Letter from the President | February 2013

While the players enjoy the off-season, the Executive Board and Program Coordinators have been busy at work. The winter months are filled with season wrap up, AFL reporting requirements, USAFL annual tax return preparation, and upcoming season planning. In the following months, I will update you on different activities and areas where the league needs volunteers.

To note, this past season has been busy with website development. Thanks to Member-at-Large Kathryn Hogg, we are instituting a League Management System (LMS) which will track player participation, games played, and ultimately, eligibility for the National tournament. This has been a long term vision of the league for the website, however, requirements and costs have been the main barrier to development. It's important to note that our Nationals point eligibility requirements moves our technical needs outside of common off-the-shelf systems, which is why we require custom development. Past investigation of companies who could provide such a system quoted the league up to $20,000 per year for a service. Luckily, the USAFL has Kathryn to thank for her time, effort, and website development skills.

Our goal is to use this system to track all games, both intra-city and metro competitions, to gain accurate numbers of participation and accumulated points. This will eliminate the need for manual processes for both teams and league administration, as well as provide transparency for all teams going into the Nationals weekend. A test version of the system is being used in the upcoming months for the winter metro competitions and we look forward to a league-wide rollout this summer.

The league will be conducting conferences for club administration to ensure that all clubs are knowledgeable on using the system. For players to gain points towards Nationals, they will have to have paid registrants (there is a 7 day grace period post games for registration to occur). This is a major step for the league to ensure all rules are followed. Please send us feedback as we expect to have on-going development of the site.

As always, thank you to your commitment in growing Australian football in the US. I welcome feedback, questions, or thoughts. Shoot me an email at president@usafl.com.

Andy Vanica, President
UNITED STATES AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE
president@usafl.com | @usrevo4