Business Meeting Location

During the past couple of years, we’ve been meeting at the Knights of Columbus hall in New Hyde Park. The hall is a good size for us with a central location. However, we don’t get a lot of availability from them due to other events they host. Our chapter meetings are generally restricted to Mondays and Wednesdays. Wednesday is traditionally the busiest day for college games during the week. Given a choice, we prefer not to schedule meetings on Wednesday.

If anyone has access to a suitable venue to host our 4 chapter business meetings, please let us know. We would like to have options for 2008 and beyond. The criteria we want are:

  1. Ability to seat at least 50 members.
  2. Centrally located. Western Nassau County or Eastern Queens is best.
  3. Ample, onsite and free parking.

Thanks for your help.

Passing the NISOA Fitness Test

In 2003, NISOA completely revised the events in their physical performance test. The new events, 12 minute run, “The Pro-40 Test”, “Brazilian AR 50 meter test” and “The 30 meter shuffle” were developed based on the findings of leading researchers in the field of Soccer Referee Physiology. New scoring criteria were developed. In 2005, NISOA revised their policy to require renewing members to pass the fitness test with a minimum average score of 1.0 for the 4 individual events to maintain their member “in good standing” status. A full description of the policy, fitness tests and scoring criteria is available here.

The current NISOA policy as well as the current terms of our constitution allows the chapter (at its discretion) to place a renewing member who does not pass the fitness test under probation and assigned a game as an official for assessment purposes. This provision works well where there is a traditional NISOA Chapter Assignor. However, the NY Metro Chapter does not have a chapter assignor. Games are assigned exclusively by conference assignors such as ECAC, ISOAB, Atlantic 10, and Region XV. The chapter’s executive board cannot ensure members who fail the fitness test will have an opportunity to be assigned a game for assessment purposes. It’s a Catch 22. Read the rest of this entry »