Upon its acceptance as an independent USAV Region, the Arizona Region created its own Board of Directors and governing documents. With a membership of less than 3000 in 1998, the Board of Directors consisted of five representatives who dealt with policy issues and had responsibility over many operational aspects of the Region. Shortly after becoming a Region, Becky Hudson was hired to deal with many of the operational issues that could be handled in the Arizona Region Office. From 1998 to 2024, the Region membership flourished to over 13,000 forcing the Region staff expansion to a modest four. The workload has still grown much faster than the staff size while the duties and responsibilities of the Board members have remained the same.

What used to be a small, reasonable list of duties of each Board member during the junior girls’ season to help the Region run has exploded into a lengthy list of responsibilities throughout the entire year. While growth is something that the Region embraces and enjoys, that same growth makes it unreasonable and unfair to demand that a Board member with a full time job (and a family) be expected to find the time to respond to a large number of e-mails, communicate with members of their Division, write newsletter articles about their Division, generate budgets and calendars and confer with other members of their Division before making decisions or authorizing work. In some cases, these board members also work as club directors, coaches or officials as well.

This increasingly heavy workload has generated some frustration for everyone – Board members, staff and members alike. Unfortunately, some work has taken longer than necessary, some inquiries have been delayed or even gone unanswered and what used to be regular communication with members of Divisions has become less regular with some deadlines being missed. None of these examples occurred because of a lack of desire, interest or concern for the Region – they have been due to the increasing demands on everyone’s limited time.

After speaking with many members of the Region, it was decided, as a Board, that the time had come for the Region to move away from what has been called a “Working Board” (the Region’s old model where Board members had policy and operational duties) to a “Policy Board” (more like corporations where Board members are only concerned with policy issues and leave all of the operational aspects of the Region to the staff). This major decision frees the Board members to focus on policy and planning for the Region and lets the staff deal with the operational tasks that need to be addressed.

For many, if not most, members of the Region, the change to a Policy Board will go unnoticed. Board positions will remain the same and elections will take place to fill those Board positions. Current Board members will continue in their roles and will now be able to focus on “bigger” issues like planning and budgeting for the Region instead of serving on the front line responding to phone calls, e-mails and text messages. The Board will continue to meet, as usual, but the conversations will transition more to policy issues and much less talk concerning operational topics.

From now on, members of the Region will be encouraged to begin any inquiries by contacting the Region Office first. From there, one of the staff should be able to respond very quickly. If the staff member doesn’t know the answer immediately, they will know where to get the answer and provide the answer in a timely manner. Some current staff will have expanded roles (compared to the past) but this has been discussed with them and they are very willing to take care of the operational tasks assigned by the Board. All of this means that Board members will no longer have the additional pressure to complete operational tasks being they are already short on time.

This change is designed to benefit current and potential members of the Arizona Region as well as parents of junior members. It involves more changes than most members will notice but it will take a little time. This is a significant change and the Board will move in a slow and deliberate fashion over the course of this season as operational duties are moved from Board members and reassigned to staff. Most of this will go on behind the scenes but the Board feels it is important to inform our members about a change that is being made for their benefit. We hope members and parents of juniors will appreciate the effort being made to improve customer service at the Region.