Rumor or Truth?

[DHCJr]

I heard two rumors this weekend at a youth tournament this past weekend that I hope are untrue. I feel they will hurt what we have built over the last few years.

The first, supposedly going to be proposed by the new president Barbara Anderson is to eliminate Divisions and Sections and have all competitions being run by a paid Regional Coordinator. Besides the logistical problem of what will happen to the equipment and getting Regional equipment around to the competitions, you have the time factor. Right now you don’t need to worry if a Division competition is in Washington conflicting with one in California. You could have them on the same day, not so if they were both Regional events. How many fencers would we loose, if we told them they would have to travel almost every time they want to fence? Would the competitions be spread out or would they be concentrated in one area of the region, like the second rumor I heard.

The second rumor I heard is ALL the Bay Cup Youth Events will be Regional Youth Competitions, while the only one in Southern California will be after the deadline for applications to National. How many of the Western Regional Youth Competitions will be outside of the San Francisco Bay area, next year? If this is true and you’re a youth in that area, it will be a lot easier to qualify for Nationals, then if you were elsewhere, unless your parents were rich and had the time to travel on ‘Work Days’.

As I said, I hope these rumors are untrue, but I am going to be VERY interested in what comes out of the Executive meeting and the Official schedule this summer.

[CarlKnoch]

I can't imagine that it would be a good idea to break up divisions and sections. The reason to separate the USFA into divisions is made clear in the bylaws.

To place control in a regional body wouldn't be bad if the regions were say.... the exact size and shape of our current divisions. If they were to try to make the regions larger than that, it will become problematic to schedule enough tournaments for the fencing population in each region. It would also change dramatically the structure of the USFA.

I would have to see the data that she has to back up the idea to see if I liked it, but my knee jerk reaction is that it would be a disaster.
C

[neevel]

I know that there has been some consideration of doing away with the Sections. The only practical thing the sections do currently is run Sectional Qualifyers, and ever since Div. I Nationals moved to qualification based on NRPS the only purpose Sectionals serves is to qualify for Div I-A and U-19 (which could easily be shifted to the Divisional level).

I suspect the bit about the Divisions being eliminated was a mis-understanding of the idea about doing away with the sections. As Donald and Carl note, the Divisions do play an immediate and practical role in running local tournaments. I doubt paid regional coordinators could do any better (especially for what they might be paid- US Fencing certainly wouldn't be able to pay a group of full-timers for the task).

-Dave

[azfencer]

I remember as long as three years ago hearing talk at sectionals about sections being eliminated in a few years. I don't recall what the replacements were to be, something to TRY to cope better with the wide geographical and population differences between sections across the country. I'd have to guess it will take quite a while before whatever comes next is really an improvement but I suppose it's a good thing that the USFA is trying.

[AndrewH]

I'm all for eliminating sections/sectionals, just keep the divisions as they are. I don't know how it is for other people around the country, but in the MidAtlantic section, I would say 70% of the fencers are from NJ, 15% from the Philadelphia area, 5% from other areas in PA and 10% from Maryland. Very rough estimate there. Anyway, our Junior Sectionals were held in a suburb of Pittsburgh, which is an 8 hour drive from NJ. In MS, only one Western PA division member made top 8 and qualified for nationals. Meanwhile, many more than qualified fencers from NJ, MD, and even eastern PA didn't come because it was just too far to drive. Why should we have to drive 8 hours to a place that isn't even convienient for residents of that state to get to, just to qualify for nationals? Just take the top 25% of the U19 Division Championships, makes soooo much more sense logistically.

[Mo]

I heard two rumors this weekend at a youth tournament this past weekend that I hope are untrue. I feel they will hurt what we have built over the last few years.

The first, supposedly going to be proposed by the new president Barbara Anderson is to eliminate Divisions and Sections and have all competitions being run by a paid Regional Coordinator.

