About Hounds

Who are the Pharaoh Hounds?

Formed in 1994 as the 'Pittsburgh Running Team' under the coaching of Niall Moyna PhD, the group later changed its name to the 'Pittsburgh Pharaoh Hounds' and remain Pittsburgh's premiere elite running team.

We have won the Pittsburgh Marathon Mellon Bank Relay every year since 1997, when it first began, took second at the 2001 USATF National Half-Marathon Championships in Parkersburg, WVA, and regularly win local races. The mission of the Pittsburgh Pharaoh Hounds is the development of high performance runners to be competitive in the racing scene in Western Pennsylvania. Our core work is the recruitment and development of competitive athletes through regularly-scheduled workouts, team races, and volunteer opportunities. We also seek to develop younger runners and masters runners.

Mission

The mission of the Pittsburgh Pharaoh Hounds is the development of high performance runners of all ages and dominance of the competitive racing scene in Western Pennsylvania. We will accomplish our mission through:

    • Providing quality training and workouts for competitive runners;
    • Demonstrating that we have a winning record in team competitions;
  • Developing and maintaining a competitive women's team; and
  • Conditioning collegiate and high school runners on the off-season.

Elected Officer Positions

1. Club Director

2. Treasurer

3. Training Director

4. Men’s Coordinator

5. Women’s Coordinator

6. Uniform Coordinator

7. Web Master

8. Club Journalist

Responsibilities:

Club Director

1. Coordinating elections.

2. Gets general feedback from members on general issues

3. Disseminates information to appropriate positions

4. Coordinates social activities

5. Determines the clubs budget and spending

6. Steps in if another position needs help or can’t come to a decision, but can’t change a decision made by an elected position member, within the position member’s responsibility.

7. Produce an annual financial report to be shared with the members

8. Coordinate voting on any bylaw changes (see Changing Bylaw Process section below)

Treasurer

1. Collects and tracts member dues

2. Manages the club account

Men’s Coordinator

1. Gets feedback on men’s team specific issues.

2. Disseminates information to appropriate positions

3. Helps with organizing male teams for an event at the direction of the club director

Woman’s Coordinator

1. Gets feedback on women’s team specific issues.

2. Disseminates information to appropriate positions

3. Helps with organizing male teams for an event at the direction of the club director

Training Director

1. Organizes a training group, interested in designing the workouts and training information for the club.

2. Decides on the training schedule.

3. Disseminates the training information to the Web Master for distribution to the club members.

4. Gets feedback on training issues from club members and decides how to use this feedback to improve the training information on the training page.

Uniform Coordinator

1. Identifies uniform vendor and orders uniforms for team members

2. Identifies logo vendor and gets the Pharaoh Hound logo on the uniforms

3. Identifies logo vendor for personal items such as sports bras and coordinate having the logo put on these items

4. Distributes uniforms

5. Keeps track of who received uniforms

Web Master

1. Updates the Pittsburgh Pharaoh Hound website, including announcements, news, workouts, public member list, and private member list

2. Maintains the Hounds Google Group

Club Journalist

1. Creates short news stories about member’s race results

2. Creates short news stories about club events

3. Passes these stories on the Web Master to include on the web site

4. If requested, edit stories written by others.

Election Process

1. Once a year on December 1 thru December 12th, current paid members submit their names for one or more positions. A candidate could run for and be voted in to multiple positions in the same year. The candidate can also include information of what they plan on doing in the position. The candidates submit their positions to the web master. From May 13th thru May 20th the positions are voted on. Positions take effect on June 1.

2. The submitted names are available to all current paid members to be voted on. The candidate’s information will be listed on the Hounds web site.

3. Votes are emailed to an impartial individual who is neither running nor voting

4. The election results are posted by the Web Master. The Web Master is not given the details of the votes, only the results.

Changing Bylaw Process

The bylaws can only be changed by a 75% or greater vote from the paid club members. A bylaw change can be requested by any paid member to the Club Director, or can be requested directly by the Club Director. The Club Director can refuse to put a bylaw change up for a vote, in which case the requsted bylaw change is not made. If the Club Director however chooses to put the bylaw change up for a vote, the results of the vote alone determines whether the change is made.