The meeting was called to order at 7:10 PM by Chairman Art Tokle.

Moved (Graves, Fairall) to accept the minutes of the Spring Meeting held April 21, 2007. Passed.

Financial Report: A printed report, several pages in various colors, prepared in Doug Hoffman's office, was distributed. Chairman Tokle invited questions, but there were none.

Report on the Summer just ended: Matt Cook reported that the addition of Casey Colby to the NYSEF coaching staff has been a great help, relieving Matt of an over-load of duties. Casey has largely assumed the task of big-hill coaching. Soon Sean Burke will be back on board to work through the winter with the little kids, leaving Matt to do many other of his NYSEF tasks.

Summer in Lebanon: Jon Farnham reported that the Lebanon Outing Club is still jumping the 23 meter hill every Thursday evening and has extended their string of jumping every month to more than 121 months (over ten years). The most dependable jumpers have been the Lebanon Masters group, and the Dion Cup competition turned out to be a de-facto Masters championship. Thursday jumping is planned into November, after which the snow guns will be set up.

North American Junior-1 Championships: Art Tokle reported (standing in for Dan Warner) that the Championships, originally scheduled for Lake Placid, were summarily moved to the new Vancouver Olympic jumps. Apparently this involved no discussion, no give and take, but rather was presented as a fait accompli, which angered a number of Eastern officials.
Tokle suggested that the facilities may not be ready by winter and warned that if Vancouver cannot carry out their responsibilities for the Nor-Am event, that they should not assume that Lake Placid will happily pick up the task on short notice.

Norge Training and Competition: Jon Farnham, who made the trip with the junior jumpers and joined in, jumping the 70 meter hill, reported that it was a very good session. Two families, the Glasders and the Browns, opened their doors to the Eastern contingent, who reciprocated by behaving as model guests. Jon said that we should all be proud of the Eastern Juniors, both in their behavior and their skiing. Eastern skiers took the top two places in the Ladies Class (Tara and Nina) and the top three in Junior-1 (Frenette, Dodds and Delaney).

Masters Jumping: Don West reported that the 2008 U.S. National Masters Age Group Championships are scheduled on January 26-27 at Norge Ski Club, Fox River Grove, Illinois, and that the 2008 IMC will be in Taivalkoski, Finland, running from Feb. 25 to March 2. Eastern representation has grown at the U.S. Nationals with the participation of the Lebanon Masters team, and this year we expect to see Mark Breen at Norge as well, possibly building the Eastern team up to seven competitors.

Nordic Officials: Art Tokle (standing in for the new officials association president, Dan Warner) reported that Martina Lussi has just finished her certification process. in addition, Jody Graves and Bill Ryan are in the process to become judges, while Joe Freire is doing on-the-job training as Chief of Competition.
(Later, by e-mail, Peter Claus submitted the following list of new Officials Association officers:
President - Dan Warner
First VP - Peter Claus
Second VP - Mark Levasseur
Secretary - Galen Sayward
Treasurer - Mike Sayward.
Congratulations to all five.)

Winter 2008 Competition Schedule: Don West slowly read through the schedule, weekend by weekend, and a few changes and updates were noted.
The most significant change was the removal of the Harris Hill competitions. The Harris Hill group has committed to rebuild the inrun trestle with approximately its old profile, but now it looks like construction will not be completed by winter, so they they have asked that their Feb. 16 & 17 events be removed from the 2008 schedule. The Feb. 16 junior competition remains, and the suggestion was made to schedule a second little-hill meet in the Upper Valley on Feb. 17 to make the long drive more rewarding.
Tom Dodds (FS) and Jon Farnham (LOC) agreed to move both of their competitions to the Jan. 19-20 weekend (Lebanon on Saturday, Hanover on Sunday) and the tentative Vermont Academy event was slid back one week to Jan. 13.
Matt Cook agreed to clean up all the details the entire small hill schedule before the snow comes, contacting Vermont Academy and Newport, among others.
The schedule posted at SkiJumpEast.com will be updated from time to time to keep it current.

Junior Olympics: Jennie Frenette and Martina Lussi will again share the job of Junior Olympic Team leader at the 2008 event in Ishpeming, Michigan.

Continental Cup: North America will host just one Continental Cup competition in the coming season, in Iron Mt. on Feb. 16 & 17, 2008.

Silent Auction: Marianne Fairall didn't have the final numbers but hoped that the silent auction might have raised a thousand dollars.

Active Venues: Art Tokle asked the group to run through those places where kids still might start ski jumping. The list included high school activities at Plymouth, Newport, Hanover, Lebanon and Kennett. Someone mentioned that Walter Malmquist is working with beginners at his old school, Holderness. One of the two Nashua High Schools has dropped jumping because no skiers signed up last year. Nobody knew if Gould Academy is still active in jumping.

Club News:
All the club reports had one common message "We need more kids!"
LOC: Jon Farnham reported that things are going on much the same at Storrs Hill. He suggested that we all encourage New Hampshire high school jumpers to obtain USSA competition cards early in the season and be active in our events.
NYSEF: Matt Cook reported that things in Lake Placid are going well, and reiterated the value of Casey Colby joining the NYSEF coaching staff.
SWSA: Ken Barker reported that Salisbury has continued with construction and improvement projects. Some of these are preparations for the time, not too many years in the future, when they finally build their new tower. This year they have completed a small cross country course which will have snow making.
Larry Stone will come down and talk to students at the Salisbury schools.
[End of club reports]

Other Items:

Ski Jumping Video: Joe Freire reminded the group that we had agreed in a prior meeting that a video would be a good recruitment tool, and mentioned that he had found a group of high school students looking for projects as they trained in the production of videos. He will continue his discussions with this group.

Anecdote: Ken Barker reported that SWSA was sued, a nuisance suit, as a result of the fireworks shown after their night jumping last winter. The USSA was a great help in getting the suit dismissed, and Ken suggested that we not be so cynical about paying our annual USSA dues.

The time and place for the spring meeting will be determined well before spring.

Moved (Farnham, Hoffman) to adjourn the meeting. Passed. The meeting was adjourned at 8:08.

Respectfully submitted, Don West (Secretary).