Umm, as a person on a Division Board I do know that there are assigned regional coordinators, (forced volunteers) who are overseeing the Regional Youth Competitions. The only thing they do IS oversee those competitions. IF there is money in it I am going to rush down to my nearest USFA office and sign up!!
The USFA is trying to make them run more efficiently so that there can be more and better RYCs which means more opportunities for kids to fence.
Our division is looking for new ways for all people to fence even those who don't fence in National Tournaments so fencing will be enjoyed by all. (imagine flowers and butterflies with that statement kay?)
Attaching a big open or other interesting events to the RYCs and making a weekend of them is what we have in mind.

[DHCJr]

Looking at what has been posted has brought some other points to mind. For those like AndrewH who thought the Sections to large and spead out. Look at the Regions in place for the Youth events. They are as large or larger than the Sections. But there is a big difference, the National Office decides who will run the Regions, we vote on the officers for the Sections.

Also a point that Mo brought out, more opportunities to fence. I only have a good knowledge of the Pacific Coast section, but as I said about the second rumor, if you live in San Francisco Bay area, you will have great opportunity any where else in the Pacific Coast Region, too bad.

The Pacific Coast Section does more than most. There are a very strong Sectional Circuit for both the Seniors and the Juniors and they are not concentrated in one area. I like to think this is because it is controlled more locally, then having the control come from the national office.

I just received an e-mail from Midi Cox of a e-mail sent out by Eric Dew.

Here is where the schedule has been posted:

http://www.thebaycup.org/MAIN/prelimSchedule.html and
http://www.thebaycup.org/MAIN/prelimSortEvents.html

Here is what Eric Dew wrote:

· Y10MxF is split into Y10BF and Y10GF, as there are enough of each, and will allow for easier hosting of these events.
· I have received "approval" from Wendell Kubik to make the Bay Cup, at least the youth events, into our own RYC. That means, fencers who compete in the youth events in the Bay Cup will qualify to Y10 and Y12 national events, including the April NAC and the Summer Nationals. Thus, I've included Y10MxS and Y10MxE to facilitate those event categories. I expect about 10-15 competitors in Y10MxS, but have no clue how many will attend Y10MxE. Perhaps there may be some from the usual places. We may have some coming in from out of town, now that the Youth portion of the Bay Cup is an RYC.(Longer term implications may be that as USFA regionalizes more, the Bay Cup model will become the qualifying process to some national events. May or may not happen.)

I don't know how many qualifing events total for the Pacific Coast Region, but 5 will be in the San Francisco Bay Area and 1 in Southern California. I was told by the organizer of the event in Southern California that the date was set by Eric and the date is after the entries need to be in for Nationals.

Will there be any other RYC's in the Pacific Coast Region? I hope so, but if not it does give a lot of advantage to those who live in the area.

[edew]

Since my name and my "work" has now been spewed across the web for all to see (including those working for Al-Qaida, so now, I have to include additional security measures at our local competitions...), let me try to explain.

The consideration to change the administrative structure of the USFA has been around for several years, at least since the Reno NAC in 2001, when several of us (Carla Richards, me, several others) talked about the need to look at the future of USFA and see where the administrative structure will take us. The current division/section structure lacks coherence as some divisions are extremely strong and some are extremely weak. The strong ones lose out in sending their proportionate number of fencers (relative to the rest of USFA), the weak ones might not sustain itself.

Sections also have this problem.

Another problem - a problem USFA wants to have - is how to deal with hundreds and thousands of fencers. National events may, in the future, no longer handle the number of competitions. I have mentioned in another thread about the possibility of holding quadrennials for nationals, having a different caliber of "nationals" each year, culminating in a grand uber-nationals on the Olympic quadrennial year. But that's just me speaking. There's nothing from USFA or any committee within USFA I know of speaking such ideas.

The solution is to move more towards regionalization. As more events are pushed off of USFA's plate and onto someone else's plate, USFA can stay abovewater financially and still perform its stated goals: help the elite fencers, provide governance, blah-blah-blah.

