So, what happened at Chicago Athletic Association Fencing Club on Sunday, June 26th?

[Joe biebel]

So, what happened at Chicago Athletic Association Fencing Club on Sunday, June 26th?

Or better yet, what happened on Saturday June 25th? On Sunday there was supposed to be a USFA sanctioned open tournament. I checked their website during the day on Saturday to find out the start times, printed it out, checked my gear and packed the car. The next morning, I got up at 5:30 AM and I drove to CAAFC (95 miles from north of Milwaukee to the Chicago downtown lakefront) parked for $15.00 in the underground parking garage at Millenium Park, walked a block to the Chicago Athletic Association and went up the elevator to the fencing salle on the 9th floor. Okay, no lights, I’m a little early, go take a walk. Had a lovely walk in the park, came back to the salle, found a number of other non-club, out-of-town fencers standing around in the dark salle.

Some of the other folks said that the people at the entrance to the club were unaware of any tournament. Some of the other folks that were present had tried to call the fencing club manager to find out what was going on, but to no avail. Only voicemail. Then one clever gentleman called his spouse 130 miles away to check the website and it had “tournament cancelled” where the day before had been the schedule.

Needless to say, there were a number (myself included) of irate fencers that went to a lot of trouble and expense to be treated like dirt. I got names and email addresses of the folks and promised to write something to let our feelings be known. I have since talked to 2 people that told me a rumor of a meeting the night before that “broke up” the club. No details and no confirmation.

Now the rumor of the club breakup may or may not be true, but so what! If you advertise a tournament, you hold it. In the simplest terms, “you say what you’ll do, then do what you said”. As traumatic as something like is rumored to have happened on Saturday evening is, there is no excuse, except perhaps personal selfishness, a lack of maturity, arrogance, or a total lack of regard for others to do what they did. Once you put a schedule out into cyberspace, it’s a done deal. I really don’t think that they thought canceling the tournament on the website the night before would get to the “out of town” folks coming to the meet. Maybe they cared, but just not enough to do the right thing.

[edew]

Maybe we can revise the BoD agenda motion to have USFA reimburse the CAAFC for the Men's Foil team event fee from the 2004 Summer Nationals, and have that money go to you and the others who went there, to reimburse YOU for your travel expenses and such. Doesn't sound like they will be using the money as a club, in any case.

[Mr Epee]

Joe, sorry to hear about your experience...

---------------
Chicago is one of the largest cities in the US... and cannot seem to sustain a good fencing program for any length of time.

I'll never understand why.

[Sciurus-Rex]

You probably did something in a previous life to deserve it.

[Schiavona]

That's always pretty crappy. Got one that's worse; I think it was 1986 or so, Western WA was going to host Sectionals, so three of us decide to buy tickets and fly down and fence, only to find out that the Section chair decided to have Sectionals in Oregon. We get there, no Sectionals. We spent as much getting there as some people spend going to Nationals. We were not happy. Never got ANY notification that Sectionals had been moved and I was AK Division chair at the time. Communication is so much better with the internet!

[Joe Inzerillo]

Joe, I want to apologize personally for the cancellation of our tournament and you coming down for nothing. I have unfortunately attended (or not attended) a couple of tournaments in the same way. I can assure you we are as committed as ever providing a solid schedule and great fencing. For complicated reasons I do not want to get into in this post, the CAA-FC has had a fracture where some of our members and some of our coaches have gone to start another club in the suburbs. This was done without warning and caught the remaining people off guard. We decided to cancel the tournament about a week ahead of time for that and other reasons. Without getting too technical, we had an issue with a bad cache on a server so many people saw the old page while most saw the updated one. We also called every club we thought of and I am sorry that you were accidentally omitted from that list. I cannot express to you how terribly myself, all of the fencers and administration of the CAA feel about the situation. While nothing can give you back your Sunday, we would like to reimburse you for all of your out of pocket expenses and give you free admission to a future CAA tournament. We heard that there were about 8 people in the same situation and would extend the same offer to them. If you know of who they are please let me know. I respect you as a fencer and a person and appreciate the support that you have showed my club and me over the years. Again, I apologize and we are taking steps to better communicate should an issue arise. We are developing a registration list that will allow people to register for email updates from us so we can better communicate if there is an issue. I would love to open this up for other clubs to use the same mechanism. I can also promise that our new manager Rob Bralow is fantastic and very responsive. Once he is up to speed, I hope to be the best communicating club in the Midwest.

We are very sorry for this inconvenience and ask for the opportunity to make it up to you.

Respectfully,

-Joe Inzerillo

[qatet]

Originally Posted by Joe Inzerillo

I can also promise that our new manager Rob Bralow is fantastic and very responsive.

Well, drat. We knew that Rob had a job out there, but there was still a glimmer of hope that he would come back to his old stomping grounds like all the rest of his generation. Best of luck to him.

[Agent_V]

Methinks this is why preregistration is useful...

