How is your club run?

[Aestro]

We had the club rules thread a week or so ago, but it didn't really help much in what I'm looking to do. Our club has been kind of stagnant for about 5 years and I think part of it at the least is due to a lack of purpose. I'm looking to rewrite our club's constitution before I graduate, and would like general information from everyone else about general policy. Information about the club is also very helpful, as obviously a small university club probably won't be completely comparable to a large olympic-spouting salle. Here's an example of the info I'm looking for, based on my own club:

I am part of a club based out of the University of Tennessee - Knoxville. We run around 20 members total, averaging around 10 per semester. Dues are $25 per semester, taken after the 4th attended practice. The Club has a large armoury, and provides both beginner's equipment and electric equipment for those in need, who most are.

We generally send about 8-10 fencers to local tournaments, and 5-6 to divisional. We have members which regularly place, but rarely go beyond divs.

We receive $1500 per year from the university and raise around $1000 on our own. We host 2 tournaments per year, with 2 events each and charging $15 for either or both events for non-members, and $10 for members. The University also provides us with a secluded basketball court to practice on, and a reasonable space for our armoury. Unfortunately, the University also forbids us from having non-university members.

We are student-run, with coaches allowed but by and large lacking. The Beginner's coach has been a student since I have joined, and is now myself, still a student. We have 4 offices: President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer. President does most of the organizational work - making sure tournaments are run smoothly, dealing with the University, generally making sure the club stays together. Vice-President at the moment is more of a back-up president and doesn't do much so long as the prseident has something to do. The Secretary takes care of paperwork, such as USFA forms and waivers and tournament entry forms. The Treasurer handles money. Large projects such as tournaments and equipment orders are generally handled by multiple officers. Officers are elected at the start of each semester.

So, what are your club policies? What do you charge, and what do your members get in return? What are some problems your club has faced in the past, and what helped fix them? Anything that can help improve membership or pretty much any other aspect of the club would be nice. and Thanks in advance to any help given!

[Schiavona]

So, what do you really want your club to do? Your structure seems fine to me. What do you spend that $2500 per year on? Shouldn't your "mission statement" include something along the lines of promoting and advancing the teaching and practice of fencing at your university? Recruit, teach, train and hold tournaments! What else is there? If you are lacking in the teaching dept use your money to pay for clinics. Not really sure what your problem is. Every club I've ever seen or heard about does the same thing; recruit, teach, train and hold tournaments. Oh, and party every so often!

The questions you asked at the end of your post often have club specific answers. Some clubs have to charge a lot to pay for space, coaching etc. Others have very little overhead, ie fencing classes for free space. Some salles are privately owned, some are non-profit corporations and some have no "leagle" identity at all(but they should!). Focus on the mantra I gave you-recruit, teach, train, tournaments! Oh and don't forget training refs and coaches! Have fun.

[Rabid Monk]

They have an armband system here in Canada.
I don't know what they have in the States, but for a club with lots of recreational members, it gives them something to work towards, and that is never a bad thing.

[Zilverzmurfen]

Originally Posted by Rabid Monk

They have an armband system here in Canada.

Just curious, but what's an 'armband system'?

[ThatReallyHurt]

Kind of like an indicator of proficiency, if you're interested in trying it out. To progress, you need to demonstrate knowledge, as well as fencing and directing skills. There are seven (I think levels):

None, yellow, orange, green, blue, red, and black.

For example, to get a yellow armband, you need to show you can do simple attacks, parries, and ripostes, as well as be a corner judge and do very simple directing. You also need to demonstrate knowledge of the dimensions of the piste, where the lines are, how points are scored between the three weapons and target area. That sort of stuff.

I think that's pretty much what it's all about. It's not required to do, but it does give people a structure they can use to learn about other aspects of fencing.

[Zilverzmurfen]

Ok. So these 'armbands', are they some sort of badge or patch that fencers wear on their kit?


(And sorry for threadjacking. TRH, feel free to PM me instead if you think it'll be better.)

[mfp]

Canadian armband program:

http://www.fencing.ca/downloads/armband_program_eng.pdf

[Alain]

Aestro,

Good thread, with lots of things to answer! Search the forums: what beginner classes are like, how to improve them, club rules, etc. as there's loads of info already out there

From personal experience, I know how hard it can be to run a uni club and try to encourage members to turn up regularly.

Generally, a uni club needs to appeal more to beginners (as that's who most of your members will be). As such, it needs to be fun - with a good coach, and good socials - as well as cheap(ish). A proper club (as in, big club for people who want more than just an excuhuse to get pished - no offence) needs to be open more regularly, with a good number of coaches and fencers for people to improve. A good uni club should be somewhere between the two, I guess!