The regional level fencing is where the fencers must prove their mettle (or metal, as the case may be). The point is that regions will be more flexible in creation. Currently, both the sections and divisions are very static. Either you belong to one division or a section or another (or don't). This format is getting outmoded and too slow to deal with changes in the fencing demographic. Strong clubs and strong fencing presence are popping up in all the unlikely places and the divisions and sections in those areas can't handle them. Regionalization will forgo the traditional division/section structure and will allow clubs from wherever to enter in, exit out of, or create their own region. A region will survive or die on its own (financial) merits. If fencers prefer to compete somewhere else, then that region will wither away. There's nothing USFA needs to do, in a sense. Hopefully, of course, all regions will prosper and grow. But they may not due to mismanagement, due to lack of interest, due to whatever. But there's no need for USFA to keep track of such things.

The only thing relevant to USFA is that fencers will qualify to national events via regions. This goes along the grain of my quadrennial program: do well in your region in year 1, qualify for national level competition in year 2; do well there, qualify for year 3 and so on.

Now, about the Bay Cup. At the 2002 Div I Nationals/YNAC at Louisville KY, Wendell Kubik held a "What's a RYC?" meeting for people so that they can understand the program and what he wanted to spread to the rest of USFA. At the meeting, he explained how the Texas RYC came into being with events held at such and such and this-and-that. All fine and great. The several people there from the Bay Area, me, Greg Massialas, Maureen Griffin, Mike Pederson, and several fencing parents, all listened to that and said, "that's the Bay Cup, except we have six events instead of three and we spread out the events so that they're not all held on one weekend."

We (the Bay Cup community), have since then, tried to incorporate the Bay Cup into an RYC format. The season after the above, we designated three events in the Bay Cup as RYCs. People from various places outside the Bay Cup area (a 75 mile radius from the capitol of Oakland is the general idea of the boundary) did come, but were confused about the fees. Some chose to join the Bay Cup, paying the $40 Bay Cup fee and came to fence in all three (or at least two) of the "RYCs". Some came only once and paid the $30 RYC registration fee. Fencers within the Bay Cup were also confused about whether they should pay $40 or $30/RYC. There was a compromise which was confusing at best, but seemed equitable.

Now, this season, we pulled the Bay Cup out of being RYCs, so we had three RYCs in the Pacific region (see, www.pacific-ryc.org), plus one Super RYC (which I would prefer to call Gran Prix RYC or something like that). Those three were in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles. The Super was in San Francisco as well. All three plus the Super were qualifiers to Summer Nationals, even though the LA RYC was held after the Summer Nationals entry deadline: the entries to the LA RYC was sent to USFA (since it was due prior to the Summer Nationals deadline) and were cross-checked with those who entered. USFA was satisfied with that process. We plan to do the same thing next season, if need be. (Also, we hope that USFA will become more automated so that entry deadline doesn't have to be 1.5 months ahead of the Summer Nationals, just 1 month would be nice.)

So this year, as you read in DHCJr's excerpt of my email to various people, I "petitioned" Wendell about whether the Bay Cup can be made into its own RYC, since for all intents and purposes, it does everything an RYC does (and very well, too, I might add). He said yes, but probably too cavalierly. I may or may not hold him to his word, but that's not the point.

Southern Cal wants to do something similar and wants it to be its own RYC. Fine by me. Since I also run the Pacific RYC (the www.pacific-ryc.org is webministered by me, as you can see by its rather basic html format), I have no problems adding them into the mix. By the way, I'm paid squat (i.e., nada) to be the Pacific Coast Regional coordinator. Hopefully, one day, I may actually be paid for doing this.

I am "paid" by the Bay Cup for a tune of $1200 a year for administrative expenses. For that amount, I can't charge the Bay Cup for any expenses like buying paper or printer ink or Kinko's stuff. I don't mind. I think I can do better than $1200/year. I expect to. On the other hand, I've paid myself only $300 for the year so far.

As you see in the prelimSchedule.html page, there are three assigned RYCs. They're there probably as placeholders. Also, note that the locations are all somewhere besides the SF Bay Area (unless you include Sacramento as SF Bay Area). I haven't received confirmation from any of the other places, Portland, Sacramento, or LA for running an RYC. If I don't by end of Summer Nationals this year, I will have to pick them, and obviously, I'll consult the locals for their ability to run one or two. But since they'll be redundant to our existing Bay Cup, people might not want to run any, and those from outside the Bay Area may have to travel all the time to SF to compete in RYCs.

