The meeting begins

First up - a wonderful video celebrating U.S. Nationals in Spokane. Fun to see the cut of Amanda Evora talking on the phone telling family and friends making the Olympic Team.

Amanda and Mark welcomed the delegates by telling the story of their eight year partnership. Best quote: "Everyone fails but everyone who learns from those failure become champions." Mark introduced a video clip from Olympic roommate, Evan Lysacek, who couldn't be with us since he was skating in Cleveland at the time.  He ended his message asking us all to be sure to vote for him on DWTS.  After his clip, they played a video of his Olympic gold medal performance, which will never get old.

We were also fortunate to have Frank Carroll in attendance to talk about his experience with Evan as well as working with skaters at every level.  Here's a photo of Frank at the Olympics with our fabulous friend and Olympic team leader Lorrie Parker (R) and choreographer Lori Nichols. (Photo stolen from Lorrie's Facebook photo album)

Frank Carroll told a story of a random person at Spokane Nationals who asked him how long he was going to be doing this. He was taken aback, but shared with us that he will continue to coach as long as he has the physical and mental ability to do so.

At 2:07 p.m., Ms. St. Peter called the meeting to order.
The magic numbers for this year's meeting: 591 Full Member Clubs, 15 Provisional Member Clubs with the possibility of 1293 votes. Currently registered: 341 Delegate votes, 421 Proxy votes and 205 Athlete votes for a total of 967 votes.

Since none of the positions have more than one nominees, we voted to forgo the candidate's forum. Yea!!!

Pat St. Peter talked about all the new sponsorships that happened this year including the infamous Snuggie! Part of the deal is that Pat has to wear a Snuggie at all official events and she has leopard version and modeled it for us. She also told us that next year, each section will have their own color (just kiding, we hope). We'll look like a cult!

Looking up at the leadership on stage, I noticed that their chair were nice leather-looking executive chairs. I don't begrudge them these chairs, but just wish we all could have them. These chairs are like sitting on rocks. If the delegates get crabby later, I think it's because of the chairs.