An open question for the tournament organizers and div officers in New Jersey

[RITFencing]

As far as clubs running events and the div just sanctioning them... that happens all the time. We've done it here are RIT, and I've been to many other clubs in many other divisions that do just that. It works very well, so long as the club in question knows what it's doing.

[jeff]

I'm hopeful it will work out well - it's a different style than I'm used to. Fortunately, we have a very good Tournament Committee chairman (rsy)

[RITFencing]

So then when prices shoot through the roof, we can take it up with clubs, right?

[jeff]

A comment was made about how fencers can "vote with their feet" if prices are too high, or events are poorly run or are otherwise of poor quality. It sounds a little too caveat emptor to me, but, as I said, I'm still adjusting to the concept

[RITFencing]

A comment was made about how fencers can "vote with their feet" if prices are too high, or events are poorly run or are otherwise of poor quality.

Looking at the results from the tournament that day, in that very building... I think it is HIGHLY ironic that there would be such a small turnout. Maybe some of the fencers did indeed "vote with their feet."

[Peach]

From a post a while ago:

Sabre/epee events on Sunday at Medeo are a bit better. $35 pre-reg or at the door (not penalizing walk-in fencers seems a no-brainer if fields are small).(snip)
$35 still seems way too much, but compared with the NJFA events this weekend it's a bargain. Medeo is also including a BBQ (hot dogs, hamburgers, s'mores are all explicitly mentioned) and movies in the parent's lounge.

Actually, it ended up being an excellent event and worth the money to me--and it seemed to me that everyone there agreed, from what I overheard. The women's sabre event was only 8 people, granted--but all of them were competent and there were several who were very good fencers indeed, and to my relief I got lots of fencing because they ran a pool of 8. The men's event was pretty large, but choice despite only having one B. I had a nice all-beef hamburger and a coke. The epee was just getting started as I was leaving, but it looked well-attended. Although there didn't seem to be any paid referees, we didn't have to referee ourselves--some of the guys in the men's event (who were excellent referees) were filling in during the beginning, and then someone else stepped in and took care of the rest of the pool when he was free, and I think the guy who did the DEs may have been paid. I don't mind paying $35 if I get good value for the event.

[rsy]

I was installed as tournament chair of the NJ divsion on Sat and I was aware of the comments posted on this thread.

Unfortuantely, I have no control over the prices set for the tournaments. This is the executive committee's job and the division chairman believes that fees need to be raised so that the division will have money for scholarships. I am not sure what scholarships the chair is referring to or what the financial need for them is. Hopefully, that information will be provided in advance of the next executive committee meeting so that an informed descision can be made by all.

In any event, the exec committee agreed to continue the waiver of the Division's $5.00 per head fee for club run/division sanctioned events, at least temporarily, and the issue will be re-visited at the next exec committee meeting. I believe the final decision for division events was $30 pre-registered, $60 pay at the door. All pre-registrations would be through AskFred and the division would have arrangements in place for any fencers who could not register in advanve due to lack of a credit card.

Remember, the only division events this year are the JO and Summer Nat Qualifiers and the Denise O'C Youth & HS Tournaments. These are all large, well attended events and well worth the price of admission. The division will not be holding the Fall Festival or the Hay Fever Open this year and a decision has not been made about the division championships. I will continue to push for them.

As far as the rest of the events scheduled for NJ, and there are a lot of them, they are all club events and it is a very ambitous venture. This is due to the nature of the makeup of the Tournament Committee in NJ. It is mostly club reps and while the clubs wanted the division to act as a traffic cop to prevent scheduling conflicts between the clubs, they did not want the division to limit the overall number of events that a club could run.

There was definitely not a belief in "less is more" operating in that room and I hope that the crowded schedule does not dilute the overall quality of the events, especially the ones put on by the division.

If the clubs get great turnouts then this practice will continue. But if the clubs experience poor turnouts, I am sure that will lead to event cancellations and that will create further problems which might lead to a change in the procedure, if not this year, then perhaps next.

