Minutes from January 9, 2017
Posted by Michael McIntosh on Jan 16, 2017
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The Casper Rotary Club
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Rotary Club of Casper WY
Meeting Summary
01/09/2017
President Jim Ruble called the meeting to order promptly at 12:28, with the ring of the bell and welcomed everyone to today’s meeting.
Inspiration, Pledge, 4-Way Test:
Glenn Januska
Greeters:
Charlie Shopp and Kevin Murphy were the greeters today, and Kevin introduced the members who brought guests:
- Rotary Exchange Students Tobby and Claudia;
- Visiting Rotarians Roxy Skogen (Five Trails) and Cynthia Olson (Revielle);
- Daron Gruner introduced Matt Grant and Leif Johansson (Today’s speakers);
- Peaches Lynch introduced Micah Larsen;
- Jeff Edgens introduced his wife Janie;
- Lisa Scroggins introduced Wes Cates (John Deere);
- Dean Cline introduced Michael Brown (Long Building Technologies);
- Barry Johnson introduced A.C.Hanneman;
- Dennis Jack introduced Eric Schlidt;
Song:
Gary Pehrson, lead us in attempting to sing “Auld Lang Syne”
Michael Brown, sponsored by Dean Cline was sworn in as a member of our club today, welcome aboard!
Family of Rotary:
Ronna Boril announced that Martha Rakestraw is struggling and having a hard time, she is at home with home health care so thoughts, prayers and visits would be appreciated.
Al Metz announced that Brenda Peters is at Life Care and undergoing some procedures, more prayers are welcome.
Rotarians of the Week:
Steve Loftin nominated those who helped at the Food Bank of the Rockies, Dan O’Dell, Greg Brondos, Jim Allison, Jim Porter, Guy DeWitt, John Griffith, Brad Cundy, and Steven Schnell.
President Jim Ruble nominated all of those who volunteered to be our representative for the victim’s response committee Susie McMurry, Cori Burton, Steve Higginson, Barry Johnson, Tim Monroe, Valerie Roberts, Jeff Edgens, Steve Domonkos, Erin Essary, and Mike Stepp. After drawing a name from the hat Valerie Roberts will be our volunteer.
Denise Prugh nominated Mike McIntosh for being Santa at the Christmas party and doing such a great job. She also nominated everyone who participated in the wrapping party to wrap the gifts, Brad Cundy, Steve Loftin, Anne Ladd and her husband Bruce.
President Jim nominated Denise Prugh for all of her hard work and a very successful party.
Maribeth Plocek nominated Jim Porter and his wife for arranging the Rose Parade trip.
Sheryl Foland nominated Brett Johnson for helping her put together a piece of legislation.
- Dave Simonson gave us an update on the International project in Panama. They have been off for the Christmas holiday for the past few weeks and have just started back up with the hopes to have the first classroom ready by the end of February. There is an opportunity to go to Panama with the NC Rotary team to do some work March 28- April 3, give Dave a call if you are interested in going.
- Our exchange student Claudia is on the KWHS Ski team and they are selling Papa Murphy discount cards to raise money, they are $10 each so if you are interested in helping her out please get in touch with her.
- Roxy Skogen invited all to the Guns and Roses fundraiser dinner on Friday February 10 for the Casper Rotary Clubs’ Foundation. They are also in need of volunteers, please sign up to attend and to help out.
- Brian Deurloo announced that there are Biathlon competitions going on this week and encouraged us to go check it out.
Program (CAMBYR):
PE Richard Schwahn introduced our speakers today, Matt Grant and Leif Johansson from the Casper Area Mountain Bike Youth Racing. Matt and Leif have put together a team of youth who compete in Mountain Bike Races The races have seven categories for the races and there are 100-200 youth in each category. They area consists of WY, CO, and NM teams and they compete in several races each year. They just completed their fifth year of competing and it was their best year yet. They have a roster of 24 youth that compete with them and they separated them into two groups according to their High School, KW and NC. The NC team took 9th place overall and the KW team took 16th place overall for the year. They told us that they train up at the Rotary Park trails by running the trails every Wednesday to keep themselves in shape. They are very grateful for Rotary and the Park. They also have done maintenance on the trails to keep them clean and useable as part of the service they teach the youth they need to perform. When they go to competitions they camp out instead of getting a hotel room so they can have more outdoor experiences with the kids. They have a youth from Sheridan that wanted to be a part of the team so they added him to the team this year. They go to a lot of competitions in different areas of Colorado and the people who put together the races know the Casper kids and is very welcoming to them every time. The kids tend to do well in the higher elevation races because of the training they do on Casper Mountain and being from Casper with the higher elevation. They showed us some of the courses they race and it is amazing to see how long the courses are, 5-7 miles per lap, and some of the races do 2-3 laps with very good speeds and very technical courses. They do a pre-race lap and take about an hour then in the race the kids can do it in less than 20 minutes. Some of the courses they average 15+ MPH, which is very impressive. In 2015 they won the most improved team award which was very exciting. As they work with the kids they try to incorporate fun conditioning things so the kids have fun, stay engaged and keep going. They ride Moab UT, Laramie Peak, among other areas that are hard rides but a lot of fun too. They want this to be a lifelong sport so the kids can keep doing it for their whole life especially since there are so many great places to participate in this sport here in Casper and in Wyoming and surrounding states. This is a great sport to work as a team as well as individually and to do together as a family. If you have kids that want to get involved you can go to a Fat Fish race and talk with Leif there, Fat Fish races are on Monday nights starting in the spring.
President Jim Ruble concluded the meeting at 1:28, with the ring of the bell and reminded us that next week we will be back at the Parkway Plaza.
