Rules Governing Tournaments Questions

[OleMissFencer]

There has been a debate that sprung up recently concerning the specifics of a tournament. It has alway been my understanding that you must has a least 3 clubs participating in order to make it a ranked tournamnet (as well as have it sanctioned by the division). But recently someone told me that you dont have to have 3 clubs, but merely advertise it through the division, if no one but your club shows up, too bad, its still a ranked tournament. Now this seems fishy to me, because clubs could hand out rankings to their members like candy. Can anyone clear this up for me?

[edew]

[quote]Originally posted by OleMissFencer:
<strong>There has been a debate that sprung up recently concerning the specifics of a tournament. It has alway been my understanding that you must has a least 3 clubs participating in order to make it a ranked tournamnet (as well as have it sanctioned by the division). But recently someone told me that you dont have to have 3 clubs, but merely advertise it through the division, if no one but your club shows up, too bad, its still a ranked tournament. Now this seems fishy to me, because clubs could hand out rankings to their members like candy. Can anyone clear this up for me?</strong><hr></blockquote>

The event just needs to be well publicized. Look, there are divisions where there are just one club, or two. It's not possible for such divisions to hold local events and expect to see three clubs' worth of fencers showing up. The event must be printed up on some division schedule (either hard-copy or webpage or something). And it must be printed up well ahead of the date of the event.

[OleMissFencer]

[quote]Originally posted by edew:
<strong>

The event just needs to be well publicized. Look, there are divisions where there are just one club, or two. It's not possible for such divisions to hold local events and expect to see three clubs' worth of fencers showing up. The event must be printed up on some division schedule (either hard-copy or webpage or something). And it must be printed up well ahead of the date of the event.</strong><hr></blockquote>

So you could schedule an event for any time and place, expecting no one else besides your club to show up?? And they can award ranks? That doesnt make sense to me, something fishy about it. It makes it too easy for people to stack ratings. To close to collusion for my liking.

[Peach]

Since our division consults the hosting clubs at the beginning of the season and schedules tournaments by mutual agreement, then publishes the schedule both by mail and on the Web, I think that the "collusion" issue doesn't arise in Philadelphia. There are certainly events at which nobody but members of the hosting club show up. We're always disappointed about that, especially when only five people show up and they're the same people I fence all the time.

It *is* possible for a club (or a division, as I have heard suggested) to "manufacture" letter rankings; on the other hand, those rankings don't do people a whole lot of good outside that particular club or division except to give them slightly easier pools (and everybody else a hearty laugh at their expense).

When you get right down to it, aren't the letter rankings fairly bogus anyway? I earned my ranking at the Division I-A, which is shunned by most of the top fencers in the country, because they don't want to wear themselves out for the Division I Championships; did I "manufacture" my ranking by counting on that fact?

Well, yeah. &lt;grin&gt;.

And I sure as heck ain't fencing at that level now. . .

Oh, well. (Off to Reno to get my out-of-condition keister kicked in the Vet WS)

[OleMissFencer]

Can anyone cite Rulebook passages stating whether its legal or not? I've searched the rulebook but have been unable to find anything on it.

[Peach]

It ain't in the rule book or in the operations manual.

[BarryTice]

If there's no specific mention of a number of clubs being required at an event for it to be a rated tournament, then it follows that the rule doesn't exist.

There are some rules about how many countries must be represented in international competitions for an American fencer to be awarded USFA points. (Athlete Programs Handbook, chapter 3.) But neither the APH, which includes the table of what's required for winners of a tournament to earn a given rating, nor the Operations Manual, which has pretty much the same information in paragraph form, makes any reference to some minimum number of clubs that must be present to award ratings.

-- Barry Tice

[OleMissFencer]

so you mean to tell me there are no rules governing how a tournament is setup? I can just decide that my club is going to have a tournament at 2 in the morning on a wednesday, as long as i advertise it and basically give out rankings as gifts and thats perfectly legal??? thats a bunch of BS.

