Rugby Ohio Elections Are Done and the Results are Mixed
Rugby Ohio Elections Are Done and the Results are Mixed
Rigby Ohio's new elections are completed and the results aren't decisive one way or the other.
For the agents of change who wanted to see a new Board, the election did not deliver a landslide.
For the incumbent group of Boardmembers, the election did not deliver a vote of confident.
Six spots on a new nine-member Board were up for election, with three spots from the previous Board up for re-election in August.
The group hoping to sweep in with a mandate to change things secures four of the of the six spots, short of the five or six that they wanted.
Peter Haler (at-large North), Mark Weidner (at-large South), Rory Fitzpatrick (High School at-large), Kyle Clark (at-large Central), Chris DePerro (Middle School at-large), and Barton Hacker (youth at-large) were voted in.
Haler (Athletic Director at St. Edward HS in Cleveland), Fitzpatrick (Athletic Director at St. Ignatius in Cleveland), and Mark Weidner (Head Coach St. Xavier HS, Cincinnati) were certainly on the agents of change group.
They had hoped to be backed up by incumbent Boardmember Allan Hanson and new candidates candidates Kyle Banset and Ashley Grace would also be voted in.
Instead, Clark, Deperro, and Hacker received the most votes.
Clark, is considered a bit of a financial hawk. DePerro is considered a champion of youth rugby. Hacker is considered, at the moment, a supporter of the incumbents, although these opinions are all somewhat relative.
With the new Board in place, however, there is work to be done in terms of figuring out how Rugby Ohio is run day-to-day, how youth successes can be replicated within the state, and how to leverage the presence of two high-profile ADs to build the game at the high school level in the state.
Ohio is uniquely placed in that it has a fairly high level of participation, and also it is a somewhat square state with pockets of rugby in several spots throughout the state, Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest.
So now comes the next step.