The meeting started with another great Buffet. PRESIDENT BRUCE called the meeting to order and BRUCE TUNZE led the pledge and Star Spangled Banner amid a sea of red. Many members wore red in honor of our speaker.
TOM LICKLITER offered a nice inspiration. He noted that small actions of an individual can create great things when those actions are combined with others’ actions. A good example is the RCOT Car Show….many small actions that results in a lot of money raised for our designated charities.
PRESIDENT BRUCE told us that HUGH THOMPSON is doing well post surgery and that a Celebration of Life for EMERY BARKER would be held at the Tucson Museum of Art on May 17th at 5pm.
CHRIS KIM, with his debut as Sergeant at Arms, welcomed all of our guests.
Then, PRESIDENT BRUCE introduced our meeting sponsor, Eric Schroeder from Fidelity National Title, who talked to the club for a few minutes.
BOB LOGAN introduced our speaker, Dave Heeke who is the Athletic Director at the University of Arizona. Dave is very passionate about college sports. He’s been the AD at the U of A for the past 6 years. The U of A sports program has 22 different sports that have a combined total of 275 full-time employees and over 300 part-time employees. Dave is proud of the student athletes who have an average GPA of 3.157 and 87% of the student athletes graduate from the U of A. He talked about the importance of the media deal that they negotiate as it contributes a significant amount to the overall budget of the sports program. Having USC and UCLA leave the PAC 12 Conference may hurt that budget and we may once again be the PAC 10 Conference. The future of the conference centers around the finances and the media deal is a big part of that. He noted that the NCAA’s Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) program and Transfer Portal has created an Unrestricted Free Agency for the student athletes and that has complicated things for coaches and the athletic program. At the end of the talk, Dave fielded some really tough questions from our membership and signed the book “ABC’s of Sports.”CHUCK SAWYER was celebrating his birthday and something you may not know about him is that he’s hiked the Grand Canyon four times and is also a new proud grandfather to a baby girl! TOM MOULTON was celebrating his birthday and did you know that he used to work for Mattel and Hasbro writing scripts for kid’s shows like He-Man and the Transformers? SCOTT VAUGHAN was also celebrating his birthday and it was noted that the last time he danced was when he was 12 on the American Bandstand. Happy Birthday guys!
CHUCK SAWYER presented a Blue Badge to TOM MCKINNEY who said a highlight of his membership was working along side of ARNIE JACOBSEN at the Car Show.CHRIS KIM held a 25/50/25 drawing and GENE CASAGRANDE won. He didn’t win the jackpot though.
The following announcements were made:
There are Fellowship Links on our website and it’s bringing in visitors who aren’t members of our club. That’s good!
The Change of Administration (COA) Event will be at the Omni Resort on June 24th.
The Replacement/Social Event will be on May 31st at the Sands Club. All must register.
PRESIDENT BRUCE offered a toast to U of A Athletics, their student athletes and then we were dismissed.