I don't like that. I would rather push the Bay Cup model to other regions. I have talked to some people in LA and they don't think it can work there. I think it can. They just have to make it manageable by not going too big. On the other hand, those who experiened the Bay Cup and see its organizational structure are evangelizing the beauty of the Bay Cup to their native areas. I will be helping the Houston area form their Lay Cup (as in Ken Lay, and it rhymes with Bay). A Bay Area fencer is returning to England and wants me to help them set something of the sort in London.

So why is the Bay Cup so "great"? There's three main things:

1. Schedule is put out early in the season. As you can see with the preliminary schedule, it's out there. The whole year. Done now, not in late September.

2. Cool prizes. At the end of the season, the top-8 fencers in each event category (that's 23 categories for us) get nice prizes. For example, all junior Bay Cup fencers (23 categories, 8 places) get a $40 gift certificate from American Fencers Supply Co. Let's all give a big hand to American Fencers Supply Company for their wonderful sponsorship of the Bay Cup. On top of the $40 gift certificate, they also get material prizes: complete electric foil, chest protector, points, body cords, whatever.

3. Coordinated schedule. The genesis of the Bay Cup was a desire to not have conflicts between the local divisions, Central California Division, Northern California Division, and Mountain Valley Division. Prior to the Bay Cup's existence, we'd have the schedules created sometime by mid-October. Then, all the events are crowded around three weekends, as that schedule only goes to end of December. For those three or four weekends, the open foil in Central California is scheduled on the same weekend as the open foil in Northern California, and so on for all the other weapons. Or, it's scheduled when the other division's division qualifiers were scheduled. The net result was sparse attendance and lack of referees.

My primary goal, when creating the Bay Cup, was to have the three divisions agree to coordinate their qualifiers (as you can see in the preliminary schedule). Once that's done, we then distributed the events across the various clubs among the three divisions. Since then, there has been some grumblings as some clubs took on more events than others. That will be rectified in the upcoming season.

Another benefit about the Bay Cup is that the money stays in the fencing community. The $40 registration fee is rather insignificant, compared the the standard $30/event registration fee at many RYCs or higher at many other major tournaments. Entry fees at events are $20/event or less. The $40 goes to the Bay Cup, which I administer (and miserably fail at embezzling), the entry fee goes to the host club. Since we don't rent outside venues (any outside venues are gotten for free), money doesn't go to a third-party not directly associated with fencing. The $40 registration fee goes towards paying for the medals (that is a third-party and can't really be dealt with by any other means, and besides, the medal maker is my brother and so what if the medals are $20/each...haha, just joking by the way: medals cost about $4.50/each including the engraving and the ribbon), partial payment for referees, and the prizes. We spend about $12K on prizes. Go to the Bay Cup website and look for the archives and check the expenses for the 2002-2003 season. The prize money is spent at fencing vendors, American Fencers Supply Co., and The Fencing Post. Other vendors are encouraged to offer something neat-o, but with the possible expansion of the Bay Cup model to other areas, I think there'll be lots of opportunities for other vendors.

Results? Well, at the last YNAC in Atlanta, 6 of the top-8 Youth-10 Men's Foil fencers were from the Bay Cup. Our somewhat slow-growth women's foil (I'm talking about 3+ years ago) has become somewhat of a force, although not at the level of the Rochesters or NYFCs. Our men's epee fencers have done reasonably well. At the Division II/III/Vet at Arlington TX last season, two of the top-4 were Bay Cup fencers, and I think several below were also Bay Cup fencers. Bay Cup fencers have consistently taken the top places at the Pacific Coast Championships. Some top fencers who grew out of the Bay Cup include Dmitri Kirk-Gordon, Clinton Kershaw, Max Williams, Doris Willette, Eileen Grench, Michael Pearce, Frank Denier, Emerson DiNapoli, the CFA women epeeists of several years back, and soon to make their mark at the cadet and junior (and senior) level: Gerek Meinhardt, Sam Perkins, Alex Khoshnevissan, Alex Simmons (who won the Y14 MF at the Canadian National Championships), Benjamin Dorn, Allison Henvick, Heather Stephenson, Jessica Wacker, Rachel and Jacob Becker, and a whole host of others. At the veteran level, we've had several fencers make the veteran national team. Jere Bothelio is a Bay Cup fencer, as is Phil Gerring.

