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Email to managers - Oct 29

Weekend 4 games/Retiering

Final weekend of preseason match ups are attached. As before, please put your game info into the google spreadsheet and we'll enter the games into the schedule. Let us know asap if you see an error in your game as posted on NEAHL (date, time, opponents, location).

[link shared with managers]

Some teams have already played 6 pre-season games, so not every team has a match up for this weekend. If you schedule any exhibition games, you are encouraged to send us the gamesheet (scan and email).

This is the final weekend of preseason. Retiring will be done on November 7, information about tiers and regular season game requirements will be provided to managers by the next day, and you can begin booking games immediately.

If you want to assess your own team and send a statement to the league about where you think your team fits in the tiering, you can submit a statement to any of the deputies and we will forward it to John prior to retiering. Please have any statements in by Sunday, Nov 5.

Jersey Numbers

Reminder that managers need to login to the NEAHL website with their team login and enter the jersey numbers for their players. You will have to click on the blue edit box beside each player to go in and edit/add the jersey number. For APs, if you want them to drop to the bottom of your roster, give them all a jersey number of 99 (or anything higher than they highest number on your regular team). You can adjust the number on the roster when an AP plays for you.

Affiliated Players
Reminder that APs must be added on HCR before they can play, and they also have to be approved by the governor (to make sure you have followed the AP grid). After preseason, regular AP rules apply (APs can be used to bring your team up to original roster size or to 12 skaters if you have a small team, they are not to be used for strength, you cannot replace a suspended player with an AP). After Dec 1, APs can only play in a game if they are on HCR as APPROVED.

Provincial Bids

Deadline for provincial bids is November 15 (https://www.haprovincials.ca/uploads/source/2024ProvincialHostBidGuidelinesApplicationMHAFINALVERSION.pdf). Note that if you submit a bid, your roster is locked until hosts are announced, and host team rosters remain locked.

Accumulation of Penalty Minutes/Suspensions

Penalty minutes do NOT reset after preseason (ie preseason penalties count toward your season total), and the U18 threshold is 100 minutes. You can check penalty minute totals for your players under the statistics tab on your home page. Select "all game types" (that should be the default). PIM (penalty infraction minutes) is the last column. You can click on the heading to sort in ascending or descending order.

Similarly, penalty accumulations do not reset after preseason - fights, major penalties, match penalties, game misconducts and gross misconducts all have additional suspensions for second or more infractions, and repeat offenders can quickly end up with indefinite suspensions that go to Hockey Alberta.

NEW DEPUTIES

I am very happy to announce that we are bringing on two new deputies for U18, Jenn Hoogerdijk and Colin Mazurenko.

The deputy assignments will be:

Tier 1/2 - Kathy

Tier 3 west*- Colin

Tier 3 east* - Margaret

Tier 1 NBC - Jenn

*depending on what's decided at retiering, but expect tier 3 to be split in some way

Email to managers - Oct 24, 2023

Letter from the U18 Governor

Attached is a letter for the U18 governor. [letter was attached to email]

Accurate Penalties

Please verify your penalties have been entered accurately. We've had some minors entered as majors and some misconducts entered as game misconducts.

Suspensions on Gamesheet App Rosters

Suspensions - the feature on ramp where players are marked as suspended on the roster in the gamesheet app is still NOT working. I've opened several tickets with ramp about it. Until it works, I think the best practice will be to NOT put the player on the roster and then just let Kathy and I know that the game was served. We track the suspensions separately outside of ramp anyway. Obviously, if you are an oversize team, if someone is serving a suspension, you cannot fill that spot in the game roster. Teams cannot bring up an affiliated player to replace a suspended player.

Suspensions

Please note that when a player is removed during a game due to a major or match penalty or game or gross misconduct, that removal is not a suspension. I'm pedantic about this because Hockey Alberta has minimum suspension guidelines, and the list of minimum suspensions has grown over the years to include all major penalties, all match penalties, most game misconducts, and all gross misconducts. Even ten years ago, many major penalties did not have a minimum suspension. This has led to a lot of confusion for coaches, managers, and parents who were familiar with the old way when a player would receive an infraction during a game and be ordered to the dressing room, but would be allowed to play the next game as long as the infraction occurred before the final ten minute mark.

