Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all of you,
Here's a few things of gymnastics interest to most of you.

Danny Davis, of Starlite Gymnastics in Shelby, regretfully had to resign from the NC USAG Board at the beginning of December.  Luckily for Danny, unluckily for NC, Danny has signed with a firm in Boston
for a new, non--gymnastics position.  He's probably there right now as this e-mail goes out.  Being that he's a Green Bay fan, he's more than likely enjoying the cold, even though he'll be in Patriot country.  We wish you the best, Danny, and hope you come back home when you tire of New England.

Because Danny's position is now open on the NC Board, I'm soliciting nominations for the position, which will continue until June of "09.  Any professional member is eligible to run for the position.  I rarely clean gymnastics stuff from around my computer, but I did at the end of August, and I think I trashed the ballots and tallies of the "07 election.  I cannot officially say who was the 9th person of the candidates we had.  I'm truly sorry.  So I am asking, please for nominations.  Six months may be enough time that circumstances could have changed for those who ran in May.

Please e-mail the nominations to me at this address.  I will accept nominations until Dec. 30th, and then post the slate on the nc-usag.org website.  Your votes will come  to my e-mail address and we'll hold the balloting open for one week.  There is a Board meeting scheduled for the 12th of Jan. at the Judges Cup site of
International, and the new electee will be eligible to attend.

The second piece of information is that the Olympic Trial tickets and hotel availability for Congress in Philadelphia in June is now open.  I went online yesterday and hopefully made reservations for the Marriott.  One can only reserve two rooms under one name, so you can't reserve a large block.  The cost is $175 per night.  I also went on-line to see what the rooms would cost otherwise, and they were $299 a night.  The travel agency you go to for the hotel is National Travel Systems and click on the sports segment, then to
Congress, then to hotels.  The site address sportsinfo@nationaltravelsystsems.com did not work yesterday, so I just went in to the main website.

A few of you asked about renting a bus to go up as a group.  I don't think it would be any cheaper.  Everything is within walking or subway distance, and from my experience, we'd have a bus driver
inactive for about 4 days, still having to pay all of his or her expenses. I'm going to look into train fares and will let you know how much that might be.

I hope you all have a good holidays.  The quality of gymnastics is really improving, as proven by the quality of the compulsory State Meets.  Taking time away from gymnastics for a few days may get you calmed for the optional season.

Thanks,
Jennie