At the moment, our saber is still kinda weak. But watch it grow. The numbers have increased from 12-15 fencers to 25-35 fencers and onward.

[edew]

Coupla more things:

The goal of regionalization is not to have people travel far. The goal is to allow them to NOT have to travel far. For example the Central California division includes the following counties: Santa Clara County, Santa Cruz, Monterey, and San Luis Obispo. Those who live and fence in San Luis Obispo would have to drive up to Santa Clara county (about 250 miles or more) to compete in a division event, like a qualifier, mainly because it's not likely that the division is willing to hold a qualifier down in SLO, given the demographics (90% of the CenCal fencers are in Santa Clara county).

So, rather than forcing SLO fencers, when they start getting big, to drive up to San Jose to compete, the regionalization concept will allow them to form their own San Luis Obispo/Santa Barbara/Fresno/Visalia axis of competition. Regionalization does not have names than can't be changed quickly, such as the current division/section model. Currently, it's very hard to dissolve a division or a section. It's not easy to start a new division. Regionalization? Snap your fingers and it becomes one.

So why wouldn't any two-bit club decide to form its own region? Well, you need numbers to make it profitable. It's the pure-and-simple profit motive that makes regions succeed or fail. If the numbers aren't there, you can't succeed and those fencers will either leave the sport or leave to fence at a more populated area. If they're willing to drive 3 hours, they'll do it. I can't speak for all of the US, but 3 hours seems to be the upper bound in California for tolerant driving distance. I believe folks in Texas don't think twice about driving 6 hours each way. I'm sure folks in New York won't try if it requires more than 45 minutes of driving.

Regions are flexible: if the concentration of fencers move over time, the region moves with it. Location of where most competitions are held will move to where the fencers what to hold them. Will politics sneak in and muddy things up? Doesn't it always? But the caveat to those who might plan to is that people vote with their dollars. If some club or area want to monopolize on events, fencers are not obligated to attend. These fencers may choose to organize among themselves to have competition elsewhere.

The only rule that USFA requires is that there is liability insurance paid for the location, and that the schedule is announced well ahead of time to allow people to attend.

[Inquartata]

And never underestimate the zeal of a bureaucracy for centralizing power. Divisions are semi-autonomous; mustn't let that continue to go on...

[esskreemr]

HEY! Don't forget about the .1% from West Virginia (a part of West Penn)!

[Fencing Mom]

It seems to me that the travel issue concerning Sectional qualifiers is never going to be resolved fairly for all, short of a Senate/House of Representatives answer. By that I mean that as voters who reside in a particular state, we are all represented equally in the Senate, each state having two Senators. We are also represented proportional to our state’s population with differing numbers of Congressmen and women in the House. Translated to fencing, that might mean that each division would have the opportunity to qualify its fencers at least once each year at a nearby venue, while divisions with a high percentages of fencers would get more than one opportunity to qualify fencers at nearby venues.

That said, I’d like to respond to Andrew H. in New Jersey concerning his complaint that New Jersey fencers had to travel to W. PA for Jr. Sectionals this year:

Meanwhile, many more than qualified fencers from NJ, MD, and even eastern PA didn't come because it was just too far to drive. Why should we have to drive 8 hours to a place that isn't even convienient for residents of that state to get to, just to qualify for nationals?