A suspension is issued after the game after the league or Hockey Alberta has reviewed the gamesheet and incident report. A suspension is served at the NEXT game or games. A player CANNOT participate in a game when serving a suspension (Minor Hockey regulation 11.2(q) No suspended Player or Team Official is allowed on the bench, in the timekeepers/penalty box, dressing room or within fifty (50) feet of the players' benches during a game.) Therefore, by definition, the game in which the player received the infraction is not a suspension, even if he or she was removed for the remainder of the game.

The minimum suspension guidelines are available as appendix IV of the Hockey Alberta bylaws and regulations, there is a link on the NEAHL website under the Hockey Alberta Helpful Links menu tab, and I am attaching a copy of the 2023/24 guidelines to this email. Please consult the guidelines or contact the deputy governors for a ruling any time there is a suspendable offence. Coaches are expected to know and follow the guildelines and sit a player out if a suspension applies even if they have not received a ruling from the league or Hockey Alberta.

There will be at least a one game suspension for every major penalty. Every time a major penalty is assessed, a game misconduct is also assessed (this is in the Hockey Canada playing rules for every offence, and the game misconduct is the reason the player leaves the game after the incident). A game misconduct that occurs in the last ten minutes of the game will result in a one game suspension IN ADDITION to any other suspensions that apply. Some game misconduct penalties carry a suspension on their own (e.g. 11.2 Abusive Behaviour carries a minimum 2 game suspension). The suspensions are longer for any gross misconduct or match penalties. Some penalties carry an indefinite suspension (e.g. ineligible player or 11.4 discrimination), and those will be ruled on by Hockey Alberta. 11.4 discrimination will result in a minimum 5 game suspension.

There are also accumulation sanctions for penalties, so the suspension increases. See the end of the guidelines for the accumulations (fighting major accumulations are listed in the chart). The major penalties (except fighting) are lumped together, so a second major penalty will result in a longer suspension (the majors do not have to be the same infraction for the accumulation to apply).

Some examples of minimum suspensions:

Cross checking major & Game Misconduct at 12:45 in the second - minimum 1 game suspension

Cross checking major & Game MIsconduct at 7:30 in the third - minimum 2 game suspension (one for the CC major, one for the GAME in last ten minutes)

11.2 Abusive Behaviour Game Misconduct at 12:45 in the second - minimum 2 game suspension

11.2 Abusive Behaviour Game Misconduct at 7:30 in the third - minimum 3 game suspension (two for the 11.2, one for the GAME in the last ten minutes)

CFB minor & Game Misconduct at 12:45 in the second - no minimum suspension (there are no minimums for minor penalties)

CFB minor & Game Misconduct at 7:30 in the third - 1 game suspension for GAME in the last ten minutes

The minimum suspension guidelines are set by Hockey Alberta, and the league has NO authority to waive the minimums.

Misconduct, Game Misconduct, Game Ejection

I've mentioned this before, but there is a difference between these penalties.

Misconduct is a ten minute non timed penalty that a player serves. They return to the game after the penalty is served. It is written as MISC on a gamesheet. (Non timed means the player serves the penalty but immediate substitution is allowed, so the team does not have to play shorthanded. Because of the immediate substitution, the player does not leave the penalty bench until the first whistle after the penalty has expired. If he or she were to return to the game immediately upon the expiration of the penalty, that team would have too many players). Sometimes a player is sent to the dressing room if they receive a misconduct in the last ten minutes of the game because the game will be over before they have finished serving the penalty. If the scorekeeper is not sure whether a player has been sent because of a misconduct or a game misconduct, please ask the ref.

Game Misconduct written as GAME on a gamesheet. It is a ten minute penalty, but a player who receives a game misconduct is removed from the game, so no one serves it in the penalty box. This is a more serious penalty. It is always assessed with a major penalty, and it is always assessed with a Check From Behind penalty, even a CFB minor. It is also used for abusive behaviours and discrimination. There will always be an incident report for a game misconduct.

Game Ejection - occurs when a player accumulates 3 stick infractions or 3 head contact infractions in a game (those are counted separately - if a player has 2 stick infraction and then gets a head contact infraction, they would NOT be ejected). No penalty minutes are attached to a game ejection. There are no suspensions for receiving a game ejection. The stick infractions are slashing, cross checking, high sticking, butt ending and spearing. Any 3 of those stick infractions will result in a game ejection (e.g. player gets slash, cross check, slash - they would be ejected after the 2nd slash because it is the third stick infraction). It is written as GE on the game sheet.