I will be starting a new thread soon about what hasn't changed about the division tournaments and I will offer for consideration some ideas to attract refs to the events. (Supermodel scorekeepers were already rejected as strip hazards, but based on the comments above, a good caterer might do the trick).

I guess the only thing to say is pick a weekend, any weekend...hell, you can pick every weekend & come fence NJ!

-r

[RITFencing]

In any event, the exec committee agreed to continue the waiver of the Division's $5.00 per head fee for club run/division sanctioned events, at least temporarily, and the issue will be re-visited at the next exec committee meeting. I believe the final decision for division events was $30 pre-registered, $60 pay at the door. All pre-registrations would be through AskFred and the division would have arrangements in place for any fencers who could not register in advanve due to lack of a credit card.

Remember, the only division events this year are the JO and Summer Nat Qualifiers and the Denise O'C Youth & HS Tournaments. These are all large, well attended events and well worth the price of admission. The division will not be holding the Fall Festival or the Hay Fever Open this year and a decision has not been made about the division championships. I will continue to push for them.

From the archived results of last year:

The Denise O'Connor High School Open:
Men's Epee: 41 People, B2 Event
Men's Foil: 49 People, B2 Event
Men's Sabre: 39 People, C2 Event
Women's Epee: 33 People, D1 Event
Women's Foil: 40 People, C2 Event
Women's Sabre: 28 People, C2 Event

Denise O'Connor Youth Championships:
Too many events to list... seems like Y14 men's foil was the largest at 32 People, Unrated.

Cadet (U-17) JO Qualifiers:
Men's Epee: 44 People, Unrated
Men's Foil: 54 People, B2 Event
Men's Sabre: 51 People, C2 Event
Women's Epee: 29 People, Unrated
Women's Foil: 45 People, Unrated
Women's Sabre: 31 People, C2 Event

Junior (U-20) JO Qualifiers:
Men's Epee: 50 People, B2 Event
Men's Foil: 55 People, B2 Event
Men's Sabre: 48 People, B2 Event
Women's Epee: 38 People, B2 Event
Women's Foil: 39 People, C2 Event
Women's Sabre: 28 People, C2 Event

Div 3 Qualifiers:
Men's Epee:35 People, D1 Event
Men's Foil: 44 People, C2 Event
Men's Sabre: 41 People, C2 Event
Womens' Epee:25 People, D1 Event
Women's Foil: 29 People, D1 Event
Women's Sabre: 21 People, D1 Event

Div 2 Qualifiers:
Men's Epee: 46 People, C2 Event
Men's Foil: 55 People, C2 Event
Men's Sabre: 45 People, C2 Event
Womens' Epee: 31 People, C2 Event
Women's Foil: 33 People, C2 Event
Women's Sabre: 27 People, C2 Event

These are some large events, no lie. It's great to see that kind of interest. But well worth 30 bucks? I must disagree, sir. For any one event there, I would be willing to pay 20, maximum. Probably more like 15. If I'm going to shell out 30 bucks for an event, I want it to be historically at least an A3, or have some other special sort of thing, like a format that gets me tons of fencing, or some really cool prizes. When I'm spending that much I also want decent referees and grounded strips if at all possible. If the refereeing hasn't changes since I was a high school student in Jersey, I'm going to guess that on the whole, it's not decent.

Assuming everyone there paid 30 dollars to get in and there were no registrations at the door (riiiiiight) then the division took in 7,740 dollars. There must have been a great deal going towards those scolarships. Incidentally, is it possible to get any more details on those? If my money is actually going towards a worthy cause, then I'd be willing to pay a bit more at events.

