USACFC Format

[Wafath]

I had a question for people interested in USACFCs and formats. I thought I would bring it up here first before discussing it on the group.

Lets say your team is traveling to Texas, and you assume that your team will do average, ie, not make it to individuals, win the first DE, loose the second, etc.

Is there a minimum number of bouts per fencer that would make the trip worthwhile?

Clearly it would probably not be worthwhile to travel that distance for a single five touch bout, and for most people, the 26 bouts per fencer for men, and 17.5 bouts per fencer for women at Clemson was enough, it not more than enough.

But do you have an internal cutoff point for yourself or team?

(LS's format will probably give men around 15 bouts, and women around 13, under the circumstances outlined above. RFC #1 gives about 18 for men, and 14 for the women, assuming 36 men's and 30 women's teams.)

W

[erooMynohtnA]

It's really the waiting around that kills me, not the fencing. I don't have a limit on the number of bouts I'd like to fence, but I do have time constraints of how early and how late I would want to be at the venue.

The 26 bouts were a lot, but I'd prefer more fencing to less. However, if it can't happen between 9-6-ish, I'm for trimming it down.

[TooLoftheDeviL]

The only thing that worries me about not fencing everyone in an initial round is accurate seeding. If a team was only guaranteed < 10 bouts, but the pools were of a reasonably equal level, then whatever makes the tournament run should be fine.

The proposed 'rivalrly' round from proposal 1 in the USACFC group, for example is a bit ludicrous. Honestly, we're all familiar with the Army / Navy rivarly, but if the two were guaranteed to have to fence in a championship event, which team is that clearly benefitting?

[oiuyt]

Apologies for thread jacking, but I'd like to expand to ask a second question (set) as well.

How important do you feel is keeping entire (single-gender) teams together during the competition?

Same question but with squad instead of entire team?

What if part of the competition kept the team/squad together and then there's a portion where the team or squad was split (so teams being split into squads or squads being split into strips)?

Is the important thing that everyone's there and fencing, or is it a high priority that everyone's there fencing in the same location at the same time?

What if squads were fencing separately, but at different times, so that the rest of the team and coach(es) could still be there? What if the times overlapped (partially or fully)?

-B

[KShan5[PrFC]]

I think the teams being together is hugely important.

I know at UMass we thrive on the team atmosphere and get the entire team pumped up.

Also, most schools don't have more than one coach, so for that one coach to be running around trying to find particular strips doesn't seem fair.

Even if it means the tournament is run differently I still think keeping entire teams together is crucial to the tournament and the team aspect.

[Wafath]

The proposed 'rivalrly' round from proposal 1 in the USACFC group, for example is a bit ludicrous. Honestly, we're all familiar with the Army / Navy rivarly, but if the two were guaranteed to have to fence in a championship event, which team is that clearly benefitting?

This is a fair observation. In many ways RFC #1 was an attempt to meet _all_ of the orriginal requirements and still have a usable format. Think of it as a proof of concept. I also wanted to remove any possibility of re-matches. If we go from fencing Everyone to fencing a subset of everyone, it doesn't make sense to me to fence the same team twice. Any DE will have a significant number of re-matches, but I may be more adverse to this than is warrented.

One possibility is to replace the rivalry round with a balance round. The idea being that ones opponents are chosen based on how hard a day you have had so far, to balance things out a bit.

W

[noodle]

Also, most schools don't have more than one coach, so for that one coach to be running around trying to find particular strips doesn't seem fair.

to note, most schools don't have any coach, so the running around with that is at a minimum.

[noodle]

one last question to answer:

how important, do you feel, is the individual competition to the general USACFC tournament? is it essential, could we do without it, etc.?

[Wafath]

Apologies for thread jacking, but I'd like to expand to ask a second question (set) as well.

By all means. The Thread title invited it.

How important do you feel is keeping entire (single-gender) teams together during the competition?

Same question but with squad instead of entire team?

What if part of the competition kept the team/squad together and then there's a portion where the team or squad was split (so teams being split into squads or squads being split into strips)?