One of the major factors is your budget; use it wisely. It's a delicate balancing act: try to keep your club's prices in line with other clubs on offer, whilst having regular (and structured) sessions for your beginners; at the same time, though, try to make sure that you have enough resources (coaching, boxes) to keep the more experienced fencers interested. You need to make the club serious enough so that people are willing to turn up and improve, whilst making it not-so-serious enough so that they don't feel bored!

GOOD LUCK!!!

[penguin_2000]

I would highly suggest a social chair. His responsibility would be to organize club awards/traditions/parties/get-togethers/food/alcohol/etc. If people enjoy the PEOPLE as well as the activity, they're more likely to show up.

[DangerMouse]

We are in a similar situation to you. We are a university club that gets about the same amount of money from the school as your club.

We don't charge fees of any sort, which limits our budget.

We provide all equipment, but do not pay for transportation, hotel, etc. If a student can't afford to compete, we can find some moeny to help, but generally it's not very expensive because we don't have to travel overnight very often. However, we do make students pay for a portion of any club blade they break.

The past couple years we have almost doubled our membership. The key to this has been fostering a competitive atmosphere and bridging the political gap that used to exist between the club and the PE class (classical italian foil). The main way we have accomplished this is by having some of our fencers register for the class.

It also helps that many of the SCA/Renfair crowd have left the club because of the new competitive atmosphere. This has helped us attract somewhat more dedicated people.

By being extra stingy with our budget this year, we have been able to buy a number of dry weapons for practice use and have a policy that the electric club weapons are only used by competitive fencers training for competition. This will free up a large portion of our budget next year to upgrade some of the electric weapons and buy a few for tournament use only (so we know they work well and pass weights/shims).

[MyrddinsPrecint]

a copy of the smith college fencing club charter can be found here: http://sophia.smith.edu/hellsbelles/charter.htm

One obvious goal is to increase membership--- but everyone's always looking to increase membership.

One thing that might help to de-stagnante your club is to try to get to at least one collegiate event (rather than just the standard local tournament) per year. they have an amazing ability to bring a team together (... sometimes). obviously this would involve a bit of coordination (transportation, food, equipment)--- but if you look around, there might be a collegiate tournament that wouldn't be that much of a strech. it would at least be something to try out.....

[Aestro]

Thanks for all the help guys! We actually have a pretty close-knit club. We go to Stefano's (local pizza joint) after every thursday practice, and have held parties and gone to ren faires together before. A friend to the club actually had a good description about our clubs - "Fencers are like cats. They congregate where-ever there's food, and then run immediately off to do their own thing."

Dangermouse - I've been turning an eye to the SCA crowd as well. They come in the most eager, but are also the ones that never end up taking it seriously as a sport. I think in order to keep the dedication to the club that I want we're going to have to take a more serious approach to fencing.

Anyone have suggestions about dues? Our club has to raise a certain amount on its own in order to get uni money, but I'm trying to find the delicate balance between a low enough fee that anyone who wishes to fence can, and a high enough fee that those who pay it will take their investment seriously and hopefully attend a few more practices.

As for the collegiate event - that's pretty tough. There are two or three clubs in the south that I can think of that would host a collegiate event (UNC and Florida, possibly Ole Miss) and all of those are well outside our usual travel range. On top of that, we have difficulties getting a large enough group together for even a 3-hour drive to divisionals or the like. This is a combination of beginners not fencing in tourneys, some older guys not having the money, and lack of time. We are considering sponsoring a couple USFA memberships per year though, so that the financially unable are able to participate. We could use either the attendance policy (as mentioned in your Smith College charter) or possibly have an in-house tournament for the spots. Maybe both, or just have officers decide.

The thing that's absolutely killed us this past year in membership are the more strict RecSports policies. We are no longer able to have outside members, and if we were to offer it as a non-credit class then they would be unable to participate in club practices, and possibly even not be allowed to use club gear. We have been forced to send away a number of potential members on this alone, and RecSports does not seem willing to change on this anytime soon. Have any other clubs had to deal with this recently, and if so, were there any regulations or the like which you used to get around it? We are a public university, after all.

[rcmatthews]

I currently attend Ole Miss. We would be willing to host a collegiate event if we could get a number of schools to attend. Clemson hosted an event this January, which may be a possibility. I know how hard it is to get people to drive to far away tournaments, we don't have a high caliber fencing (at least for sabre) closer than six hours. Perhaps something that we might want to look into is a joint cooperation with Vanderbilt, Rhodes, Ole Miss, UT, MTSU, and possibly Memphis (I know they have something going, just not how large they are yet). Let me know what you think of this idea, and if you know any other schools that might be interested.

