The WTSC AGM was held on Monday night out in Wilkinstown. We were afraid that the falling participation and attendance numbers we’ve seen (which we’re fairly sure the economy imploding might have something to do with) but we were happily surprised when a good number of people turned up and were eager to get involved.
The end result is that Geoff Cooney is in the hot seat as Chair for the coming year, and is all fired up with a bunch of ideas. Several of us have stayed on for this – I’m still there as Secretary, Richard Stapleton Jr is still there as Treasurer, Marina Cunningham is still Children’s Officer and Jimmy Byrne is still looking after the Archery side of things. Mark Casey is joining in as the Press Officer, so he’ll create more content for the WTSC website, and Colm Brereton will be helping out with graphic design work and other things during the year; and six of our members volunteered to do the NTSA Club Instructor course so we’ll have them all trained up to act as range officers for a night a week from now on so we can go back and reclaim all of our shooters who did the Beginners Courses, which we’ll keep on running albiet at a less frentic pace.
The Beginners Courses led to a lot of discussion, mainly about how to capitalise on them, which we haven’t managed to do this year (almost all of those who did the course didn’t continue on). We still have their contact details and we’ll be bringing them all back in and explaining how we’ll have a night every week where they can come down and shoot with an experienced person there to keep an eye out and help them. It won’t be as formal as the course, but there’ll be enough of a structure there that they won’t have to worry about anything.
Membership dues stayed at the same level, though we’ve brought in a special offer for Juniors (first Junior at full price, second and subsequent Juniors from the same family at half price). The club’s finances in general are healthy enough, though we need to become more financially independent from Geoff, as he’s been paying things like electricity bills and so on, so we need to start picking up our own tab that way, and that’s something this year will see.
At any rate, we saw a lot more energy and enthusiasm at the meeting than we thought we were going to see, and that’s always a pleasant surprise – maybe 2009/10 will be a shining year in WTSC history after all!
) strings for the bow. 
Hooray for the right bracing height!
