The Casper Rotary Club
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This week's meeting will be held:
Monday, March 5th, 2018
at the Ramkota Hotel and Conference Center
800 N. Poplar St.
Casper, WY 82601
Greeters:
Jim Ruble
Craig Valdez
Inspiration:
Deb Theriault
Program: tba
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Rotary Club of Casper WY
Meeting Summary
02/26/2018
President Richard Schwahn called the meeting to order promptly at 12:30, with the ring of the bell and welcomed everyone to today’s meeting.
Inspiration, Pledge, 4-Way Test:
Mike Ward
Greeters:
Casey Allison and Charlie Shopp were our greeters today and Casey introduced the members who brought guests:
- Visiting Rotarian Ardell Breed (Reveille);
- Maribeth Plocek introduced Rob and Monika Ratliff;
- Frida our exchange student was also present;
Song:
Gary Pehrson led us in singing “My Country Tis of Thee”
Rob and Monika Ratliff sponsored by Maribeth Plocek, were inducted into the club today. Welcome!!
Garry Mosier gave his classification talk today, he grew up in NW Ohio in a small town. He has three brothers and a sister, his oldest brother as well as an Aunt both had Polio so that makes Rotary very near and dear to him. He attended University in Dayton Ohio and in Munsee Indiana at Ball State University where he got his master’s degree in Public Administration. He is married with 5 children and 6 grandchildren. He has been a Rotarian since 1988 and was a Past President 1997-1998 in the Salina Rotary Club and has served in many capacities. For their fundraiser they raised $80-$90 thousand a year with a big formal charity ball. For 31 years he served as the CEO of a company that gave housing support to people with mental disabilities. They moved to Casper last year as his wife got a job at Wyoming Medical Center. Garry is currently the regional manager for WY Health, a health organization that works with Medicare and Medicaid and health management services.
Family of Rotary:
President Schwahn told us that his daughter a few months back decided to do the Ancestry.com DNA test to see her ethnic make-up. So a few weeks ago while at a game she got an email from a woman who had also done the DNA test and it showed that they were closely related. She said she was adopted and her mom’s name was the same as Richard’s Mom’s name and that her Dad’s name could have been Schwahn. So this started a lot of questions and they found out that his Mom had a baby daughter at the age of 16 and within hours of giving birth the baby was taken for adoption. They did a sibling test and found out that she is his full blown sister that they did not know they had. They have met her and she looks just like his other sister, what a neat experience.
Rotarians of the Week:
- Eric Easton nominated Brad Cundy for doing a fundraiser for the Ski Patrol, he has done that annually for the last 4-5 years and they are very grateful for his help.
- Dale Bohren was nominated for his new job as publisher.
- Dick Jay nominated Ronna Boril for organizing the event at NCHS last Wednesday evening.
- Bob Tarantola nominated Steve Loftin for his interesting write up in the rig this week.
- President Schwahn nominated Jason Cooper for putting together the Rig every week.
- Brett Osborn was nominated for winning the top green chili at the chili cook-off last week, it was also mentioned that Brett went to the Jack Daniels invitational BBQ contest a few months ago.
- Brian Deurloo nominated Becky Byron for stepping up to be the club treasurer.
Student of the Month:
Martha Rakestraw introduced our SOM John Dunlevy from Roosevelt HS, an impressive young man.
Announcements:
- Phillip Rael announced that the Duck Derby preparation is starting, there are signup sheets on each table for volunteers, they do need a couple of chairs and vice-chairs to get organized so please let him know if you can help.
- President Schwahn covered the due payment policy which each table has a copy. They have new policies that cover overdue accounts. This will also be emailed out to each club member.
Program (Casper Coyote Hockey Team):
President Elect Dick Jay introduced our speakers today, Coach David “Smoke” Cole, players, Tyler Rossi (Buffalo NY), Cameron Braun (Calgary Alberta), Dylan Ossachuk (Fort Francis Ontario), and Dallen Neese (Casper WY).
Coach Cole introduced each of the players and let us know that this level of hockey is one of the highest levels of amateur hockey and that their goal is to prepare the players to go on in to College level or the pro hockey level with more of a focus on college so that they can be prepared with a career choice after hockey or if they do not make the pros.
He then turned it over to the players to tell us about themselves.
Dallen started, he told us that he is currently studying at Casper College online, he played for Coach Cole last year in Oregon and was excited to come play in his hometown.
Dylan told us that he is the Goal tender, he lives on a border town with International Fall MN, just a small town. He is a certified fourth class power engineer and is here to play and gain exposure to some of the American Colleges and to get the opportunity to play in College while studying Business and marketing.
Cameron told us that he came to play a few years with Coach Cole and is very happy with Casper and how well they are treated here. He is also taking classes online to study for the SAT and ACT so that he can get accepted to a good university in the U.S.
Tyler told us he also played in Oregon last year for Coach Cole, he wants to also pursue a College education through playing Hockey.
Coach Cole then opened the floor for questions where we learned more about the team and how everything works.
While they are playing they take School classes online or attend College classes in the towns where they are stationed. They usually do part time college because once they start as a FT student then the 4 year clock starts on playing hockey at the college level.
They have very busy schedules, they practice Monday through Thursday starting around 9:30-10:00 then break for lunch after which they do weight lifting or yoga. Then Fridays they usually have games and the schedule depends on how far they have to travel to play Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
The age for Junior Hockey is from age 16 to 21 but normally they have to be age 17 unless they have a prior approval.
Their funding comes from the owners, we have 4 local owners here, and from the ticket sales etc.
The out of town players have host families that take them in for the season and treat them like their own kids. If you are interested in being a “billet family” you can contact the team.
The season runs August 27th through April and they play 51 games plus play-off games if they make it to play-offs which will make it up to 65 games.
This is a very hard sport and they have to evaluate the players to see who can return the following year, which is sometimes very difficult.
Coach said that there are 7 million youth playing the sport nationwide and there are 700 spots in professional hockey. The amateur hockey level has about 2200 spots and the goal is to get to the college level where they have four more years to develop and to hopefully make it into the pro teams.
He said that they are in the toughest division of the Western States Hockey League with teams in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming.
All of the players have great education goals and plans for the future with very good GPA’s.
The Coach spoke a little about the fighting on the ice and how they do not use the stick when they get into it, they just drop the gloves in order to keep the injuries from occurring. The Coyotes are one of the teams with larger players but still are doing their best to play with finesses as well as physicality.
Coach Cole said that he is an Irish Catholic from Belfast and the third generation of hockey coaches in his family. He played and then became a police officer in Calgary. While a policeman he got involved in coaching the game as a way to be involved in the community and has been coaching now for 33 years and has been very blessed to play and coach with some great people.
President Richard Schwahn concluded the meeting at 1:31 letting us know that next week we will be back at the Ramkota and the program will be one of our own club members speaking about mental health issues.
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