News

Spring 2025 Rep meeting minutes
2/25/2025
Minutes for the Spring LITL Rep meeting
February 25, 2025
Another Broken EGG

The meeting for the LITL Spring season was opened at 9:30 am by presiding President Sally McClanahan (Inverness Country Club)

Sally welcomed all Reps and officers to the meeting.

LaVonda Keel, (CCB) acting as Secretary for Tracy Crutchfield called the roll of clubs.
All club reps with the exception of Hoover, Lake Cyrus, MBC, and Wald Park were present.
All level Coordinators were present except Nancy Thomas, and all officers were present with the exception of Tracy Crutchfield (Secretary) and Betty Austin (Treasurer)

LaVonda presented the minutes from the Fall meeting as posted on the website, a motion to approve the minutes was made by Heather Morgan (CCB) and seconded by Janet Simonetti,(Old Overton) the motion passed with a verbal affirmative.

Sally, acting on behalf of Betty gave the treasure’s report, after most expenses the balance stands at $8650.70 with a portion of the winter gifts purchased despite the winter season having not concluded. A motion to approve the amended treasurer report was made by Tracy Smith and Seconded by Dee Carroll. The amended portion covered the fact that originally no winter gifts had been purchased when in fact some had, but the pickleball gifts for the fall and winter had not yet been acquired.

Annemarie Wilson VP scheduling (RCC) gave the scheduling report. A special thanks was given to the scheduling committee: LaVonda Keel, Nancy Thomas and Sally McClanahan.
47 teams were registered for the Spring 2025 season down from 52 teams in the Fall and 52 teams from the previous spring.

Season starts March 3rd, Spring Break week BYE is the week of March 24th, with the exception of RCC Kyle which follows the Tuscaloosa spring break schedule of March 11th. Their match will be at the end of the schedule.

The 5.3 division had five teams in it, four of which had to be away April 1st (no fooling) so the two Pelham teams will play each other at alternative courts or will choose a different day to play each other; both captains have been emailed this.
Schedules are now considered final.

LaVonda Keel gave the ethics report, move ups and move down requests can be found on the LITL.org website. LaVonda urged Level Coordinators to be mindful of court positions being played especially on move down and folks staying at their level after a first letter has been received. LC’s also need to remind captains that strength of the day is sill required even though move ups can occur on any court position if stats are met. Greystone 5.0 has had consecutive team wins and will be monitored this season. Reps were encouraged to let their captains know that LC’s need to be notified when matches are rescheduled.

Heather Morgan and Janet Simonetti, gave a combined Pickleball report encouraging club reps to get the word out about the league. Matt will be emailed about adding Pickleball rules as a form on the website. Currently the league plays to 21 points which is not exactly official pickleball rules, but was done to allow more play time for the folks playing. When we can grow the league from five teams, we can adjust the points and make upgrades to the website. A suggestion was made to make fliers for the Magic city folks and the Hoover met folks.
Currently due to the lack of teams there is no rating for players and the division is an open division .

At this point food was being served, so Sally gave the blessing.

Tracy Smith VP prizes (Greystone Y) displayed the prizes for the Fall winner and runner up teams, (tennis blankets and travel bags). The fall winning teams were on the handout so they were not read out loud. Division winners can also be found on the LITL website.

Winter winners will get tennis towels. Winter is still open so no winners have been determined as of today. As soon as the season is finalized Tracy will deliver the prizes to the winning teams.

Sally put out a request for folks to volunteer for the Susan Briggs Tournament urging the need for new blood and ideas. The committee will need to start planning in the spring for a Fall tournament date. Volunteers will be needed for marketing, accounting, communications, scheduling, prize solicitations, and food vendors. Sally will double check with JC Freeman (Inverness pro) for verification of a tournament date.

Dee Carroll (Pelham Racquet) announced a scholarship application from the James Lewis Tennis Center for the SB committee to consider $2500 would be used to purchase new equipment for their programs. Annemarie Wilson assured the reps that the monies granted would not impact the seed money that is maintained in the account as start up funds for the next year’s tournament. Gina McIntosh (BHRC) also mentioned a need from Restoration academy for funding of their programs and clothing donations. Gina was encouraged to have the academy apply for a stipend next year, and that a donation box would be set up at the tournament to collect clothing for the academy.

Only one rule change was submitted which was to allow 2.5 players to interchange subs from each team if a club was fielding two teams. The rational was 1. The teams only play in the winter and have no lower subs to pull from 2. Would put us in alignment with the SC rules on this practice. Janet Simonetti made the motion to approve and the rule change was approved without discussion.

Tracy Smith distributed door prizes and with no further business, Sally adjourned the meeting at 10:16 am.