Propwash April 2019 web.pub

The big payoff though, was our mini flyers that were given to members to hand out to friends, place at hobby stores or other places that may help generate interest, and handing out at races to spectators. These flyers included the full race calendar and how to reach and follow us on the web. Proving their worth, one of these flyers at a local hobby store resulted in a recreational model boater becoming aware of organized racing, partici- pating, buying and racing more boats, bringing out his girlfriend who had a boat also, and his daughter coming out to run “Kids R Boaters Too”. Oh, and that daughter brought one of her friends out to run “Kids R Boaters Too” at one event. Three new boaters, several new boats, a great example of the value of family to the growth of the hobby, and new friends we’ve all enjoyed getting to know. With those things out of the way we launched into a new program called Arrive & Drive where the district purchased four ProMarine Phantom P LTD Monos allowing people who may be interested in to hobby to come out and give it a try without the commitment of purchasing a boat. These may be friends of our members, people who race in other disciplines, or people who have been members for years but have not run boats. The boats are prepared and maintained by the district and the driver is paired up with a member to help them through the day of driving. Arrive & Drive is an exhibition class that runs on Sunday all four rounds for four minutes each round. All totaled we had 9 different participants in this program during 2018 with one of them already racing their own boat in 2018 and another bringing out their own boat in 2019. These same boats are used in our “ Kids R Boaters Too” class on Saturday with the same running format. The best part of it all is the encouragement and excitement coming from the other race participants as they watch these people take the wheel. (Continued on the next page) News @ 9 By Chris Wittrig NAMBA District 9 Director What an amazing 2018 racing season we had! Such a great group of leaders and fellow boaters that make it so easy to have a great time. We started the year committed to taking a fresh approach for our brand and competition in District 9, along with finding new ways to build membership. That all paid off with a significant growth in membership, increased participation at races, exceptionally close points battles for championship podium finishes at the last event, and a new overall energy in our District. We started by wiping the slate clean and creating a new look and feel. The talents of district member Roger Hooks, Jr., make that an easy task to accomplish and he cranked out a new logo and graphic featured on our web page, Facebook page, and product created throughout the year. Assistant District Director Joe Slaney, Chris Emard and I discussed new ways to recognize the top three class finishers at each race and the result was podium stands created by the Emard family and a backdrop banner that Roger Hooks, Jr., was able to get sponsorship for. Next we moved toward finding new ways to get our District in front of more eyes and with a goal of increasing membership. The first step was to update our web presence with a fresh new website. Have a look by going to NAMBA9.com . With that out of the way we created a public-facing Facebook page where we’d publish all our events, information, podium photos, and videos. PROPWASH April 2019 13 The podium finish at a District 9 race. Randy Naylor, Nicole Croffoot, and Tony Martin Arrive & Drive L/R: Nick Gould, Stephenie Wittrig, and Karen Emard