Email to managers - Oct 22, 2023

Having everyone enter games into the google sheet worked much better for us for creating games, so we are going to do that again. We will use the same spreadsheet, but we've added a new page for the Oct 27 games. That should be the page that you are on when you open it up, but you can check the bottom tab or the date at the top to make sure you are on the correct one.

The link is here: [link for manager use only] I've also attached the list as an excel doc.

Please add the date, time, home, away, and arena for your games in the google sheet. We will check it frequently, so you do not have to send us a separate email letting us know that you have posted your game. Again, if you have difficulty with the sheet, you can send your game info in an email. If your game has not been posted by the end of the day after you put it on the sheet, let us know. Also, if you see your game posted and there is an error, let us know right away so we can correct it.

Some teams already have four games played, so they may only have one game this weekend.

Email to managers - Oct 19, 2023

Some information about rosters, gamesheets and suspensions is posted on the NEAHL website: http://www.neahl.ca/article/88964 [posted below]

AP players - although you cannot play them yet, you can certainly begin the process of adding them to your roster. Remember that after they have been added to your roster, they must be submitted to the league governors for approval before they can play in any games. APs normally show up on your roster with no jersey number. If you want to bump them to the bottom of the list, give them all jersey #99. That way you won't have to scroll through all the APs every time you do a game roster. You can change the jersey number as needed when an AP actually plays in a game.

HCR rosters - the sync brought over records, but we still need to have a copy of your actual HCR report uploaded to the website. We will need to verify rosters because the sync doesn't bring over complete information (for example, it doesn't tell us approved/pending/released, it doesn't indicate overage players). We also need to see the HCR roster because it gives us dates if there's any question as to whether a player or coach was eligible on the day that they appeared in a game. Please update the HCR file whenever there are changes (e.g. add APs, rosters move from pending to approved).

Suspensions - there were a lot of suspensions first weekend! Please notify your deputy (include both Kathy and me during preseason since we are working together for now) whenever there is a suspendable offence during your game (major, match, game misconduct, gross misconduct). If you are using paper gamesheets, email or text a copy of the gamesheet and writes ups after your game. If you are using the app, you can just email or text us the game number and let us know to look so we can get the ruling to you asap. We track suspensions through the season, and there are accumulation of suspension penalties (see the end of the minimum suspension guidelines for details https://cloud.rampinteractive.com/neahl/files/2023-2024%20Season/16.%20Appendix%20VII-%20Minimum%20Suspensions%2023-24%20season.pdf)

Misconduct vs Game Misconduct - there is a difference between a misconduct (MISC on the gamesheet - ten minute non timed penalty where the player sits in the penalty box and then returns to play after thinking long and hard about his or her life choices) and a game misconduct (player is removed from the game and will receive a 1 game suspension for the GAME if it occurs in the last ten minutes in addition to any other suspensions that apply). A game misconduct is ALWAYS called with any major penalty (it's in the playing rules), with any CFB whether major or minor, and also on its own for things like 11.2 Abuse of officials. There will always be an incident report from the refs when there is a game misconduct, and most of the time, there will be a suspension issued.

Sometimes if a player receives a misconduct in the last ten minutes of the game, the ref orders them to the dressing room immediately because the game will be over before their penalty expires, and that can keep things from escalating with that player. If you are not sure whether a player received a misconduct or a game misconduct in the last ten minutes, please ask your ref to clarify. The ref will provide an incident report if it's a game misconduct. Some will also do a write up if it's a misconduct in the last ten minutes just to clarify what the call was.

Bench/Coach penalties - do not attribute those to a player. A player number should only ever go under served. On the app, you can choose "bench penalty" for the offender. On a gamesheet, leave the first box blank or write in BM if it's a bench minor. If you put in a player number, those minutes will be added to the player's total penalty minutes for the season.

Accumulation of Penalty Minutes Suspensions - please be aware that NEAHL has accumulation of penalty minute suspensions.

The thresholds are:

U11 - 50 min

U13 - 75 min

U15 - 75 min

U18 - 100 min

There is a one game suspension when a player reaches the threshold, and then it doubles for every additional 25 minutes. For U18, that means

100 min = 1 game

125 min = 2 games

150 min = 4 games . . .