[grotto]

Joe,
If you have not looked into Ask Fred you should, it is a very nice tool to keep folks updated, (and preregistered) for your tournament. We have been using in more and more here in the Southeast Section and it seems to work great.

[Joe biebel]

Originally Posted by Joe Inzerillo

Joe, I want to apologize personally for the cancellation of our tournament and you coming down for nothing. I have unfortunately attended (or not attended) a couple of tournaments in the same way. I can assure you we are as committed as ever providing a solid schedule and great fencing. For complicated reasons I do not want to get into in this post, the CAA-FC has had a fracture where some of our members and some of our coaches have gone to start another club in the suburbs. This was done without warning and caught the remaining people off guard. We decided to cancel the tournament about a week ahead of time for that and other reasons. Without getting too technical, we had an issue with a bad cache on a server so many people saw the old page while most saw the updated one. We also called every club we thought of and I am sorry that you were accidentally omitted from that list. I cannot express to you how terribly myself, all of the fencers and administration of the CAA feel about the situation. While nothing can give you back your Sunday, we would like to reimburse you for all of your out of pocket expenses and give you free admission to a future CAA tournament. We heard that there were about 8 people in the same situation and would extend the same offer to them. If you know of who they are please let me know. I respect you as a fencer and a person and appreciate the support that you have showed my club and me over the years. Again, I apologize and we are taking steps to better communicate should an issue arise. We are developing a registration list that will allow people to register for email updates from us so we can better communicate if there is an issue. I would love to open this up for other clubs to use the same mechanism. I can also promise that our new manager Rob Bralow is fantastic and very responsive. Once he is up to speed, I hope to be the best communicating club in the Midwest.

We are very sorry for this inconvenience and ask for the opportunity to make it up to you.

Respectfully,

-Joe Inzerillo

Dear Joe:
Thanks, I was hoping there was a reasonable explanation for this snafu. Since foil was the first weapon of the day, I was also afraid that others, fencing epee or saber, might show up later and have the same thing happen to them. I also hold you, your teammates and coaches in the highest regard and would rather break a stained glass window than destroy an artist like yourself. Your explanation and apology are gratefully accepted. I will send you a P.M. about “out of pocket” expenses. I have emailed all of the other folks that gave me their email addresses and they can contact you directly.
Best Regards,
Joe Biebel

[edew]

Originally Posted by Agent_V

Methinks this is why preregistration is useful...

How does preregistration help, other than identifying who might have attended. Pre-registration for major events are a given. But for local events, pre-reg seems to be more of a problem than a solution.

Not to threadjack, but in the Bay Area, we have contemplated using pre-registration for our Bay Cup events. But the main problem is that you can't force people to pre-register. Suppose your regular entry fee is $20.00. Maybe you can give a slight incentive for pre-registering. So, say it's only $15.00 (which the host club would then object, because that's a 25% discount that they would rather not take on). Even so, who really cares about $5.00? For some, that $5.00 is quickly eaten away by gas or lunch. Maybe you charge a on-site entry fee of $25.00. Again, it's $5.00 and people aren't going to make the extra effort to commit (for a mere local tournament, dammit!) for a $5.00 savings. Ok, so you say, on-site entry is $30.00. The people will claim usurous fees. So what will it be? $27.25? Then, we're nickel and dimeing and no one wants to deal with denominations less than $5.00. (While many clubs are professionally run, few have a stack of $5.00s waiting for entry fees.)

Secondly, what's the point of pre-registration? For most organizers, the benefit of pre-registering is to guesstimate the number of competitors at the event, so that the number of available strips and referees can be determined. First off, the location and check-in close times have to be pre-set BEFORE event allowing for registration. While fencers are willing to devote a whole day for fencing, or even a day or two before the competition for major events, no fencer is going to devote the whole day for local events. Thus, if you don't set the check-in close times before the fencer decides, he might just as well not attend (and if it's set for an inappropriate time, he won't be able to attend).

So pre-registering will yield a skewed image of who will eventually show up. If pre-registering shows 15 people signed up and the host organizer hires 2 refs (plus himself) to officiate, and another 15 fencers walk in the door at the day of the event, then the whole competition is shot due to conclusions based on incomplete information.

It's better to use historical data to assess the anticipated sizes of local competitions. Locally in the Bay Area, we should not expect more than 25 women foilists at any one event. A realistic average would be somewhere between 12 to 18. If we used pre-registration and 6 pre-registers, do you anticipate only these 6 will show up and hire just one referee, or should you brace yourself for another additional 6-12 walk-ons? If you do the latter, then the benefits of advance information with the 6 pre-registers are negligible, and you lose whatever additional revenue you could make using the pre-registration.

We in the Bay Area did have some competitions that required pre-registering. They probably did help (I wasn't there to see). I think for some spot events, doing so makes the process more significant and people will do the pre-registering (although they still pay at the door, just a slightly less amount). That's typical social behavior: someone requires you do X and you're socially conditioned to do X as required.

