GFR Falling apart?
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
Running theme is “unauthorized” and “without board approval”. Yikes! |
Anonymous
So whose responsibility is it to sign contracts? Staff or Board? What does the bylaws say? If RS had delegated authority to sign contracts of this scale before new board member came on board, they will have a hard time proving their case. |
Anonymous
Link to filing? |
Anonymous
bylaws clearly state the board has to approve all contracts. meeting tonight was complete shit show that only made them all look far more guilty of malfeasance and cover ups than ever. |
Anonymous
Do they post minutes from meeting? |
Anonymous
lol no. they had their lawyer there and didn’t answer basic questions unrelated to lawsuit. she’s dumb as rocks and had zero clue what was even in bylaws. |
Anonymous
| It is ridiculous that the board members are elected by the other board members and as paying members we have no say in who represents us. When they elected AP half the board members who "represent" us couldn't be bothered to ask a question of the candidates. Then when they had to fill the spot vacated by ML rather than elect any of the very qualified current parents who had applied RS "recruited" HW to come back to the board. HW doesn't have a child at GFR and is a paid employee at the club. RS is going out of his way to put his friends on the board. I wonder what the lawyer who "represents" the club thinks about the way the board has structured these self-serving bylaws. |
Anonymous
this is how all local soccer clubs work - look at mclean or vienna's bylaws, they are also run this way. expecting 1/3 of the membership to step up to vote for a board member is impossible. out of thousands of club members, only about 50 people even showed up last night amidst all of this chaos and the majority didn't even speak and/or seemed absolutely fine with the way things are run (myself included). most of the parents who spoke were mad about specific issues with their own kid and couldn't care less about the club as a whole. |
Anonymous
| Were we at the same meeting? There were definitely more than 50 people there and plenty of comments had to do with transparency, communication and asking the board to commit to an audit. Some people did have questions about individual teams or players and the board, thankfully, asked those parents to take those offline. Plenty of other sports organizations in our area have figured out how to allow their members to vote. Why is our bar how other, arguably, messed up soccer programs are running themselves and not what is best practice across youth sports? |
Anonymous
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I attended the meeting and it was clear that there was a significant contingent in attendance who supported ML’s takeover attempt [ML the board member, not the coach], largely (with a couple exceptions) from the boys side. Frequent interruptions from this contingent limited the ability of RS, NM, or other board members to respond. I think there was also a significant number of folks on the other side of this issue at the meeting, particularly from the girls’ side folks who had more direct experience with the TF coaches, but they tended to be less disruptive so didn’t get as much chance to speak. My DD is on the girls side and on one of the teams affected by the efforts to remove the TF coaches, and my primary concern is retaining these high quality coaches for my DD’s development, so I guess I have some bias here, but it remains the case that the takeover effort was highly disruptive and I’ve still seen no reason (including in ML’s resignation letter or the allegations in the lawsuit) why the level of disruption caused by ML’s takeover attempt was merited.
If there are concerns about financial processes or board controls, those can be worked out within the Board and/or in the off-season, rather than in a manner that is highly damaging to the club. ML’s supporters tried to deny this, but the timing of the disruption—just a couple weeks before tryouts—plainly hurt the club’s retention and recruiting, as everyone in the affected age groups knows and the statistics shared at the meeting showed. The ML-led Board put out a “proposed” coaching slate that literally had “TBD” for some teams, had individual coaches purportedly (and unbelievably) covering 4-5 teams, and lacked the quality of coaching across the board, at least on the girls’ side, that TF had brought to the club. I don’t know why ML’s supporters at the meeting refused to acknowledge that the disruption was damaging rather than just accepting and justifying it. Nor has any reason ever been offered for why the timing suddenly became acute in early April 2025. The TF contract and other issues raised had all been in place for a year or more by that point, and nothing offered yet shows any change in April that required sudden and disruptive action. Why couldn’t these issues wait until the summer to work out through constructive engagement rather than in ways damaging to the club? I don’t know the real drivers on the timing because nothing’s been offered, but from the outside the timing certainly appears as though it was chosen to inflict the most harm. Why take these actions in early April with no trigger and no plan on how to address the giant hole in coaching it created just weeks before the typical NoVa tryout period? What changed in early April that warranted doing this much harm to the club? I’ve never seen any answer to this timing question in all the rumors and complaints offered on this board. Why was it a problem in April and not apparent in December? Why couldn’t it wait until June? Given that there is active litigation, it’s not surprising that the Board was not inclined to “litigate” the merits with ML’s supporters in the room. No sensible lawyer would advise that. But the Board presentation did address some of the significant claims in the lawsuit. First, contrary to ML’s complaint, the presentation made clear that the TF contract was approved by the Board in the first instance and ratified again after ML’s interregnum. Second, the presentation made clear that RS received no compensation through the TF arrangement. While of course the evidence might show otherwise, given that the Board’s lawyer surely vetted the presentation, it seems unlikely there is no support for these claims. Some of ML’s supporters seemed to think that the mere fact that some coaches were contractors rather than employees was a problem, but there’s no evidence structuring compensation differently was detrimental to the club or the players. If a nonprofit foodbank buys food from a grocery store instead of having its own employees grow it, that can still serve its nonprofit mission. As long as my club fees are the same and don’t go up, why do I care how coaches’ compensation is structured on the back end? I could see that there might be some equity concerns if all coaches weren’t