USACFC Review

[DJ Apostrophe]

Originally Posted by noodle

since the format's going to be changing quite drastically next year, i can't really give any solid information on how to run it.

Details???

-w

[seak]

None yet, the new format hasn't been decided on. There is talk of basically team pools. So if there were 40 teams there would be 4 pools of 10 teams each and you would fence all of the teams in your pool as opposed to fencing all 40 teams.

However, proposals for the format change aren't due yet and the voting wont happen till this summer

[Wafath]

Originally Posted by DJ Apostrophe

Details???

What do you want the format to be?

The current plan is to collect proposals, discuss, and then vote. If you have ideas, write them up, and give them to the USACFC officers. You may think of something that others have not.

W

[DJ Apostrophe]

Originally Posted by Wafath

What do you want the format to be?

The current plan is to collect proposals, discuss, and then vote. If you have ideas, write them up, and give them to the USACFC officers. You may think of something that others have not.

W

I've talked with Bruce a few times... he has my ideas... just didn't know if one was decided on or not.

Trust me... I'm not one to hold back my input when it comes to the running of a tournament.

-w

[Wafath]

Originally Posted by DJ Apostrophe

I've talked with Bruce a few times... he has my ideas... just didn't know if one was decided on or not.

Trust me... I'm not one to hold back my input when it comes to the running of a tournament.

I still recommend that you write them up. This isn't a decision for just Bruce to make, but for the entire conference. I think the conference will be best served if we have all the information on the table, and remove any filters between ideas and team reps.

W

[DJ Apostrophe]

First, this thread was brought up last year as well, many people had put ideas there, so anyone and everyone should read this thread: How would you change Club Nationals (USACFC)?

There were some basic questions that I had asked that needed to be answered in order for me to tweak some of my proposals... I'll post those questions here first, and we'll go from there:

Why are we holding this event? (To promote collegiate club fencing? To decide 3-Weapon champions? To decide a 6-Weapon champion? To decide individual champions?)
I realize that the answer is 'all of the above', but these need to be ranked in order of importance, and an emphasis put on how important each one is.

What is the minimum amount of fencing a team who is travelling a great distance should expect when they get to the event? (Probably expressed as bouts / fencer).

How important is it to fence other schools you don't normally fence during the season?

What is the expected attendance at next year's (and 2-5 years down the road) event?

What are we going to have for strip availability?

What is the longest you would want a team (or an individual fencer) fencing in one day?

As I'm no longer directly involved with the conference, these are not my questions to answer... but the conference's... each one has an impact on the format... the goals and resources need to be established before you develop your means to get from your resources to your goals.

-w

[seak]

Originally Posted by DJ Apostrophe

Why are we holding this event? (To promote collegiate club fencing? To decide 3-Weapon champions? To decide a 6-Weapon champion? To decide individual champions?)
I realize that the answer is 'all of the above', but these need to be ranked in order of importance, and an emphasis put on how important each one is.

Unfortunately, the answer really is all of the above. The team event is probably the most important however many people do not want to give up the individuals. The new format will hopefully include a way for deciding all of the above

Originally Posted by DJ Apostrophe

What is the minimum amount of fencing a team who is traveling a great distance should expect when they get to the event? (Probably expressed as bouts / fencer).

I think most people are happy if they get 10-15 bouts however they aren't going to want to be there for 2 days and only fence one

Originally Posted by DJ Apostrophe

How important is it to fence other schools you don't normally fence during the season?

I think its fun to fence teams that you don't fence during the year, however as that’s most of the teams and sometimes your women will fence a team but your men wont, this wouldn't be a criteria I would use for determining format

Originally Posted by DJ Apostrophe

What is the expected attendance at next year's (and 2-5 years down the road) event?

Lets say between 30 - 40 teams/year this is counting teams that don't have full squads and the fact that some teams send men only and other women only

Originally Posted by DJ Apostrophe

What are we going to have for strip availability?

lots in the 20's at least

Originally Posted by DJ Apostrophe

What is the longest you would want a team (or an individual fencer) fencing in one day?

I think that most people really don’t mind fencing for 12 hours as long as that doesn't mean them having to drive all night to get back home : ). Really I think the issue here is not how long the fencing goes, but how long breaks are between bouts. In the current format you are basically getting one bout every half hour. That leaves a lot of time for fencers to cool down and then have to warm back up.

Just my 2 cents

[MyrddinsPrecint]

Originally Posted by larkmaj

Yeah, I heard you b**h slapped a particular UMass fencer pertaining to this.