[kro]

you still have to follow the ratings chart and have the required number of fencers. If you have a club full of unranked fencers it is going to take some time and a considerable amount of effort to generate a single "C" rating. Consult the chart and you will see what you need.

[Peach]

Nobody said you could hold an unsanctioned event in secret. Generally speaking, a USFA-sanctioned event must follow rules for public announcement, depending on the bylaws of your division. I suggest you look up those bylaws.

[OleMissFencer]

I know about the advertisement, it just pisses me off at the idea of it. A club in my division is doing something like this and giving their fencers "manufactored" ratings. And it just pisses me off because what they are doing strips the very reason and meaning of a ranking. Sorry had to vent.

[neevel]

There's no such number-of-clubs restriction mandated by the national office. The Operations Manual simply states that Divisional competitions are held under the supervision of the Divisional chair and the appropriate committes within the division, and that the Division must publish a schedule of sanctioned competitions at the start of the season. What the exact procedures are for getting events sanctioned and listed on the schedule are left up to the individual Divisions in their bylaws. There should be some provision that any competitions not on the initial schedule for the season have to be approved some minimum time in advance and well-publicized, or are simply not permitted as sanctioned events. If your division bylaws don't have a paragraph addressing this, one should be devised and added. We ran into a situation like this in Wisconsin a couple of years ago (a well publicized, well-attented competition added after the schedule was published), and had to modify the bylaws to account for it in the future.

Since the Division chair does have to supervise/approve a competition (again, by whatever specific procedure is set in the Division bylaws), you wouldn't be able to organize an impromptu, unannounced club competition and award classifications from that competition.

-Dave

[OleMissFencer]

[quote]Originally posted by neevel:
<strong>There's no such number-of-clubs restriction mandated by the national office. The Operations Manual simply states that Divisional competitions are held under the supervision of the Divisional chair and the appropriate committes within the division, and that the Division must publish a schedule of sanctioned competitions at the start of the season. What the exact procedures are for getting events sanctioned and listed on the schedule are left up to the individual Divisions in their bylaws. There should be some provision that any competitions not on the initial schedule for the season have to be approved some minimum time in advance and well-publicized, or are simply not permitted as sanctioned events. If your division bylaws don't have a paragraph addressing this, one should be devised and added. We ran into a situation like this in Wisconsin a couple of years ago (a well publicized, well-attented competition added after the schedule was published), and had to modify the bylaws to account for it in the future.

Since the Division chair does have to supervise/approve a competition (again, by whatever specific procedure is set in the Division bylaws), you wouldn't be able to organize an impromptu, unannounced club competition and award classifications from that competition.

-Dave</strong><hr></blockquote>


Lol true, but this division officers happen to be members of this club fishy eh?

[oiuyt]

OleMiss- What's the issue, they're holding regular wednesday night tournaments that are only attended by their members or something due to travel distance? There's nothing in the USFA rules against this.

Now granted opportunity is a major factor in getting ratings, doing what I mention above still shouldn't get many people ratings much above what they should have anyway unless there is also results fixing in the actual fencing of the competitions. In any group of fencers the same few should be taking the top spots every time. At least in my area we could hold 20 tournaments with the same 20 people and there'd be a total of about 3-4 winners and 6-8 people that would break into the top 4 at least once. The people with the top ratings take the top spots every time, running a bunch of tournaments (fairly) won't change that. Yeah, we could collude to give out A's to everyone if we wanted to, but is this what's happening in your area or is it just that there are lots of poorly scheduled tournaments which mean that only a given club has the opportunity to get ratings?

If it's the latter, who cares? Okay, a few U level fencers will have E's or maybe D's, a few E's will have D's. You might even get a few D level fencers with C's. Some places it's easier to get ratings than others. This is not necesarily an evil plot. Now if they're actually fixing results to get the ratings that's a completey seperate issue.

Now the other solution is to start getting to their tournaments and winning them. What specifically is making their tournaments closed to just their fencers?