Yes, New Jersey has the highest number of fencers, due to the state’s high school fencing program, although the vast majority of high school fencers do not attend national tournaments. The MidAtlantic Section has bent over backwards to accommodate Jersey fencers, at the absolute expense of fencers in the western part of the section. Junior Sectionals is held every other year in N.Jersey. That means 7 times since 1990 junior W. PA fencers have had to travel to N. Jersey, while Jersey fencers have had to travel only once to W. PA. Put another way, let’s say theoretically as a W. PA fencer you started fencing in Junior Sectionals at the age of six. When you age out at 19 you still haven’t fenced a Jr. Sectional qualifier in your own division, but you’ve traveled to N.J. seven times.
So, Andrew H., you think it is unfair because once in 14 years Jersey fencers have to travel to W. PA? Want to hear about the three – or is it four- times I’ve found myself with a van full of kids at midnight, on the Jersey turnpike, looking for the exit where the hotel is located? Want to hear about getting those kids to the venue for an 8:00 close of registration, after 8 hours of driving and 5 hours of sleep, only to find out the organizers pushed back the start time so they could get more sleep? Want to hear about the referees who showed up a couple of hours after the published start time? Don’t get me started. If I never see Teaneck N.J. again it will be too soon.

[Dan H]

I'm all for eliminating sections/sectionals, just keep the divisions as they are. I don't know how it is for other people around the country, but in the MidAtlantic section, I would say 70% of the fencers are from NJ, 15% from the Philadelphia area, 5% from other areas in PA and 10% from Maryland. Very rough estimate there. Anyway, our Junior Sectionals were held in a suburb of Pittsburgh, which is an 8 hour drive from NJ. In MS, only one Western PA division member made top 8 and qualified for nationals. Meanwhile, many more than qualified fencers from NJ, MD, and even eastern PA didn't come because it was just too far to drive. Why should we have to drive 8 hours to a place that isn't even convienient for residents of that state to get to, just to qualify for nationals? Just take the top 25% of the U19 Division Championships, makes soooo much more sense logistically.

Those numbers are both inaccurate and injurious to other divisions in the section. Fencers from W. PA drove to New Jersey and other points in the east part of the section for several years in a row before we got a junior sectionals close to us. Our division placed fencers in every event except for women's saber, and the men's foil champion was local. As for the relative populations (data from USFA website):
DIVISION POPULATION % OF TOTAL
NJ 936 35.5
Philadelphia 478 18.1
W. PA 409 15.5
Maryland 258 9.8
Capitol 236 9.0
Harrisburg 127 4.8
South Jersey 119 4.5
Central PA 71 2.7

So, yes, Jersey is the biggest division in the section, but other areas are by no means fencing backwaters. I think you guys can afford the 6-hour drive once every 5 years so that the 23% of us from "other areas of PA" can have the tournament closer to us.

[AndrewH]

Dan H-
I made those numbers up completely off the top of my head. just trying to get the point across that NJ was the biggest fencing population in the MidAtlantic section.

Fencing Mom-
I'm certainly not trying to make the case for having Sectionals in Teaneck every year. While it was nice to drive 15 minutes to get there, obviously the tournament needs to rotate locations to be fair to everyone. The reason I complained about having the tournament in W. Pa was the low attendance by W. Pa fencers. Of course, it's not fair to compare tournament attendance absolutely. W. Pa just doesn't have as many fencers than NJ does. What I think would be best for everyone would be to determine a tournament site using a "weighted average" kind of formula, moving the site towards the more fencer-populated areas but not at the total expense of the non-populated areas. I'd give up sectionals in Teaneck for that. So everyone in the section ends up driving a couple of hours, but no one more than 4 or 5.

PS- On a (possibly) unrelated complaint about sectionals, the W. Pa division seems to be in the stone age as far as running tournaments is concerned. Everything was done with a pen & paper, not so much as a calculator for determining seeding. DE slips were sent out without seed numbers, and when my DE was called, I asked the director if I could see the tableau. He said that there wasn't one yet. There was also some confusion about calculating the indicators in a MS pool that led to a 20-30 minute delay.

PPS- I must say, the area of W. Pa that we were in was just beautiful. And for an april day, the weather was perfect. I really did enjoy my time there, even if the drive was quite greuling.

PPPS- The top-8 prizes were a neat idea, same with the samurai sword drawing. Kudos for that idea, we should institute something similar here in NJ.

