Where would you start a club?

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

If you were someone who was looking to start a mega-club (in the US), which city would you pick? Consider aspects such as area strength, market saturation, ect.

[piste off]

Nothern New Jersey. Specifically Bergen county.

There is no major club in NJ north of Medeo, which is in Bridgewater and is more central Jersey.

The Bergen County area has a lot of high school fencing programs, and is one of the wealthiest counties in the country (typically in the top 10). There are tons of kids (and adults) because of population density, and people there are driven to get their children in activities.

Yes, New York is close... but getting into the city is expensive when you consider tolls and parking.

Trust me on this one.

Rick

[eac]

If by mega-club you mean one that produces a handful (not that anybody has much more than a handful) of ranked fencers, I honestly think you can do it from anywhere in the US with any significant population of well-off suburbanites, as long as you have the stuff technically and are driven to have winning students. Just eliminate a couple places, like NYC for men's saber, where another club would siphon off your students too quickly.
Location isn't nearly as important as the stuff you have as a coach. In Pittsburgh, where I live for much of the year, the clubs have no trouble at all filling many many beginner classes; the only reason we don't have ranked fencers in numbers like Texas or SF or NYC is that the necessary coaches don't live here. I mean, as a city, we are probably significantly friendlier to fencing than Rochester, NY, but Rochester totally blows us away.
So if you're a good coach, don't worry about location. If you're a bad coach, don't worry about location, but remember to send your best students to good coaches when they get serious.

[edew]

Look for a place that doesn't have an established program for football/baseball/basketball. Soccer is not that big of a deal, although AYSO is pretty entrenched in most places.

Good luck finding such a place.

[Craig]

Look for a place that doesn't have an established program for football/baseball/basketball. Soccer is not that big of a deal, although AYSO is pretty entrenched in most places.

Good luck finding such a place.

Why is that Eric? I would want to be near other sports programs to encourage the kids that don't like the team or ball sports to try out fencing. The proximity of the fencing club and visibility in the areas where kids are already going for sports would help I would think.

[piste off]

Look for a place that doesn't have an established program for football/baseball/basketball. Soccer is not that big of a deal, although AYSO is pretty entrenched in most places.

Good luck finding such a place.

Not sure I agee, Eric.

My town has huge participation (even multiple leagues) in the traditional sports (including the #1 team in the country in football). Yet, the camps and leagues for sports like soccer and lacrosse are bursting at the seems. For activities like dance, karate and gymnastics there are waiting lists, and if you are lucky enough to get in the classes can be 50+ people.

BTW congrats at your showing in Richmond, and I also liked "the font." (I guess I've been spending too much time in Powerpoint lately).

Rick

[DJ Apostrophe]

If I were going to start a club, it would be right here: Google Maps

Whitman, MA is where I grew up.

There are no other fencing clubs within a 45 minute drive....

The building is an old mill building (the west side of the building is still in use, but where I would put the club is retail space with some nice street exposure, big windows, plenty of parking, a train station right accross the street, within walking distance of all of the town's schools, etc. etc.)...

-w

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!


I think that one should be searching for a place with the highest number of possible fencing recruits in the near area.

With near area, I mean the area around one point which fulfills these criteria:
1. Nearer to that point than to any existing fencing club
2. Within one hour´s one-way travel (given local traffic, speed limits, etc) from the point.

1. Start out by finding a list of all US. counties, ordered by population size.
2. From that list, strike all countries which already have fencing clubs.
3. Of the remaining list, take the top-20 (or so) and rank them according to average post-tax income, adjusted for local living expenses.
4. From that list, strike all counties which are so far from the nearest existing fencing club so that car travel over a single weekend day becomes impractical.
5. Work your way down from the top of that list, examining each county for local pros and cons.

BTW: The largest county in Sweden without a fencing club has a population of 113,000. Any idea of what the comparable figure for USA is?


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[Allen Evans]

Hi!
2. From that list, strike all countries which already have fencing clubs.

LA County has about 9 million people. I'm not sure I would automatically discount putting a club there if there was one there already.

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

1. Start out by finding a list of all US. counties, ordered by population size.
2. From that list, strike all countries which already have fencing clubs.
3. Of the remaining list, take the top-20 (or so) and rank them according to average post-tax income, adjusted for local living expenses.
4. From that list, strike all counties which are so far from the nearest existing fencing club so that car travel over a single weekend day becomes impractical.
5. Work your way down from the top of that list, examining each county for local pros and cons.