-B

[edew]

[quote]Originally posted by OleMissFencer:
<strong>

So you could schedule an event for any time and place, expecting no one else besides your club to show up?? And they can award ranks? That doesnt make sense to me, something fishy about it. It makes it too easy for people to stack ratings. To close to collusion for my liking.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Who is the "you" you are referring to above? If the division schedules the event at any time and any place, within reason (can't be at someone's house at 3AM, for example), and the schedule is publicized well ahead of time (can't schedule an event for tonight and not make it available for everyone until this afternoon, for example), then it's all right. I mean, how can any host organizer guarantee that enough people from different clubs will show up?

A club or team cannot, by themselves, schedule an event and expect to have it be a USFA sanctioned event (thereby allowing fencers to earn new classifications).

[edew]

[quote]Originally posted by Peach:
<strong>[...]

It *is* possible for a club (or a division, as I have heard suggested) to "manufacture" letter rankings; on the other hand, those rankings don't do people a whole lot of good outside that particular club or division except to give them slightly easier pools (and everybody else a hearty laugh at their expense).

When you get right down to it, aren't the letter rankings fairly bogus anyway? I earned my ranking at the Division I-A, which is shunned by most of the top fencers in the country, because they don't want to wear themselves out for the Division I Championships; did I "manufacture" my ranking by counting on that fact?

[...]
</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yes, it is certainly possible for divisions (and I've heard of cases of some divisions, but don't know of which specific divisions) to run events specifically to churn out new ratings. The only reason to do so is to allow more fencers to compete in the Div I NAC, which may or may not be a good thing. As a perennial first-day Div I NAC fencer, any additional scrub showing up is just gravy for me. Thanks, so I don't mind.

As for the bogosity of letter ratings, well, it's not bogus if you use it as it's intended and nothing more. Again and again, people complain about the "inaccuracy" or "imprecision" of the letter rating. Well, that's only because people put too much expectations into it. The only information that the rating should provide is that the owner finished sufficiently high at a sufficiently tough tournament within the calendar year (to earn a &lt;letter&gt;-2002, say). That's it. Second, because of that, it allows the person to be seeded accordingly when entering an event.

If one restricts one's interpretation of the letter rating to just those two bits of information (as one should), then there's really nothing bogus about it.

[OleMissFencer]

[quote]Originally posted by oiuyt:
<strong>Now the other solution is to start getting to their tournaments and winning them. What specifically is making their tournaments closed to just their fencers?

-B </strong><hr></blockquote>


They're having them on thursdays at 3oclock. An inopportune time to most people in our area, my club is 6 hours away from theirs and most others are about equal distance. They only allow 6 fencers in each event, and they all are U's, making each an E tournament. I dont know, it just seems wrong to me, even they have said they are having them so their fencers can get ratings.

[oiuyt]

K, yeah that's blatent ratings manufacture. What's the point? What does getting an E (especially THAT way) prove? That said, it should barely affect you or your clubmates.

Anyone else have a situation where tournaments are limited to the first X entrants? I've never even heard of doing that.

OleMiss: so what do they plan to do once everyone's an E? Heck, if that were their goal why don't they just run multiple tournaments a day until everyone has a C? (obviously allowing 15 entrants per tournament and limiting fields to D and under)

I assume that this club is run by the people who run your division? If so, aim complaints to national office. Who knows what they can do, but they might put some pressure back down the line to get the practice stopped.

Name names, give specifics. Put up a general low-level complaint and see whether or not peer pressure convinces them to do things right. Get everyone in your division to give them grief at the real events. Then go out and beat their fencers at every opportunity. Show them exactly how much their E's are worth.

-B

[OleMissFencer]

Thanks for the advice oiuyt, i'll see what i can do.

[Crash55]

One more thing. If the people doing this are division officers then vote them out next election. If they try to do the same thing next year then the new officers can say that such tournaments are not sanctioned. They could even move to sanction the club and remove their status as a USFA club. (We almost did this to a club but for another reason)

Our division sets all tournaments and start times at the start of the season. This is then posted on the division website and announced in the division newsletter. Any changes are posted on the website and sent to representatives form each club by email.