[mlr2fence]

If one looks at the geographic size of the Sections, Mid-Atlantic is fortunate to be one of the more compact ones. Take a look at your neighboring Southeast--stretching from Florida to Virginia and over to Alabama. If they held a Sectional tournament in a 'corner' (like Miami) it would be an almost impossible weekend drive to attend, necessitating a flight. Maybe its time to reconfigure and increase the number of sections, since the numbers of fencers have grown, into smaller areas.

[Dan H]

PS- On a (possibly) unrelated complaint about sectionals, the W. Pa division seems to be in the stone age as far as running tournaments is concerned. Everything was done with a pen & paper, not so much as a calculator for determining seeding. DE slips were sent out without seed numbers, and when my DE was called, I asked the director if I could see the tableau. He said that there wasn't one yet. There was also some confusion about calculating the indicators in a MS pool that led to a 20-30 minute delay.

It wasn't the W PA people doing the bout committee paperwork - they had people from the USFA handling that.
Our division does have its problems, I grant you. This one wasn't us, though.
On an unrelated note, I heard Darius bit the head off a chicken at Pomme de Terre last weekend!

[dekko]

Seems as though travel is the biggest concern. If they allowed every division to hold one and not limit each section to 4 RYC's this would allow more of them and prevent the very problem that seems to be developing. Also just curious, how is regionalization differents from sections? Seems to be the same thing with a different name. I understand having an event geographically useful to the most people but then it eliminates so many others. "You are not going to sell many red ones if you offer none to sell" Having these events spread out over every where seems to be a better option. In the Mid Atlantic section example, if the RYCs mostly happen in Jersey then you will see lower %'s from other areas but if you have one in Pittsburg then the Jersey %'s will go down and the WV %'s will go up, not a big stretch in thinking.

It was mentioned about the SE Section, there was a sectionals in Miami and many of us did have to fly. Even people in Florida had to fly. I am not sure but I suspect we have the largest section geographically in the USFA. We had 4 RYCs this year, 2 in NC, 2 in Florida, 1 in Alabama. The 2 in NC were in September and March. Why didn't Virginia, SC, W Tenn, Georgia have RYCs? No interest, lacking ability(I doubt it), didn't care? The March ecent had kids from lots of places including NYC.

Lastly, let's not forget the fencers we are talking about, mainly Y10 and Y12 kids. Parents are going to be less likey to travel very far and spend the time and money for that trip for a 9 year old kid who likes to 'swordfight'. The easuier it is on the parents to make this happen, especially at this age, the easier it will be to keep these kids in the sport longer. If we have to tell a parent you have to travel 3-4 or more hours just so your kid can fence in an event where the outcome doesn't matter just to fence in nationals, that is a tough sell for most parents. Having more of these in more places should be the goal here, not localizing these to a certain area cased on 'who is in charge'.

Good luck, we will all need it.

[afc fencer]

Georgia did have an ryc.

[hpfencing]

I love the idea of regionalisism. I think it wil help promote the sport more and help the quality of the events. I know many groups don't do exactly what they are suppose to at event simply because they know they can get away with it.

Hiring someone to oversee each area would fix that problem quickly.

[edew]

If one looks at the geographic size of the Sections, Mid-Atlantic is fortunate to be one of the more compact ones. Take a look at your neighboring Southeast--stretching from Florida to Virginia and over to Alabama. If they held a Sectional tournament in a 'corner' (like Miami) it would be an almost impossible weekend drive to attend, necessitating a flight. Maybe its time to reconfigure and increase the number of sections, since the numbers of fencers have grown, into smaller areas.

That's the point of the regionalization: new regions will grow, existing ones will die or merge with others until there's a neat fit. The goal is to economize so that the maximal number of fencers can get to a reasonable location easily. When the numbers become too big, the region can split into two. When they each get too small, they can re-coalesce into one larger one.

The optimal goal would be 30-50 fencers in the popular events and 15-25 in the smaller ones (it's nice to have different sized events so that it can fit better). When events start bringing in more than 64 fencers, then it becomes more of a logistical problem for the organizers and the fencers, especially if there are fencers competing in multiple events on the same day. When there are fewer than 14 fencers, then it becomes less beneficial to the fencers, especially if they see each other time and again in a series of such events.