At that point, I couldn't walk very well (my ankles had finally given out), and it came to light that since i had stayed with the umass team to watch the mens finals, i didn't get food that day, which put my total food consumption that day to two Luna Bars. My team had twice gone out for food and twice not asked me if i wanted anything. Although i was hungry, I was more angry that i had been doing stuff with the Umass team all day, and someone i've come to think of as becoming MORE mature and more of a "nice guy" was doing something so lame.

Originally Posted by bigdawg2121

btw MP I don't recall actually seeing the mini-skirt at all...

I actually made individuals this year, so I wasn't wearing it all that long. Also, there was no downtime while I was wearing it- I went directly from fencing to watching finals...... But it was on.

Originally Posted by epeemike81

Hire Wayne.

-m

obviously. and when actually running the tournament, that'll be great.

but:

Originally Posted by noodle

since the format's going to be changing quite drastically next year, i can't really give any solid information on how to run it.

yes, you can't give that much advice to wayne. But you can to me. It's going to be my job to order t-shirts. my job to look at hotels. my job to reorganize the floor plan we already have for that space. My job to fill out the paper requesting chairs. Some of it is obvious- for example, # of chairs is "as many as you will give me". Tshirts? not as obvious.

Originally Posted by Fechter1

Boffing??? TOURNAMENT???

Almost afraid to ask... Yet unable to turn away...

SSFFS (smith sci fi fantasy society) was very happy to find out that none of the fencers would be in the boffing tournament they run.... I've never been able to go, so i don't really have all that much information. the website for this year's thing can be found HERE

Most of the Conbust activities will be during the fencing day-- but there's always the opportunity for things like Bilbo and the Bagginses (who supposedly used to be Draco and the Malfoys???) to be playing at night....... obviously, it will really appeal to a certain subset of the fencers, and be really funny to another subset....

[Emfuser]

Well I have to say that was a very interesting experience. I was a referee almost exclusively for foil (ended up doing a little epee too) and I figure I put in around 20 hours or so of directing more than 100 bouts. This was the first time I had ever refereed at an event of this scale and it sure opened my eyes as to what refs endure at large events.

In the first day and a half of match after match after match, I threw out (wimped out on ) just a handful of touches. During the later part of the 2nd day I probably threw out more than 15. By the time my last few matches and then the singles event came up, I was telling the fencers straight up that I was drained and would throw out anything questionable (no objections from the fencers) because my judgement and focus was degraded.

It only took one "WHAT!?!?!" call during a ladies individual event bout for Jon to mercifully let me go as I was rolling up my sleeves, heading into the other gym to go direct for the men's event. I didn't even realize why he let me go while there was still fencing going on until I was most of the way home (I live a mere 2 hours away in Columbia). While some may view that as a slight, I appreciated his covertly honest way of thanking me for my service and letting me go quietly. When I went up to the ref room to retrieve my stuff and noticed that there was a dinner (long since eaten) that I had directed straight through, I just kind of chuckled at my own obliviousness that I was that dug into my strip.

On that same note, I think Jon Moss did an excellent job of handling and coordinating us referees through a tournament format that we very quickly realized had been outgrown by the sheer number of teams and fencers present. I know many simply expect that of him, and that's great. This being my first time working under him, I can say that I came away with a positive, appreciated experience. The man had a million things to do on top of being a coach and I was thoroughly impressed. Thanks Jon.

Overall I am glad I got an opportunity to contribute to this event. I finished college right before this event kicked off its first year and was pleased to hear Bruce Capin speak up about the success the event has become since it's inception. It does indeed stand as proof that the "club scrubs", while not always privileged as the varsity teams in terms of funding and associated commitments from their schools, are still a thriving and spirited part of the collegiate fencing world. I know that I have friends out there who might disagree with me on how the USACFC has evolved, but everyone who fenced as a "club scrub" at one point in their lives (or will) should still be able to appreciate that this event is succeeding and growing.

[dekko]

Someone mentiond that some squads could have easily been vasity teams, not sure about that but there were some fencers who easily could fit into almost any vasity squad. The one stand out I remember was an epee kid Katz. He was far and above the rest of the talent there. He had some close bouts but never in danger of losing any of them. Not sure where he came from or who he fenced for but he was really good.

The passion was definately there but not sure many of the teams are ready for that jump. I do find it surprising that Air Force is a varsity team but Navy and Army are not. Not sure why that branch of the servie gets the nod while the others are on the outside looking in but there was definately quality in those teams.

[seak]

His name is Joel Katz he's from Navy by way of Texas and he's an A in Epee. He did lose a couple of bouts (one to a Maryland fencer but we fence them a lot so we have an advantage). His sister is also a very good epee fencer she graduated from the Naval academy last year.

There were in fact several fencers at the tournament who have at one point or another fenced varsity and are now in grad school and fencing for a club team, and they did not win all events there were entered in.

