club travel policy

[graham]

As a member of the executive of our fledgeling club I have been tasked with coming up with some guidelines concerning travel to training camps and tournaments. In order to make my task easier, and so I can do a more complete job on the first run-through, I am asking if any of the incredibly knowledgeable and helpful people on this message board (I have been 'lurking' for several months)could help out. If your club has any guidelines or policies concerning travel I would really appreciate receiving them. Our club has members aged 11 - 18 or so, so most of the driving is by parents. Our tournaments are within a 5-hour drive of home base (most <2 hrs away).

Thanks for any help you can give, or pointers to resources I could tap into.

Graham

[Craig]

Everyone is responsible for getting there themselves. If you want to ride with someone, that's fine - just set it up with the drivers.

(In other words - there hasn't been a 'policy' at clubs I've been at.)

Why the concern for a policy? Is this something that parents expect nowadays?

Cheers,
Craig

[Puppet Master]

Usually the policy is, split gas money, and "hey I took my car last time, someone else drive."

[fence1848]

With all clubs that I know of, the rule is that it is the responsbility of each fencer to find their own ride. Some people decide to carpool, share a hotel room, or crash at the house of someone who lives in the area.

The one exception to this is for college teams. College teams that are going to a collegiate meet can get a large van from the college/university to drive the team to the venue and usually, rooms are reserved ahead of time for the team as well. The club sometimes has to budget the money for this, but it can do that for team meets because they know how many people are going well ahead of time.

[Crash55]

We carpool whenever possible. We announce the tournaments at practioce during the week and get together anyone who wants to go.

Sicne we are a college club we get a certain amount of money frm eth school we can use for tourneys. We use it to pay for gas if carpooling and half the entry fees.

The only real rule we have is for our yearly trip to Canada. We allow non students in the club and if any of them are udnerage and wnat to go they need to get written permission from their parents. We also appoint one of the offiers to be responsible for them.

[Peach]

We do a lot of national events. For the kids, the coach posts his airline reservations so if any plan to travel with him their parents can coordinate the flights, also so parents can fly with him too and share transportation expenses when they get there. He usually reserves a block of rooms at a cheap hotel (not the official one, usually) and rents a van at the airport. The unaccompanied kids stay with him and the other adult chaperones (usually parents) and the kids who are traveling with their parents may be elsewhere. He often helps match his adult fencers up with roommates.

He frequently doesn't go with his fencers to local or regional events (he has a fencing club to run and the national trips are killers), but he announces competitions he thinks are important and tells his teenage fencers and the parents of the youth fencers when he thinks they should go, and often mentions another parent or fencer who is planning to go so they can share.

--Delia

[Gav]

We don't have a travel policy per se. As everyone else has pointed out there's this idea that it's down to the individual. That said, we're starting to pull together and organise trips as groups. As someone who can arrange cheap fares for small groups I've noticed this as a by product. I think if you're trying to put together some kind of generic policy try and find out which guys can donate which things to the club and work round that.