NAC Organization

[HDG]

Forgive the naivete of my question, but this will be my first NAC season since returning to fencing: USFA says you may only fence one event per day at NACs, but how far in advance of the event (or the entry deadline) will they tell us the actual schedule (or is there a standard schedule)? Specifically, am I likely to run into schedule conflicts if I want to fence Div II & Div III in both foil and epee this October and next March?

[Inquartata]

Usually, we get a listing of events by day a few months before the NAC. For registration close times they seem to leave it much later, like a few weeks before the NAC...so you cannot really plan very well much in advance.

[HDG]

Well the entry deadline is a month from tomorrow, so hopefully they'll send out details soon.

[oiuyt]

Usually the daily schedule is released a decent interval in advance (although it's frequently tight for the first NAC of the season). The actual event times wait until after the USFA has processed the entries (they adjust times to balance the load during the day), which is why it isn't released until ~3 weeks prior to the event (~1 week after the entry deadline). This past season they experimented with a system where they designated events that would close registration prior to 10am (and, by process of elimination, which were after that). Apparently this lead to some slight inefficiencies with the load scheduling, and the Tournament Committee would prefer to discontinue the experiment. If that information was helpful to your planning this season, please drop me an email/pm to let me know, as it will likely be discussed at the BoD meeting in about a month.

-B :)

[hello?]

Brad, in the absence of exact times, it is invaluable to know whether the even is an early one or not -- that means, if it's early, that you should not schedule a flight that gets in late at night the night before the event, but that you might be able to fly out that afternoon because you're likely to be done......I still don't understand why it takes them so long to figure out the schedule! Right now, for example, there are tons of low fares to Miami. They will all be gone by the time we know the schedule.

[HDG]

I really just want to have an idea of which event will be on which day of the NAC so that I don't mistakenly enter two events that are on the same day; time of the day is less important to me since I'm local.