Wikipedia to the rescue - here is a list of all US. counties with population in excess of 1 million:

Rank County name Population Largest Community
1 Los Angeles County, California 9,519,338 Los Angeles
2 Cook County, Illinois 5,376,741 Chicago
3 Harris County, Texas 3,400,578 Houston
4 Maricopa County, Arizona 3,072,149 Phoenix
5 Orange County, California 2,846,289 Santa Ana
6 San Diego County, California 2,813,833 San Diego
7 Kings County, New York 2,465,326 coextensive with Borough of Brooklyn
8 Miami-Dade County, Florida 2,253,362 Miami
9 Queens County, New York 2,229,379 coextensive with Borough of Queens
10 Dallas County, Texas 2,218,899 Dallas
11 Wayne County, Michigan 2,061,162 Detroit
12 King County, Washington 1,737,034 Seattle
13 San Bernardino County, California 1,709,434 San Bernardino
14 Santa Clara County, California 1,682,585 San Jose
15 Broward County, Florida 1,623,018 Fort Lauderdale
16 Riverside County, California 1,545,387 Riverside
17 New York County, New York 1,537,195 coextensive with Borough of Manhattan
18 Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania 1,517,550 coextensive with Philadelphia
19 Middlesex County, Massachusetts 1,465,396 Lowell
20 Tarrant County, Texas 1,446,219 Fort Worth
21 Alameda County, California 1,443,741 Oakland
22 Suffolk County, New York 1,419,369 Brentwood
23 Cuyahoga County, Ohio 1,393,978 Cleveland
24 Bexar County, Texas 1,392,931 San Antonio
25 Clark County, Nevada 1,375,765 Las Vegas
26 Nassau County, New York 1,334,544 Hempstead
27 Bronx County, New York 1,332,650 coextensive with Borough of The Bronx
28 Allegheny County, Pennsylvania 1,281,666 Pittsburgh
29 Sacramento County, California 1,223,499 Sacramento
30 Oakland County, Michigan 1,194,156 Troy
31 Palm Beach County, Florida 1,131,184 West Palm Beach
32 Hennepin County, Minnesota 1,116,200 Minneapolis
33 Franklin County, Ohio 1,068,978 Columbus
34 St. Louis County, Missouri 1,016,315 Florissant

So there you are, Grant. You do the rest of the homework. There are 524 counties with a population of at least 100,000 according to the 2000 Census.

LA County has about 9 million people. I'm not sure I would automatically discount putting a club there if there was one there already.

There is a point to that, but remember that the OP mentioned market saturation. In any case, the really large counties should in this marke analysis be subdivided into whatever smaller geographical/political subdivisions that they use - voting precincts, maybe?


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[notalent]

There are large areas of the county that are without fencing because the economics will not support one. We are missing out on the second tier urban athelete in LA. The acomplishments of the Westbrook Foundation is a model that we should look to.

LA County has about 9 million people. I'm not sure I would automatically discount putting a club there if there was one there already.

[oiuyt]

Meh, my choice of location would be at least as much based on localities in which I would want to live as pure economic data.

If I don't want to live somewhere, opening a club there -- no matter how successful it could be financially -- just doesn't make sense.

-B

[introspective]

My order of preference:[based on where students can find competitions as well]

Brooklyn New York. Why not check it out. Brooklyn if you have the expertise and manpower to start one? There's more businesses, you could probably start a few clubs in a few public schools or just start a salle anywhere.

Queens is next - more residential and less business like it's fairly busy, they have a great China town - more racially mixed.

Bronx - I would have to give a thumbs down. Very cold, not too much business, and too many problems.

Fencing on Long Island is fairly new, Farmingdale has a good club that I've been looking at. Watch to see if there's a spin off in the future, it may take a few decades.

[grotto]

I would pic a medium to medium large metro area with at least 4-5 highschools in driving distance and a community college / university extension.

Lets face it, highschool / college aged kids are the life blood of the beginning classes if you don't have a good established base of fencers in the area. An area with a good highschool athletic program always has athletes on the fringe who compete but don't excell in team sports or track and field. These kids are pretty ripe for a fencing program. (one of the reasons I started fencing as a matter of fact.) Add in the adults of the area interested in fencing and you have a stable enough group to keep the dues coming in and new interested folks for the classes....

my $.02