Preseason penalty minutes count for accumulation.

Gamesheet Verification - with HA making the gamesheet app mandatory, we've been asked if the visiting team still needs to verify the gamesheets on the game list when you are logged into the neahl website. I suggest that you continue to do so so you are in the practice of checking for errors. However, if the gamesheets are not verified, we will assume that you have not found any errors to report.

U18 information and announcements - we've activated the U18 home page (you'll see it above the tiers when you click U18 on the NEAHL website) where we will be posting emails and other information. We're hoping that by posting information there, we have better communication if there's a change of managers or anyone isn't getting the emails because your email program thinks we are spamming you [this is what you are reading right now]

NEAHL Announcement - News Article - Oct 19, 2023

Rosters

All team rosters have been submitted to NEAHL, and the roster sync appears to have caught up. All players and bench staff should now be imported from HCR, and any members added to HCR rosters should be coming over to NEAHL automatically shortly after being entered. If you add a new player or coach to HCR and they do not appear on your NEAHL roster within a couple of hours, please let us know at admin@neahl.ca.

Please note that ALL member records on the HCR roster are imported, whether pending, approved, or released. You must let your deputy governor or admin@neahl.ca know if there is a released member on your NEAHL roster so that they can be deactivated on NEAHL.

Teams are still required to upload a PDF of their HCR roster (get this from your association's registrar). Login to RAMP with your team login credentials, click HCR File > Choose File [click on the file wherever you have it saved] > Upload File. Please upload a new roster if you make any changes (e.g. add affiliated players) or your roster changes from pending to approved.

Gamesheets

Now that rosters have imported, please make sure your gamesheets from last weekend are uploaded to the NEAHL website.

You must also mark the game as "game is finished" when all the data has been entered.

If you used a paper gamesheet, you will need to upload a copy of the gamesheet and any incident reports using your team login. It is up to you whether you enter the rest of the gamesheet data through the app or through the online game portal.

Due to all the issues last weekend, the gamesheets were unlocked. They will remain unlocked for this weekend since many teams were unable to use the app due to missing rosters. After this weekend, the system will be set to lock gamesheet entry after 4 hours from game start time.

Suspensions

There is no way for managers to mark players as suspended on the gamesheet app. The deputies have to mark them as suspended through the ramp website, and then the players are supposed to appear as suspended in the roster for however many games the deputy has checked off. However, we are having issues with this feature. A ticket has been sent to ramp support. If your suspended players are not marked as suspended, please just let your deputy know that they have served the game even though they were not on the roster. We are hoping that this will be fixed before the games this weekend.

Email to managers - Oct 16, 2023

Attached is the game list for this weekend.

Some games last weekend were not able to be played due to lack of ice or lack of refs. If you have those booked and want them sanctioned as league games, let us know and we can add them to the schedule.

Do your best to get games scheduled - we are aware that some associations are having an extremely hard time getting ice/refs. We want to end preseason with at least 5 to 6 games per team.

Kathy and I would like to try something different with the game bookings. We are a little overwhelmed with emails and suspensions, so I am attaching a google sheet. When you book your game, please go in and fill in the columns beside your game with date, time, home, away, arena. We will refer to that sheet and get the games onto the NEAHL calendar as they appear. Do your best to put the info there. If you for some reason can't do it, then send an email. But please try to put it on the google sheet first.

[link excluded from this reproduction as it is for managers only]

I'll have some more stuff to tell you about ramp and rosters and the gamesheet app, but I'm in an arena meeting right now, so that will come later!

An excel doc of the games is also attached. Make sure to look at the Oct 20 tab for your games.

[match up list excluded from this reproduction of the email]

Email to managers - Oct 12, 2023

A few more things:

First of all, we are slammed by emails, so we apologize if your games have not been posted yet. Kathy has been carrying the bulk of the load posting games because I am also the NEAHL web admin and so I'm at my limit. I'm answering emails every moment that I am not working (and a lot of the moments when I AM working!!) and I can't get ahead of them.

Anyway, if you have a game that has NOT been posted by 8 pm tonight, please send me a text a 780-210-0518 and I will make sure it gets done. It's possible some emails have gotten buried in the avalanche.

