Lets not just kill it, lets stomp on it, beat on it, and dismember it just to make sure its dead. They are thinking like a startup, focus on the image and the marketing, except most startups are also obsessed with generating funding. Not so much here.

And upon further review and echoing JT's post, there is a juniors Elite person to be named as well as two region reps also.

1) USAV needed a new board, they had some god awful amount of people on the board, not sure exactly how many but every single constituency was represented, and more. It was untenable, nothing got done because of paralysis by analysis.

2) USAV wasn't about to change their board until the USOC threatened them.

3) The 1992 Olympics was supposed to be the banner year for female sports soccer won gold, softball won gold, volleyball laid an egg. The only bright spot was beach volleyball. So the only monetary awards the USAV, as the NGO, was able to receive came from beach volleyball. Did USAV have a program to develop beach? Nope. Come Sydney, they had maybe a couple of people working with the AVP. Bottom line AVP threatened to certify themselves as the NGO for beach volleyball, taking the money away from the USAV because the AVP is the one spending the money to develop beach players. So now USAV loves beach, which is why the representation of all those beach people on the board and there is now a beach development program involving the AVP

4) No one has pointed out the representation of the mass media on this board. I am not sure that kind of expertise could help the USAV get the TV time that they so badly want.

5) The way the board is set up, juniors has only one voice out of 12 on the board. The regions have a direct interest but they have other fish to fry. USAV wants to institute a web based registration system. Great idea you say, its about time. Well, instead of going with a commercial grade software, they paid lots of money to get a "unique" software. Untested and performance unknown. Why go this way? Traditionally the regions collect the membership fees for the USAV and they send a fraction that fee to the USAV. With this web based software the membership fees goes straight to the USAV and then they will distribute the change to the region. Do you think the regions are happy? Why should you care? Because the regions do more grunt work than the USAV in registering members, processing paperwork, and run more tournaments than the USAV. remember that the qualifiers are all operated by other entities other than the USAV. The only tournament the USAV operates directly is JO's and adult nationals. THAT battle should be interesting. If the regions balk at changing the way the membership fees are split, juniors will have a hard time organizing itself without the regions. Remember that much of the region manpower are volunteers.

6) JVDA has a good idea. I like the way their mission reads, but I will reserve judgment until I can see how they react. So far the USAV has been somewhat arrogant in dealing with JVDA. Communications are more about dictating the terms of JVDA's surrender.