More from Chicago

I wanted to share this photo of the three Lions Club chairmen that were in Chicago for the first North American Lions Club meet-up.

(from l-r  Rick Leong, (California Lions Club), Simon Leach (Chicago Lions Club), Chris Fetters (Seattle Lions Club)

Time to start thinking about next year!  UTV

Chicago 2013

It has been a busy month as preparations are being made for the FIRST meet-up of North American Lions Club branches set for 17 August 2013 in Chicago USA.  Simon Leach, chairman of the Chicago Lions Club has taken up the lead in organizing this first of what we hope will turn into an annual event.  The focus of the weekend will be joining together at The Globe Pub in Chicago to watch Villa take on Arsenal at The Emirates.

On Friday 16 Aug a match has been scheduled between AV Lions Club vs The Globe Pub team.  We will also be running a fundraiser for Acorns in conjunction with the weekend activities.  It is only a few weeks away!  A couple of us California Lions will be making the trip out to Chicago to participate in the festivities.  Up The Villa!

Birmingham for the Holidays

It's been great helping some California Lions who will be traveling to Birmingham for the holidays sort out tickets for December, January, and February home matches.   Probably one of the most satisfying duties of a Lions Club Chairman. Also, will be getting the AVFC California flag to one of the traveling members so he can fly the California Lions colors at Villa Park.

Membership Cards, Skype, and the Birmingham Mail

I finally got membership cards into the mail to all California Lions Club members.  It took a little time, but I'm excited about the continued growth of the club (80+ members now on the books).  It was nice to receive a "chairman's" pin from Villa + a couple of Lions Club scarves.

The first chairmen's meeting is scheduled right before the upcoming match against Swansea City.  I emailed in a suggestion of maybe trying to set up a simple Skype connection for some of us to "join" in from afar.

One of our members was home visiting family in the UK over the summer and he had to miss our July trip to Portland.  While he was on holiday, he picked up a copy of the Birmingham Mail and there was a short article about the California Lions!  I really appreciated his effort to bring an actual copy of the paper back to the States for me!

Well, the time has come!

California Lions are preparing for travel with some already in transit to Portland.  Meet-ups are set.  Open training.  Acorns raffle.  At this point, its time to just let everything roll out on its own.  It should be a great time.  I'm really hoping that the Acorns raffle generates a lot of interest and money for Acorns.  Villa's connection with Acorns is what drew me to Villa in the first place and now we have a California Lions branch with close to 80 members on our roster.