fairly compensated, but like any institution, there are differences in performance and licensing that mean that some coaches might be compensated differently than others. And NM at least stated that coaching compensation was comparable across groups. One heckler complained that the TF contract was sole source rather than blindly and competitively bid, but while taking three bids for a supplier of printer paper and toner might make sense, we don’t want the lowest cost, generic “Acme Coaching” serving as TD and director of coaching and leading our teams. Actual qualifications and track record matter and so competitive bidding would make no sense in this context unless you don’t care who is coaching your kids. I also think it was unfortunate that these concerns so thoroughly dominated the meeting when my other DD is on the rec/house side, which is half the club in revenue terms and far more in number of kids involved. Rec parents have an equal stake in the club and got short shrift at this meeting bc of the vocal contingent supporting the takeover attempt. I don’t doubt that governance processes and financial controls at GFR, like at any institution, could be improved. But if you think a stronger or different conflict of interest policy would benefit the club, or some other governance change is needed, the best way to accomplish that is constructive engagement, not disruption and litigiousness. If you think there should be improvements, go to work constructively, not with antagonism and disparagement. RS might at times become defensive, but NM (apart from one unfortunate quip) was calm and engaged throughout the meeting, and impressively so given the accusations being thrown his way and the refusal to afford him an uninterrupted opportunity to respond. If you actually want to make the club better, and not just act out, put in the hard work of building consensus instead of just throwing bombs. |
Anonymous
Well. Said. By the way, the 2 guys who sat with the lawyer and distanced themselves from the rest of the BoD were the 2 who sided with ML and should have been the one's answering a lot of the questions instead of sitting there like they had nothing to do with it. The rest of the board answered the difficult questions and tried to maintain order when it was those 2 who are directly responsible for everything that went down the past 2 months! The board members who support TF and RS were stuck defending the decisions made by ML and the other 2. |
Anonymous
Answered questions where? They couldn’t even answer a question about the bylaws because of the lawsuit. They also lied and said the by laws had been up on the website, but that was only very recently as seen in this very thread. The dodged a question about conflicts of interest in the BoD contracts because it doesn’t exist!! When someone asked about takeaways from the Q&A they couldn’t form an answer because they didn’t care to listen and instead pointed to the premade PowerPoint. I also find it laughable that PP was claiming that 4-5 teams for a coach is unrealistic while simultaneously supporting NM and TF. How many counties are they coaching in? How many states? How many teams? There was so much gaslighting in that cafeteria last night and lies in that presentation. They purposely scheduled it on a weeknight when parents were either stuck at home or practice, and didn’t address any of the questions sent in beforehand. This should’ve been live-streamed at the very least to give parents an opportunity to be involved remotely. I don’t understand why it’s not in everyone’s best interest to get an audit. It puts all of this speculation to bed and we as a club can move on. We don’t need to be divided by ML or RS supporters. This is all so silly. I’m glad that PP and many others have had great experiences with NM and TF staff as their coaches. Unfortunately, that was not NM and ML were hired to do. NM is first and foremost your TD and if he’s only succeeding in advancing a few girls teams, he’s neglecting several others that pay the exact same time and money that you do. TF simply did not deliver on their contract; which despite what was said last night, was one signed more than six months ago. |
Anonymous
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The disruption of the Board was not about whether TF/NM were living up to their contract, it was about, among other things, whether the contract was properly authorized at all.
If you have concerns about the performance of TD duties by NM, by all means take those up in a constructive fashion with RS or NM. Of course, the disruption caused by the purported cancellation undoubtedly took time away from TD duties, and it would be unreasonable to expect progress on those duties after the ML-led Board purported to cancel the contract until it was reinstated, or during the triage necessary to repair that damage afterwards. But if you think more should be done over the summer to prepare a curriculum for all team and train coaches on it, I don't have any issue with raising them. The right way to address those types of issues would be good faith, constructive engagement with the Board or by members bring concerns directly to NM or RS. But those shortcomings, if any, do not justify the damage and harm that was done by the ML-led takeover, nor were they offered as the justification for those decisions in April. I have no objection to a reasonably priced audit that doesn't drive up costs--although there was some irony when the same people at the meetings who are pushing the complaints in the lawsuits are complaining, at the same time, about the legal fees required to respond. And I may well support other reasonable Board governance reforms. Should there be more independent directors? Should there be two member-elected directors? Are there ways to make board decisionmaking more transparent? I'm happy to have constructive conversations about how to make the club better. But that's not what was happening at the meeting. Instead the meeting devolved into ad hominin attacks and interruptions. Who cares about whether TF was in a commercial dispute with a vending machine company? Whatever the merits--the crowd never let NM respond--it has no bearing on coaching soccer. |
Anonymous
The TF contract started in July 2024. Before that NM was not being paid by GFR. It takes more than a single season for a TD to have an impact on the club, the fact that he had made an impact on several teams after only one season is actually impressive. But, regardless, firing him in April right before tryouts was a BAD MOVE by ML and the other 2 board members who made that abrupt decision. The 2 guys still on the board who made that decision should have to explain why they did that and they could not or would not do so. And none of those 3 sat down and just spoke to NM or RS for that matter about changes they wanted to make, they just fired them and appointed themselves interim directors with absolutely no plan for the club. |