First, let me wish you all a happy holiday; I hope the vacation serves you all well and there is plenty of hckey tape in the stockings!

I have been remiss in communicating the progress of the Club over the last 8 months as we planned and executed the 2006-2007 season. I will continue to update you, our members, as the season progresses. Your input is important and helps us to focus on what we think the critical issues might be for your Board of Directors to handle. In this, our first update, I'd like to share with you our vision, where we are with our budget, our ice time policies and issues, and growth.

Vision
The NOVA Ice Dogs are all about exposing our youth and community to the fun and benefits of ice hockey; that is first and foremost in all of our efforts at the Board level. We have aligned with USAHockey, Potomac Valley Hockey Association, Chesapeake Area Recreation League, and Capital Beltway Hockey League to provide a safe and growing experience for our sons and daughters, while keeping it enjoyable. We constantly strive to create the environment that keeps the players wanting to return to the rinks each year; it's that simple.

Budget
When your present Board took over in April, one of our goals was to develop and maintain an annual budget from which to manage the Club's income and expenses. Our ultimate goal in creating the budget was to validate and match fees with our members' needs and desires for our players. As many of you have heard, our first look was not promising; last April the new Board inherited a significant debt owed to the previous year's ice contracts and thus was starting in a hole for the current season. Many board members pitched in, researching ice costs, gaining efficiencies (we had lots of unused ice time last year), and clearing enough reserve to start to grow in quality of our hockey environment. We also initiated some fund raising activities and have continued success there. All in all, I am happy to report that after all of this hard work by the Board members and other extremely dedicated volunteers, the Ice Dogs are solvent and are back on a solid path of growth to the future. The advantage of balancing the budget is that we can now entertain how to move ahead. We have had recommendations that range from more skating skills ice time with paid instructors to buying banners to recognize those teams that have excelled in League play and tournaments. Additionally, we keep an eye on trying to keep fees lower as well; hockey is a pricey sport, and you can be assured that we are aware of this. I solicit your input as to how you would like to see your money spent.

Ice Time
As part of our budget scrub, we found that we had a lot of unused ice and also had policies and processes in place that cost large amounts of money that were of no value. As a result of some streamlining, we had some travel teams that felt like they got the short end of the assigned ice time. Our policy has always been to ensure at least 20 league games for each team, and I understand that we achieved that. Specific issues involved the number of non-league games at the travel level, the scheduling of which had, in the past, been left much to the individual coaches to set up. Unfortunately, in some cases we managed this poorly. We have scrambled to correct this, and hopefully have gained grown with many of the teams that felt shorted. We did learn valuable lessons that we will apply in the future.

Growth
While we were tightening belts, we started other initiatives to help not only with the budget, but increase the quality of hockey at NOVA. We looked into the Ballston rink and a possible partnership with the Capitals. The rink was not ready for us and the hourly rates were preventatively high. We did, however, continue our highly successful relationship with the NHL team through our Pucks to bucks and Mites on ice programs. We brought in Alain Lemieux (former NHL and international player) for a session in October, resulting in largely rave reviews from the membership. As a result, he will return in early January and be available for all teams at practices within the NOVA organization. We continue to provide 100% refunds to our coaches for their certification training under USAHockey, as well as participation in the PVAHA-sponsored "Kid Safe" program. We are researching relationships with popular hockey camps, and are actively pursuing improved goalie training programs. We are expanding our outreach into the Ft Dupont and Tucker Road communities as well.

More soon. Happy New Year, and good luck in the second half of the Ice Dog season

John Rader
President