In 2006, the first really important change in the By-laws was the addition of the UN teams.  Since the birth of the ISA only the USA, Canada and Japan fielded teams, and then along came Australia followed by Brazil and naturally as young beginning organizations neither could put together a complete team.  A few players from Australia and Brazil showed up at each International Tournament and the host did their best to set up what was called a “B” tournament by pulling together whomever they could from the spectators or who ever wanted to play against the players from Australia and Brazil.  This grated on Brazil’s National President-Michael Zellner and after a couple of years of talking about a UN team he wrote an official amendment to the By-laws which was unanimously accepted by the ISA board and the UN teams were born.  This concept has been serving the ISA extremely well to date, and allows new nations, with less than full teams, to take part and officially compete in tournaments where they were previously deemed ineligible.

In 2008, the Constitution was again changed to allow one Country one vote.  This change meant the International Shuffleboard Association was in charge of itself.  Before this time the President, Past President, Executive Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, Historian, Keeper of the records, President of each Country, one Delegate from each Country as well as several other long severing Vice Presidents had a vote.  Doing business was very difficult because many of these people changed year to year and getting hold of them was almost impossible  The over whelming majority of people present to vote came from southwest Florida and they made the decisions.  Cutting the vote down to one per Nation and using the computer to communicate has made conducting business much easier. The ISA President is the only other person who gets to vote and then only to break a tie or to create a tie in which case the proposal fails.

In 2009, the third major change took place with team size being reduced from 12 with 8 playing at a time to 6 with 4 playing at a time and a Nation being allowed two teams.  The possible numbers of players per Country didn’t change but it now became possible for new countries to be better able to field a full team to compete in an International Tournament.  The results were immediate with Australia being able to field a full team of men and women in Germany and Brazil and Japan each being able to field a men’s team for the Germany Tournament where they would have been able to only send a few players to compete on the UN Team.
 

Michael Zellner
ISA President