ROSTERS:

There are still associations that have not submitted rosters. PLEASE GET AFTER YOUR PRESIDENTS TO SUBMIT ROSTERS **TODAY**. Ramp is used across Canada in many leagues and some of the rosters have been very slow to load (as in more than a day rather than within the hour). I think the system is just bogged down. If your roster is not submitted TODAY, there is very little chance that we will be able to fix it before your games if something goes wrong.

This is a link to all of the teams that have been submitted so far. If your team is not on the list, then it was not submitted as of 7:40 this morning. I will continue to check for teams throughout the day, but my time is VERY limited, and I have to do some work on the back end of the NEAHL website after they are submitted before the link is complete, so the sooner they get submitted, the better. If your team is on the list, please check your roster on NEAHL. If there are players missing, then please check your official HCR report (get it from your registrar). ONLY players and bench staff who are on HCR will come over. If a player is not on your HCR report, they have to be added BEFORE they can be added to NEAHL. If someone is on your official HCR roster but NOT on your NEAHL team, please wait one hour. The system is supposed to refresh hourly. Right now, it might take more than an hour for someone to come over, but give it that hour just in case the player was JUST added to HCR. After that, you can contact me and I can send a support ticket to ramp to look into it. They have been pretty good about getting back to me within a day, but they are also slammed.

Here is the link: [Link is excluded - all team rosters have now been submitted to NEAHL through the Alberta One portal link]

Feel free to share it with other managers in your association to check whether teams have been submitted by your association.

Team Code

On the dashboard when you login to your team ramp account, there is a team code. You can enter that into the ramp gamesheet app and get all of your home and away codes at once. Click Teams on the bottom of the screen, then Add Team Code. You will still have to enter Gamesheet codes separately if you are scorekeeping.

Gamesheet Codes

You have to click on League Gamesheet App Codes to view your gamesheet codes. The app should open on the game code page, but if it doesn't, click Games on the bottom of the screen then Add Game Code.

There is a quirk with the app where you can add a game code and it will say it is added but it's not visible until you pull the screen down (literally put your finger on the screen and drag it down a bit) and then when it pops back up, it refreshes the screen and the game should be there. You can also click Teams and then go back to Games and that will work to refresh the screen.

Margaret

Email to managers - Oct 9, 2023

Welcome everyone to the 2023-2024 hockey season!

If you are getting this email, either you are the contact we have for your U18 team (manager or coach) OR we do not have a contact for your U18 team and you are the association contact. PLEASE MAKE SURE this email gets to your U18 managers asap!

We have some big changes this year.

First of all, the NAI league is no longer operating, and most of their teams have moved over to NEAHL. Welcome everyone. This should be good for us now having more teams in U18, but of course we are also a lot bigger geographically, so that poses some challenges, and we may be thinking out of the box more this year for game play as we adjust and try to manage travel.

Another huge change is we welcome John Ermel from Hinton as the new U18 Governor. Kathy Kretschmer and I (Margaret Bayduza) are returning as your deputy governors. We will certainly be bringing in at least one more deputy to manage the season, but Kathy and I will work together to get us through preseason. Therefore, when you have questions or book games, kindly send your messages or emails to both of us, and whichever of us is available will respond. By the time we get into regular season, we will know who is covering which tiers and subdivisions (if any), but until then, including us both will help us stay in the loop and manage the 45 teams in U18.

Please remember the communication protocol:

http://cloud.rampinteractive.com/neahl/files/Documents/NEAHL%20Communication%20Protocol.pdf

Parents go though managers, managers/head coaches contact deputies, and we will bring things to the governor if we need him looped in. Association presidents can also contact governors directly.

This year, for the first time, NEAHL is requiring associations to submit their team rosters to us via the Alberta One website. Presidents and association contacts received the information about this on September 18 and the Alberta One logins on September 21. Many teams still have not submitted rosters. This MUST be done prior to beginning league play. If your rosters are not on the website, get after your presidents about it.

Many teams this year do not have managers on their HCR roster, and therefore those managers will not be imported with the rosters. If that is the case for your association, please send the manager information to Kathy and I asap (name, email, phone) so we can add it to the website.

Unfortunately, phone numbers do not come over with the NEAHL sync. Please send your manager and head coach phone numbers and any other contact information changes to Kathy and I to be added to the website.