But when it becomes standard and people realize that there's no financial penalty (register but don't show up, you don't pay...no biggie), then there's no incentive to commit when walking in costs only slightly more. It's like driving slightly faster than 65mph on the freeway. I'm sure when the country's highways first operated with 65mph, people actually did drive no faster. That probably lasted two days before people realized that they can drive virtually as fast as they can. Until some sort of penalty process came into play.

[Schiavona]

To continue the threadjack.........

The main benefit I've seen to online preregistration is that fencers can look to see who's comming and this often causes more fencers to sign up, based on who they see are registered. In FRED this is listed under "Who's comming".
Other than that, I have nothing to add.

[misha]

Originally Posted by Schiavona

To continue the threadjack.........

The main benefit I've seen to online preregistration is that fencers can look to see who's comming and this often causes more fencers to sign up, based on who they see are registered. In FRED this is listed under "Who's comming".
Other than that, I have nothing to add.

If you do not ask for money up front.... preregistration means almost nothing... take a look at Phoenix Cup Epee preregistration list ( I thought it was around 80 people) and less than 64 actually attended...


.

[dberke]

Originally Posted by edew

How does preregistration help, other than identifying who might have attended. Pre-registration for major events are a given. But for local events, pre-reg seems to be more of a problem than a solution.

In my experience, preregistration is a great help. Up here in the Pacific NW, we've been using FRED as long as it's existed (since before it was available nationally) and it has been a great help in planning events.

All of the fencers in our region are aware of FRED and use it to preregister. Sometimes it takes a couple events before the new fencers are aware of it, but once people know its there, they rely on it for keeping them updated on what events are happening. I have found that as soon as we announce an event, within a few days a large percentage of the "regulars" have preregistered, even if the event is over a month away.

The trick is "training" everyone to treat FRED as the one-stop shop for preregistering. We used to impose a late fee for those who didn't preregister, and that had the desired effect. We now no longer have that fee because people don't need to be coaxed into preregistering.

Of course there's no penalty for prereigstering and then not showing (since we don't require prepayment), but in my experience, the number of no-shows is very close to the number of people who show up unregistered. So in the end, the numbers you see on FRED are generally representitive of how many people will actually show.

And, as you mentioned, using historical data for planning purposes - FRED is ideal for this since it's easy to run a query to find old event results.

To sum up, once everyone in your division/section has gotten used to relying on FRED for preregistration (it may take a season's worth of events), it becomes pretty accurate in predicting turnout sizes.

Dan

[edew]

Pre-registration is not for other fencers. They can find out who's going by some other means. Pre-registration is for the host. And if they don't charge, like the Phoenix Cup, they can get royally screwed by having too many referees sitting idle. Referee fees aren't cheap: per diem and travel and lodging comes to about $500-$700 for any non-local referee.

Major events can assert that pre-reg with fees is required and no walk-ons (unless they want to pay triple fees). Local events can't make those claims.

[oiuyt]

Another benefit of a pre-reg list (and likely the one in mind by grotto) is that it gives you an additional list of people to contact if something gets changed or goes wrong in advance of the tournament. In addition to trying to contact area clubs, it gives you a direct list of fencers that have expressed an interest in that specific tournament, who, therefore, are very likely to be interested in announcements of any changes or cancellations.

-B :)

[fluidfencer]

Some of the preregistration issue is regional, like a lot of other things.

As grotto mentioned, AskFred is being used with great success by clubs across the Southeast. It serves several purposes:

1. It certainly helps the clubs plan. I don't have to KNOW that 32 fencers are registered for an event, but it is very helpful to see a number that approximates what will come. In the Southeast, we have seen registration for something like Open Epee range from 18 to 42. There isn't a good history on which to base a decision. Fortunately, we have access to a couple of inexpensive venues, and we have lots of scoring gear, and are training lots of referees, so last minute adjustments are not horrible, mostly because we won't soon be dealing with the scale you have on in California.

2. A $8-10 late registration is not uncommon. We would like to move toward pre-payment and probably will, but for now "no-shows" haven't been a big problem. If I see a club where it is getting noticable, a polite telephone can usually help things.

3. Again in the Southeast, preregistration is CRITICALLY important to the fencers. There just aren't that many of us, and we (fencers) are scattered over many hundreds of miles. If a tournament has an A and a couple of Bs, that is a big draw for many trying to get higher level experience.

[edew]

You have fencers scattered over hundreds of miles. That makes the events compelling and warrant pre-registering. We have events all within a 75 mile drive (except for some who are outside the boundaries). It's not so compelling.

[Sciurus-Rex]

Originally Posted by edew

Pre-registration is not for other fencers. They can find out who's going by some other means. ...

Umm, dreams, perhaps? Messages dropped from passing pelicans?

Pre-reg might not be intended primarily for other fencers, but it sure the heck does help just the same.

But that's a minor point to bicker about. And, yes, pricing matters, too. A tiered structure for advance planning is a pretty good incentive for an out-of-towner like me to sign up early and save a few bucks so I can afford a friggin' hotel room.