In closing, I'd like to offer the following events for consideration:

2006 Cherry Blossom Open:
Mixed Epee:138 People, A4 Event
Mixed Foil:112 People, A3 Event
Mixed Sabre: 65 People, A2/B3 Event
Women's Epee:36 People, B2 Event
Women's Foil:46 People, A2 Event
Women's Sabre: 17 People, B1 Event
Cost:
First Event 35 at the door, 25 Online, 20 for students (yay student ID!)
Second Event 30 at the door, 20 online, 15 for students

2005 Kickoff Open:
Mixed Epee: 95 People, A4 Event
Mixed Foil: 104 People, B3 Event
Mixed Sabre: 35 People, B2 Event
Cost: 25 per event

2006 Epeepalooza:
Mixed epee: 46 People, A2 Event (RIDICULOUSLY STRONG)
Cost: 15 dollars

The first two of these are right by DC, the second smack dab in the middle of manhattan. High cost areas. Yet they keep prices comparitively low and still manage to have very impressive fields. What, precisely, makes the Denise O'Connor High School open worth more money than, say, the Mixed Open Epee at the Cherry Blossom?

[RITFencing]

the division chairman believes that fees need to be raised so that the division will have money for scholarships

RAISED?! Will we be required to give our firstborn as well, or a few years of indentured servitude? I'm sorry for the tone of this post, but these prices are unnacceptable to begin with. Raising them because the core of extremely well off fencing kids in NJ will (get their parents to) pay any price is honestly rather infuriating at the moment.

Sigh.

Calming down now.

Out of curiosity, does the division decide in advance which events to sanction, or can one be added later?

[RITFencing]

I guess the only thing to say is pick a weekend, any weekend...hell, you can pick every weekend & come fence NJ!

-r

That is a wonderful thing. But with prices the way they are, I can fence in 2-3 local events... or a NAC. Just think about that for a moment.

[oiuyt]

Re the threadjack topic: Peter, how much of that is cost of gas, and how much of that is tax/fee/tariff? There's a big hike in gas cost going from New Jersey to New York, and it's largely governmental in nature (NY people often drive across the bridge or tunnel to NJ buy cheaper gas, which surely is self-defeating in environmental terms!)

Environmental AND financial. Even leaving aside the value of one's time, the bridge/tunnel toll would more than eat up the savings.

Regarding the cost fencingin NJ: I brought it up as promised, but it did not get a lot of play in the meeting. Perhaps it was (a) because the room was already frustrated with slow progress of other contentions items, or (b) because it provoked an immediate "it costs so much because of expenses A, B, C, and ... Z". I didnt want to derail the whole meeting for this, but it didn't get much in the way of traction.

I was there when you first raised the issue and it was immediately quashed in favor of being brought up later in the meeting. Unfortunately, after 5 hours of the meeting I needed to leave in order to make it back to another commitment Saturday evening. At that time event scheduling was still going on and looked to continue for a while, so I didn't catch the second half of the EC meeting, which looked to have most of the interesting decisions (in large part because everything kept being deferred).

-B

[RITFencing]

I was there when you first raised the issue and it was immediately quashed in favor of being brought up later in the meeting. Unfortunately, after 5 hours of the meeting I needed to leave in order to make it back to another commitment Saturday evening. At that time event scheduling was still going on and looked to continue for a while, so I didn't catch the second half of the EC meeting, which looked to have most of the interesting decisions (in large part because everything kept being deferred).

-B

Jesus Tap Dancing Christ. Five hours later and they're still not done? AND they kept deferring things that people really wanted to talk about? That's not exactly very user friendly for interested division members/citizens.

[oiuyt]

The majority of people in the room were club reps who mostly just wanted to get their events scheduled.

The meeting started as an EC meeting, a number of topics were introduced as "I intend to submit a proposal about this later in the meeting"-type announcements. Actual discussion on the majority of these topics was deferred as soon as it became clear that multiple opinions existed. After a couple of hours of that the EC meeting was recessed and a TC meeting was started.