If you are trying to book a game with a team that does not have manager or coach information posted, please use the association contacts found here (Associations > Association Contacts): http://www.neahl.ca/content/neahl-associations. They will be able to direct you to the team managers, and it will also motivate them to get roster and manager information posted on NEAHL asap.

We are still asking teams to upload their current HCR roster pdf (get it from your registrar) under the HCR Files tab when you login to the NEAHL website using your team login credentials (login credentials were emailed out as requested in the team registration forms as soon as teams were created on NEAHL). As players are added or approved, please upload new HCR files.

Affiliated players are NOT allowed in league games for preseason because we need to see the true strength of your team. Affiliated players have to be approved by the league (which means we check to make sure you followed the grid in the minor hockey regulations). On Dec 1, only APs who are marked "approved" on your HCR roster will be allowed to participate in games.

Another big change is that Hockey Alberta is mandating that all leagues use the Ramp Gamesheet App. Information about it is here (Associations > Ramp Gamesheet App Info): http://www.neahl.ca/content/ramp-gamesheet-app

I will do my best to help anyone who is struggling with it, but everything I know is from watching the tutorials, reading the documentation, and trying the app out. I don't think the app is difficult to use, but I definitely see some challenges with it.

I do not believe anyone scorekeeping a U18 game can realistically expect to get everything entered in the app without also writing it down, so please make sure you have paper and pen or a gamesheet with you in the box. There is even a scratchpad paper you can print out linked at the bottom of that information page (basically the goal and penalty areas from a gamesheet). Travis is still mailing out NEAHL gamesheets for this season as we transition to the app, but Randy expects most teams to have switched over by Christmas.

IN ORDER TO USE THE APP, THE SCOREKEEPER AND OFFICIALS WILL NEED THE GAME CODES. The HOME TEAM manager is responsible for making sure the scorekeeper and officials have the codes for that game. Please make sure you have entered the code on your device and downloaded the game prior to the game beginning. You will need an internet connection for the code to work to download the game. Once the game is downloaded, you can enter all the game stats without an internet connection, and it will all be uploaded back to ramp as soon as you have an internet connection again.

GAMECODES AND GAMESHEET ENTRY WILL **LOCK** FOUR HOURS AFTER THE GAME START TIME. It's unlimited time right now so people can practice on our test games, but once preseason play begins, the four hour limit will be put in place. That means that you will not be able to enter game stats via either the gamesheet app OR the online game portal on the website (where we entered games previously) after 4 hours.

If you have concerns about using the gamesheet app, please have your association direct those concerns to Hockey Alberta, which has made this mandatory for leagues.

Finally, what you have all been waiting for, the games. First, a message from John: Over the course of the 4 tiering weekends, we will make all attempts for 5 to 6 games for each team. Some of those games will require further travel as well there will be games consisting of no contact. This will allow us to have a better understanding of where each of your teams compare and when it comes to our final tiering, we can say with as much data and information as possible, where your team will be placed for the season.

Me again: If you are playing a team that is in a Non Body Checking tier, you must play the game as a non checking game. STRONGLY emphasize this to your coaches. There will be some cross tier games as we try to see where everyone fits.

Preseason match ups are sent out week by week. Some weekends you might only get 1 match up and you are free to add an exhibition game if you want an additional game. If the team you are playing is amenable, you can book your games for a weeknight. This will help alleviate the ref shortage. Otherwise, games must be played by Sunday so we can have a look at results and get the match ups for the next weekend out. We have four weekends of preseason. It's tough because of the short notice, but the league has tried many other things, and this seems to be the best way to make sure we see the matches we need to see in order to make decisions about where teams fit.

We are not designating the home and away teams. If managers are unable to work it out between themselves, contact Kathy and I, and we will make the decision. Some associations have a much harder time getting ice slots and some have all kinds of flexibility, so teams will not end up with the same number of home and away games. However, where you can, set them up as one home and one away game.

Below are the match ups for this week, and I will also attach it as an excel doc. As soon as you have your games booked, send them to Kathy and I. We need the teams (home and away), date, time, arena. We will get the games posted on the NEAHL website. As you can see, tiers have been grouped for these games as tier 1/2; tier 3; tier 1/2/3 NBC. The website will be changed to reflect this grouping of tiers.

[match ups have not been included in this copy of the email]