List of Competitors at the 2001 Summer Nat's

[Peach]

Oh, jeez, Eric. Don't get rice stuck on your screen. At least on-line PDAs don't ring in movie theaters.

Are you sure they are going to do "Elite" Nationals? By which I mean what used to be a separate Division I Nationals? I thought that was for years where they had to qualify teams for Worlds before Summer Nationals--though I guess if Portugal starts August 12 that's cutting it a little close.

I'm not looking forward to yet another trip. Though except for Palm Springs all the ticket prices are below $300 from the East Coast even now.

[edew]

PDAs may ring in movie theaters, but mine has a very quiet ring (and has vibrate mode on as well).

The USFA sends out tournament organizing booklets to convention center sales people, as well as for any fencer or group interested in hosting NACs. The booklet included a schedule for the upcoming seasons (through 2004-2005, I believe). I know that the 2002-2003 season will be quite different, but the 2001-2002 season indicated an Elite Nationals. I don't have the schedule with me at the moment, so I can't tell you the date. But, it's there.

[oiuyt]

EDew- any information that you could post about upcoming years (not just next year) would be interesting, certainly to me, and probably to most people reading this thread. You mention that 2002-3 will be quite different... How so?

-B

------------------
"Oh but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!"

[edew]

Well, this is going off topic from the title of this thread, but...

I'm involved with the Youth Regionalization Task Force. The goal is to restructure the way youth events are held. The problem with the current scheduling is that the youth events are heavily weighed to the fall season, when many new kids join the sport, and thus are not ready for NACs. So, the NACs become a crap shoot in terms of the number of entries and USFA takes a bath on them. So, we're trying to redesign the schedule so that youth fencers will have better opportunities to compete at events, while not making the schedule too hectic for everyone else. Nothing is settled at the moment, but chances are, we're going to do away with the two youth NACs and perhaps have one youth NAC maybe in April, and rely on regional events for youth competition. This way, youths (and consequently, their parents) won't have to fly across the nation to compete in a fairly good sized event.

USFA is planning for additional growth. Currently, the membership number is around 15,000. And many of those 15,000 are actively competing. USFA can't run that many national events because of the logistics of the referees and such. Thus, they're trying to push more events to regional areas. A region may be trans-sectional, and (most likely) multi-divisional. Basically, take a epicenter, draw out a 75 mile or so radius from that center, and all clubs, fencers in that circle is within the region. At most, a fencer will travel about 150 miles (each way) to get to a tournament. The 75 mile number is arbitrary, as some places may require a larger radius, while other places wouldn't need to (New York, for example can do well with a 25 mile radius.)

So, expect to see the three Div I NACs, two Junior/Cadet NACs, two Veteran/Wheelchair NACs, and at most one youth NAC. Then there is still the Summer Nationals and (presumably), the Elite Nationals.

Also, looking at my notes, I see that the 2001-2002 Elite Nationals are supposed to be scheduled over the April 27-28 weekend of 2002.