There was a lot of discussion about whether division signature events were to be division-run and clubs acting at most as hosts or whether the division would just give the entire event to a club to run. Lots of dicussions about refereeing, and the hiring practices thereof. Lots of repeated discussions. Eventually there was a vote (10-7) to have the division run events hosted at a division-chosen location, either a club or other rented venue. (side note: at no point in any of this discussions were the finances of a tournament brought up -- it was never discussed who is responsible for costs, who is responsible for making or keeping a budget, who gets tagged with any potential deficit, or who claims any potential surplus. Since these seem OBVIOUSLY to be fairly big elements in deciding how to apportion ownership/organization/operations of a tournament, especially when it starts getting spread over multiple groups, this lack just boggles my mind.) Then scheduling started taking place.

This was still going on when I had to leave.

The EC meeting was to recommence after the TC meeting concluded.

-B

[RITFencing]

Welcome to New Jersey, Brad.

[oiuyt]

Welcome to New Jersey, Brad.

Well, not quite. My new house is in South Jersey, not New Jersey Division. I was there more to see the new location for NJFA and to try to get more insight into the thought processes in the division.

-B

[RITFencing]

I was referring more to the state than this specific practice.

[Greg_D]

The EC meeting was to recommence after the TC meeting concluded.

-B

Actually, by the time the TC meeting had concluded it was pushing 3 or 4 PM. It was decided to adjourn the EC meeting until September 9 at 9 AM to be held at the Medeo Fencing club. There appeared to be a 3 inch binder of resolutions and ideas that the new chair wished to present and it was decided to give people a chance to eat and sleep prior to working through all of those issues. It appears that it will be an open meeting, so feel free to attend then and have your concerns addressed.

Greg

[oiuyt]

There appeared to be a 3 inch binder of resolutions and ideas that the new chair wished to present and it was decided to give people a chance to eat and sleep prior to working through all of those issues.

Was there any indication that an agenda of said proposals might be forthcoming before that meeting, or is everyone going in eyes-closed?

-B

[Greg_D]

Was there any indication that an agenda of said proposals might be forthcoming before that meeting, or is everyone going in eyes-closed?

-B

There was a strong suggestion to make the resolutions with rationales available prior to the meeting. I believe the idea was to have them emailed to the Executive Committee members.

GD

[nahouw]

Assuming everyone there paid 30 dollars to get in and there were no registrations at the door (riiiiiight) then the division took in 7,740 dollars. There must have been a great deal going towards those scolarships.

The scholarships are a new proposal from this year's chair. I don't know what that is about. AS far as last year events, you can contact the former chair or treasurer and get the complete breakdown for any event, if you really wanted to. The large NJ qualifier events we rented venues because Medeo and NJFA have not had their facilities in the years prior to this, and BCAF is a new club to the division, and we couldn't use their facility on Saturdays due to lessons. As to the size of the venue rented, for example, for the DO'C, we once had to rent Drew University.

To take your number above, for income, I'll list a set of typical expenses that have been inccurred, just from the top of my head (of course, costs vary from contract with each different venue)

Venue rent for 2 days: $3000
Janitoral for venue: 500
Security personnel required by venue: 900
Referee expense: $2400
Trophies: $700
Food: $600
Trainer : $300
Armorers: $400
JO USFA Entry fee for NJ winners: $480
Plus, potential future expense for $400 airfare reimbursement if said NJ Qual winner medals at JOs (TBD later)

and I'm probably forgetting something...... so total expenses of $9,280 for a net loss of $1,540. Hopefully, the next venue is less expensive, and enough fencers attend to make up for the loss of this event..... and so on and so on.....

Anyway, since now that Medeo and NJFA have their brand new air-conditioned - large number of strips available to hold a competition (without losing strips for their regular lesson schedule) costs will most likely be dropping quite dramatically because there is not a large overhead as was necessary in the past. Actually, by hosting in a club, rather than a rented venue, your costs would go down by $4,400, to $4,880 and yielding a net profit for that club of $2,860.

NJ fencers will be very happy this season, for we should see event costs in the $15-20 range, based on a cost driven model. OR, the clubs might chose to operate on a profit model to generate income.... we shall see....