Dear Committee,

Over the past 18 months, many of you have been seriously engaged in helping to develop a number of strategies to help address our increasing budget needs as we move into the future.  There have been a wide variety of strategies - all good - which are too long to re-cap here.  But as we've discussed many times, the best solution lies within the framework of USSA's own fundraising and marketing structure.  The coaches especially, along with our Chairman, have effectively pursued internal solutions with the goal of securing a larger program for cross country moving forward, with a goal of understanding where cross country fits into the USSA family before we reach the Olympics in Torino.  And with the extremely valuable help of Alan Ashley and Bill Marolt, who have helped to develop the support for our long-term vision for cross country, substantial progress has been made.

Here is an expert from an email I received from Alan this morning:

"Bill Marolt, Bill Gorton, Mark Lampe and I met on Sunday (Jan 29th) to review guidance for the coming year.  As you know, I have been anxious to establish what sort of Cross Country program we can build over the next few years.  

Based on our evaluation of future resource availability and the rough priorities with in athletics we are prepared to move forward with our plan to enhance the Cross Country program.  Specifically, this means that we will increase the funding for Cross Country to accommodate a fully built out World Cup program (including adding athletes to the team) and the implementation of a good development program:

Roughly, this equates to:
Current Spending:  $625,000
Additional Spending: Up to $375,000

This additional spending must include those items we identified together in the latest review of the core initiatives relating to the elite athlete program as well as our development program.   This roughly corresponds to the budget you submitted to me last week.  

There is a good understanding by the leadership of the need to sustain this support as we go forward in order to have the desired long-term athletic effect.  This will be the goal of the organization with in the available resources. We have all agreed that we hope to have a great Cross Country program – one that can contribute to our “Best in the World” goals of or athletes and USSA. "

I thank you all for your help in this process...now the real work begins.  I, along with the coaches, would like to sharpen everyone's focus on the "Elite Performance Model", which we introduced to you last summer.  This will be our working model as we move forward, so your attention to the plan is requested.  As you know, we will spend a full day on the "EPM" during our meeting this spring, and your feedback leading into that meeting will be invaluable in helping us to refine our future priorities.

Finally, although it goes without saying, the results of our athletes in international competition over the past several years have been a cornerstone in giving us all a place to build from, on their behalf.

I look forward to your feedback.

Sincerely,
Luke Bodensteiner

(Ed. Note:  The Elite Performance Model is the overall strategy including World Cup, development, PR, et cetera for creating a system of success in cross country.  As Luke's letter suggests it is a work in progress which will demand the attention and input of many people.  I will try to post it or some portion of it at some point.  I would also like to thank Luke and Alan for pushing this hard and getting it to go through.)