Is the important thing that everyone's there and fencing, or is it a high priority that everyone's there fencing in the same location at the same time?

What if squads were fencing separately, but at different times, so that the rest of the team and coach(es) could still be there? What if the times overlapped (partially or fully)?

I stipulate without offering proof that there is a trade off between two factors: keeping your team together, and the delay between bouts.

One of the things I like about LS's format is that the majority of a fencer's bouts happen in a single clump. You don't have 6 hours of fence-a-bout-every-30-minutes, or worse 10 hours of one bout per 50 minutes.

If I had to choose between one or the other, I strongly favor reducing the delay between bouts. The bouts don't have to happen all at once; they can be broken up into several periods throughout the day. (say, like the temple open's pool one, wait, pool two, wait, DEs. For each pool you can warm up and cool down.)

If LS's format is adopted, or the format plus the striping suggestion, I think we will see the refs shove everyone who isn't fencing very far away from the strips. We may end up with NAC style "pods" and credential requirements. This will piss off some teams, but it may result in a smoother competition.

W

[seak]

To also slightly threadjack (apoligies) is anyone else bothered by the fact that the format allows for more men's teams then women's teams, and a higher percentage of men's teams are promoted then women's (assuming 30 women's teams and 36 men's teams)

Now I know that currently there are fewer women's teams interested in participating then men's teams, but this might not be true in the future (as a female I would hope that women's fencing participation continues to grow)

Just a thought feel free to tell me I'm being silly

[KD5MDK]

Maybe the little teams should insist on splitting things up by squad if not strips, to diminish the UMass Club Effect.

[KShan5[PrFC]]

Well then if there is no coach then it's even more important to keep the team's together from a coaching aspect because the fencers are going to be coaching each other; and if they're at different strips then they would not be able to coach at all.

Also, I like the inidividuals at the end a lot. I would be pretty dissapointed if they were removed. First of all, because you should have an individual national champion in a sport that is more individual than team in nature. Secondly, the individual dection gives mediocre teams that have one strong fencer (aka Tommy Henning last year...William and Mary IIRC) something to look forward to. They know they won't be in contention for any medals as a team, but they can get behind their fencer in the individual round and still feel a sense of competitiveness.

[KShan5[PrFC]]

Maybe the little teams should insist on splitting things up by squad if not strips, to diminish the UMass Club Effect.

Don't ever think we can be quieted down too much....we'll just have to get louder and lose our voices for a week instead of 2 days after the competition.

[noodle]

Well then if there is no coach then it's even more important to keep the team's together from a coaching aspect because the fencers are going to be coaching each other; and if they're at different strips then they would not be able to coach at all.

coming from a coachless school, thats not how it works. the squads can coach themselves, so splitting into squads is just fine for us.

[seak]

I think his point is that if there is splitting within the squads, so all your women's foil fencers are fencing at roughly the same time you can't coach each other (or if the coach is a men's or women's fencer, they can't coach the other gencer team if they are fencing at the same time), hence it's a problem

[noodle]

I think his point is that if there is splitting within the squads, so all your women's foil fencers are fencing at roughly the same time you can't coach each other (or if the coach is a men's or women's fencer, they can't coach the other gencer team if they are fencing at the same time), hence it's a problem

i highly doubt we'll ever adopt a format that splits up squads.
and having a coach that also fences has always been a problem. they can't coach whoever is fencing at the same time as they are. teams without coaches adapt to it.

[noodle]

i've taken the questions here and put them in survey form, so we don't have to sift through all of the words to find real numbers


edit: we're going to rework the survey and make an official one. this one was just my whim.

[KShan5[PrFC]]

I took the poll, some of the questions were a little tough to understand at first, but I like it.

[noodle]

I took the poll, some of the questions were a little tough to understand at first, but I like it.

its really hard to take open ended questions and convert them into a survey-style questionaire.

[KShan5[PrFC]]

I wouldn't trade a fast run tournament for keeping the teams together, but finding a different format that keeps teams together I think I would shoot for.