[Schiavona]

Originally Posted by Aestro

The thing that's absolutely killed us this past year in membership are the more strict RecSports policies. We are no longer able to have outside members, and if we were to offer it as a non-credit class then they would be unable to participate in club practices, and possibly even not be allowed to use club gear. We have been forced to send away a number of potential members on this alone, and RecSports does not seem willing to change on this anytime soon. Have any other clubs had to deal with this recently, and if so, were there any regulations or the like which you used to get around it? We are a public university, after all.

So, if you take a fencing class you can't join the fencing club? That's just WRONG

Anyway, what about having "guests"? Many clubs have provisions for people who fence but are not members. Floor fees and such. Have you tried that?

[kalivor]

Originally Posted by Zilverzmurfen

Ok. So these 'armbands', are they some sort of badge or patch that fencers wear on their kit?


(And sorry for threadjacking. TRH, feel free to PM me instead if you think it'll be better.)

They look more like swimming badges (er, swimming badges here in Canada, anyways ...) than actual armbands. I've seen a few people who have them sewn onto the back arm of their jackets, but for the most part I assume people just throw them in their bag and leave them there ...

[Aestro]

Originally Posted by Schiavona

So, if you take a fencing class you can't join the fencing club? That's just WRONG

Anyway, what about having "guests"? Many clubs have provisions for people who fence but are not members. Floor fees and such. Have you tried that?

That's only for non-students. University Students who take the class could join the club, but for the time being we simply teach from within the club so that the instructor (myself) can actually fence once the lesson for the night is over. It still sucks hard. We were trying to use the logic that taking non-credit class = student = allowed to join club. didn't work. A credit class might work, but I don't think they would give it to us, nor do we have anyone with the time available for that.

I have tried a lot of things to get outsiders in - our previous policy was that non-students were charged $35 instead of $25 and could not vote in elections. We have asked about guests as well, and were told the only way guests would be allowed is in the case of an event - i.e. fencing clinic or tournament.

We have been discussing actually breaking from the university, but I don't think we can financially handle that at all. The University technically owns all our equipment as well as the space we practice in. This would be difficult.

Of course, just today ClubSports cut our funding from $1500 to $540 per year. While I understand that many non-uni and even some uni clubs get nothing, this is still a thousand bucks out of our budget. Bye-bye third box! This was mostly due to the budget board being made up of officers from other clubs. The problem with this is that none of them have any experience fencing and any attempts to explain that you need DIFFERENT KINDS OF SWORDS and that some of them have to be electric and some not seemed to bounce off of them like a foil on a sabreur. I am getting frustrated and I think a nice "chat" with the ClubSports director is in order.

[keith]

ah the joys of student led sports unions - lots of fond memories, and loathing for rowing, rugby and hockey (which had mastered the art of 'stacking').

Now it may be worth getting together with some other 'small' sports clubs and running a unified set of candidates for the board posts (assuming that these are elected posts similar to the sports unions at uk universities). Not a quick fix but if you get organised you should be able to improve things in the longer term.

How much other fencing is around your area? If the university will allow clinics etc you could try and get a local coach in to run a clinic session(s) over a series of weekends.

[Schiavona]

One year I actually joined the Student Goverment to get funding for my university club. It was a, a,......good expirence *shudder*.

[MyrddinsPrecint]

it's not unusual to have a college uninterested in letting outsiders in....

hell, the administration of my high school once tried to put a ban on alumni from our school coming back on rare occations to visit us/fence with us ....

It seems like a dead end, honestly...... If you can't get the fencing to come to you, go to the fencing.............

[Aestro]

Originally Posted by MyrddinsPrecint

it's not unusual to have a college uninterested in letting outsiders in....

hell, the administration of my high school once tried to put a ban on alumni from our school coming back on rare occations to visit us/fence with us ....

It seems like a dead end, honestly...... If you can't get the fencing to come to you, go to the fencing.............

They did that too. We have a handful of alumni in the area who are not allowed to fence with us because they are no longer students. This has been a very frustrating semester for me because it feels like the RecSports department is doing everything they can to kill the club, whether it's intentional or not. I think taking a turn towards a more competitive club would make it harder for them to give us the shaft.

I had wanted to join the Budget committee this year, but was not an officer at the time when elections were held so I did not hear about them until long after the fact. I graduate at the end of the fall semester, so I can't run for next year's hearings either. I'm tempted to take some of our problems to the SGA, but as the major notion goes here, SGA is fully self-serving and overall worthless.

We have one other club in the "local" area, but they're still a good 30 minute drive and meet at the same time as our club. They're an older club about the same size, but unfortunately a lot of their better fencers are very hit-or-miss as to when they show. The last time we took a trip down, there were 8 total fencers there, 6 of which were newbies and the 7th was their coach, so we mostly fenced each other and helped a little with class. Not a complete waste, but not the learning experience I desired. They are growing rapidly now though since I recommend all of our potential non-student members there, but it'll be another year or two before most of them are good practice - no offense to to them.