CIGCSA Blog Intro and Annual Meeting Recap

Thank you for taking the time to search and/or click to learn about the Central Illinois Golf Course Superintendent's Association (CIGCSA) and this blog.  The goal of this blog is to provide the members of CIGCSA brief updates on the current associations initiatives, meetings, and social/golf events.

This space will be used to highlight our members and also promote our valued vendors that support our Association through our Partner Recognition Program (PRP). 

The first thank you goes to Dave Drach and Crestwicke Country Club for hosting our Annual Meeting and Education event on Dec 2, 2019.

Great turnout from our Membership and great info by the speakers

Also a HUGE thanks to:

MTI DISTRIBUTING; BURRIS EQUIPMENT; WINFIELD SOLUTIONS; SITE ONE LANDSCAPES; and D & K TURF. 

Our education lineup included bunker liner discussion by Bobby Kerr of the CDGA.  Bobby did a great job at giving an overview of the current options for bunker liners and the benefits and costs associated with each type.    Bobby's discussion created a great dialog between audience members detailing their bunker projects- before, during, and after.

Shane Conroy joined us from the GCSAA.  Shane is our regional representative and always does a great job of keeping us in-tune with what is happening at our national association.  Shane covered a variety of topics including: Government advocacy issues (Glyphoste is a big one right now!); new membership initiatives including FFA students, Friends of a Superintendent, and the new facility memberships; New logo and branding strategies; the newly adopted State of Illinois BMPs, and changes at the Golf Industry Show.  Shane had a TON of relevant information to share and showed how much GCSAA is listening and improving for its members.

Brain Bothast gave us some great safety tips from OSHA.  OSHA is often an intimidating thought, but Brian did a great job of sharing practice ideas and strategies to implement safety programs at our golf courses. He also gave us some things to think about as the competent trainers and tips to achieve a safe working environment to avoid injuries or worse!

We held our final business meeting of the year as a board and elected members to fill the positions for 2020. We also awarded two education scholarships and a Golf Industry Show stipend to a member and the dependents of members.  This is a huge benefit of membership in CIGCSA and thanks to some great leaders before, we are in a great position to grow these awards!

After lunch Chris Zugel gave us a behind the scenes look at setting up to host the Ryder Cup in September of 2020.  Chris has been the superintendent at Whistling Straights for PGA Championships as well and hearing the differences in the events was really interesting.  The amount of planning and forward thinking in hosting events or even potentially hosting events is amazing.  It was a great talk by Chris with so many interesting tidbits that we can't cover them all here... you had to be there!

We wrapped our day with discussion involving growing CIGCSA membership numbers, hosting a First Green field trip at a Central Illinois course, and gave an update on the new standard operating procedures of the scholarship fund.  We also introduced a new education idea for our Spring Shop Meeting in March.  We are really excited about these changes, so keep an eye out for the details.

Again, thanks to the members and our sponsors for supporting this event.  We have our Winter Social Jan 10th at Bass Pro Shop in Peoria and the GIS Happy hour Jan 29th in Orlando.

Thanks for reading,

CIGCSA