on a $5 charge (this in effect makes their cards $26) for using the online system. These funds are used to absorb the credit card fee and cover the costs of other USA programs.
So, our cards could be as low as $26 if sold online without any Kansas dues being tacked on. If you back out the $2 you are recommending/and have gotten approved then the impact to have online cards would only be $3.
The majority of states and eventually all states will be REQUIRED to eat the $5 online fee and use themat.com to purchase cards through.
This is what I was able to discover from other leaders.
The bottom line, we could have raised the sanction fees and charter fees with little impact to the individuals. Subsequently we could have made the cards $31 and continue as we did last year or $36 and allowed online purchasing without all of the crazy accounting.
This will all roll back to: why do we pay $7000 for a bus to Fargo, why do we give $3000 to this camp, $10,000 to that group, etc... We have not, as an organization, been prudent about cutting costs and programs. Our spending goes up and the "tax" methods we choose can be questioned. We could make more money off of tournaments where our membership is getting a product instead of raising card prices that basically tax everyone not just those who are getting something for their dollars.
USA Kansas wrestling's strength has always come from the rank and file because we are a volunteer organization. I hate to see it start to become "I do this so I need to get paid." organization. If it does, it will not be around very much longer.
I am writing all of this because I DO CARE and I want this organization to outlast both of us.