When discussing varsity vs. clubs I think you need to make a distinction between serious varsity programs and varsity programs that are run more like clubs. Maryland, which is a decent but not great club team, has beaten a few varsity teams in the last few years, and individual fencers have fenced very competivly with varsity fencers (top 16's at Temple Open, medaling at NIWFA).

I would venture to say that especially in the mens event an "all - star" team could've been put together that would have been very competitive at high level NCAA tournaments

[KShan5[PrFC]]

I'm a freshman and jusy got back at 4 am last night....damn tornadoes, and I thought, overall it was a really good tournament. Specifically, the team rounds moved very fast, and there was not much delay involved between rounds, which was nice. I heard how horrible the refereeing was last year so I was plesantly surprised to see a lot of sabre refs woh were more than compotent. I was more than a little annoyed though with the referreeing in the final pools however, and you can contribute that to 2 long days which I completly understand, but it's just tough as a fencer to have calls reversed. Besides that though, I had a lot of fun and look forward to it again next year.

BTW: UMass Men's Sabre Squad took first

[whtouche]

Ironic that I finished just behind KShan in the individual, and now I'm posting just behind him on this thread.

I echo pretty much everything he said. Compared to last year, this year was infinitely more efficiently run. The level of refereeing was much, much higher this year than last year especially during the team round, where I would describe the average level from good to excellent. As stated above, the level of refereeing during the individual portion took a turn for the worse, but so did mine and I'm sure other people's fencing after averaging 2 and a half hours of sleep and one meal a day for 3 days straight.
I fenced poorly and took third, and was two touches away from being undefeated in the team round (26 and 1), sabre squad took first which was my biggest goal from the start, and overall 6W team we somehow took third, during a year where we returned only one of our female starters from last year, and lost our A and C strip mens epee A strip foil fencer, and B strip sabre.

I heard alot of people talk about how young some of the teams are, so it's going to be exciting to see the level of competition continue to raise as already-impressive fencers hone their skills a little more.

[Fechter1]

Originally Posted by MyrddinsPrecint

SSFFS (smith sci fi fantasy society) was very happy to find out that none of the fencers would be in the boffing tournament they run....

Originally Posted by Dictionary

Main Entry: 1boff
Pronunciation: 'bäf
Function: transitive verb
Etymology: from boff blow, punch, perhaps imitative
sometimes vulgar : to have sexual intercourse with

Still somwhat confused/intrigued which meaning applies here...

[MyrddinsPrecint]

Originally Posted by Fechter1

Still somwhat confused/intrigued which meaning applies here...

from wikipedia:


Boffing is the act of fighting with padded weapons called boffers. Boffer groups construct weapons such as swords, bows, catapults, and other armaments. Boffing is done purely for entertainment, as an alternative to modern fencing and kendo, and is practiced across the globe.

[oiuyt]

*WOOOOOOSH* *MP looks up, wondering where the 747 came from*

Originally Posted by MyrddinsPrecint

from wikipedia:

ALSO from wikipedia (same page):

Disambiguation
"Boffing" is also British and American slang to have sex.

Which is clearly where Fechter1 was going.

-B

[KD5MDK]

Originally Posted by DJ Apostrophe

First, this thread was brought up last year as well, many people had put ideas there, so anyone and everyone should read this thread: How would you change Club Nationals (USACFC)?

There were some basic questions that I had asked that needed to be answered in order for me to tweak some of my proposals... I'll post those questions here first, and we'll go from there:

Why are we holding this event? (To promote collegiate club fencing? To decide 3-Weapon champions? To decide a 6-Weapon champion? To decide individual champions?)
I realize that the answer is 'all of the above', but these need to be ranked in order of importance, and an emphasis put on how important each one is.

What sorts of differences do you see arising from different priorities? (Excluding individual champions, we'll assume the other 3 are with regards to team events)
What would you do differently if the primary goal was to promote collegiate club fencing as opposed to crowning a 6W champ, or 3W champ?

How important is it to fence other schools you don't normally fence during the season?

What is the expected attendance at next year's (and 2-5 years down the road) event?

What are we going to have for strip availability?

What is the longest you would want a team (or an individual fencer) fencing in one day?

As I'm no longer directly involved with the conference, these are not my questions to answer... but the conference's... each one has an impact on the format... the goals and resources need to be established before you develop your means to get from your resources to your goals.

-w

The previous discussion seemed to bog down in discussions of referee quality. Hopefully that was mostly dealt with this year, although obviously it can never be slacked down on. It looks like the core problem of this year's nationals was format: Too much fencing, too little time.

I'm a little unclear about procedures, having never attended. Do they do full equipment checks and all that, NAC style?