Club Meeting Minutes
Sun, June 7, 2020

(approved July 5, 2020)

4:00 p.m. at South Park with social distancing measures

Present: Molly Wood, Becky McClure, Gene Wee, Dee Boeck, Doug Hewitt, Alice Hewitt, Matt O’Reilly, John Hutchinson, Janet Hutchinson, Brenda Groskinsky, Kara Baden

The March minutes were reviewed and unanimously approved.

The club started with a brief discussion of other local running events and what they are doing with COVID-19. Most local races like Homerun 5k, Westward Ho! 5k, NoLaw series 5k are all virtual races. Westward Ho! Virtual Oregon Trail Relay is doing a virtual relay of 2,080 miles that is benefitting Family Promise. Other races like the Bill Snyder Highway Half and 5k and the CASA Superhero Run have been rescheduled for the fall. The Lawrence Trail Hawk’s Skyline Shuffle is going on in July. They will do bottled water and no award ceremonies so that no one is gathering for too long. Sunflower Games are still hosting their events like cross country and orienteering. Kansas Half going forward like normal but has a plan in case they need to adjust or go virtual.

Matt presented the treasurer’s report and circulated the latest bank statement indicating a balance of $18,148.25. Since our last meeting in March, $550 was donated to the CASA Shoe Fund, $550 to the Eudora Middle School CC and $3,000 to Woodlawn Elementary school. There are no outstanding checks.

The club went on to discuss what to do about the Thanksgiving Day 5k if COVID-19 is still an issue in the fall. There was discussion on if the race should be a virtual race or if we should wait until next year to host the race. If social distancing is required it could change a lot of what the race usually looks like, such as headquarters, bottled water, no same day sign ups.

There was some concern about lining up for the start of the race and whether people would have to wear masks. We also talked about having to mail swag if we go with the virtual option. We chatted about swag and what we could do that was cheaper and easy to mail if we needed. Socks and beanies were both brought up as options. If we don’t put a date on them, we can save them for next year if we can’t have the race their year. We ended the discussion with deciding to submit permits to the city and the school district to start the process for this year, knowing we may need to readjust our plans once we are more aware of what COVID-19 looks like in the fall.

There was a brief discussion on if we had any information on whether the Lawrence School District was planning on having Marathon Club next year. Denise Johnson with the school district has no news on that.

The next club meeting will be at 4 p.m. on Sunday, July 5 at South Park again.

Meeting was adjourned at 5:20 p.m.

Submitted by Secretary Kara Baden