First NAC advice

[fencerwallet]

Originally Posted by Peach

Try not to horde your chair or you'll have to clear the barbarians off every time you want to sit down. It's "hoard."

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Do that, too.

[OnTheEdge]

I'm starting my fifth year of NACs with three different kids, and am starting to actually repeat at some venues. Scary. The posts so far have covered most of the advice I'd give, but on the theory that more opinions are better ...

- Set up a base of operations, especially if you're with a group. If you're not there early enough to get a prime wall spot, pick an aisle that doesn't have strips (or vendors) on both sides. A strip across from the bout committee, referee area or first aid station usually works well. This is where you hoard your chairs and where you run in panic to get that extra body cord your kid forgot to take to the strip.

- If you're going to be there for several days and want to carry them, bringing your own chairs usually means someone won't steal them.

- Be sure you've got cell phone numbers programmed for the coach and everyone in your group. Cell coverage is usually OK in most venues.

- Despite what you've heard about long waits between close of registration and pools, and between pools and DEs, don't count on it. At one (and only one) NAC, less than 30 minutes elapsed between pools and DEs, and we were almost too late to fence the DE.

- Encourage your kids to talk to the other fencers. Don't let them keep to just their small club or family group. This is really hard for some kids, but they'll get more out of their experience.

- When you think it's about time for results to be posted, listen for the bout committe to call for runners. Then run for the closest board. You'll get the results before they announce they're posted.

- Expect the results to be posted at waist level. And expect them to be in tiny font so you can't read them from more than three feet away. It seems to be a NAC tradition to make this step difficult, to the extent that more than once we've been late to a DE because of not being able to get through the crowd to see the strip assignment.

- Print pool sheets from the USFA site. Even if you're not the scorekeeping type, having the pool bout order available to your fencer lets them be ready to fence and keeps down the dirty looks from the director when they're staring off into space instead of hooking up on the strip.

- Bring lots of food for your fencer AND for yourself. Venue food is not only expensive, it's often truly disgusting.

- Double check that your kid has actually done the equipment check and has registered on time. Remember, you're the parent and, especially at the first few NACs, they're the inexperienced kid. That 30-minute registration line is usually empty by 15 minutes before the close of registration, so you can avoid the rush by waiting.

- Be sure your fencer finds someone to fence before pools start and is warmed up. There's nothing more frustrating than this sequence:

1) your kid loses the first pool bout to a fencer they should have beaten,
2) your kid tells you they weren't warmed up but now they're ready,
3) your kid then goes 3-3 in the pool and after the cut is seeded below the middle,
4) your kid gets knocked out in the first DE by someone seeded just above the middle,
5) you remember 2) and think about what might have been if they'd been seeded above the middle, had won their first DE against someone seeded lower, placing them in the top 32, giving them national points and saving you another expensive trip to a nationals qualifier that they wouldn't have had to attend if they had national points and had just WARMED UP before that first pool bout. Been there done that.

[BrokenPenGuy]

Thanks again to all who posted advice. It was very helpful.

This was the first tournament I didn't take my daughter to. My wife's grandmother (and daughters' great-grandmother) is in a nursing home outside of Dallas, so the trip had duel purposes - a chance to fence a first NAC and to see family. My wife was nervous about the tournament, so the advice helped her alot.

They got down on Wednesday, visited my wife's grandmother on Thursday, and fenced Friday. That made arrival for the event easy. They stayed at the Adam's Mark and got a great room up on the 25th floor. They had no trouble getting over to the convention center for the early check-in. All in all, logistics went very smoothly.

My daughter's SYC experiences made her very familiar with the registration/equipment check process. My wife said things were very well organized, and they had no trouble finding pool assignments and the strip. Other than the size of the venue and number of fencers in her event, nothing surprised her. It was just a bigger and better organized version of the UNH SYC from last year. My daughter even knew the referee for her pool from the SYCs. She also had fenced one of the other girls in her pool at both SYCs she attended last year.

As for her results ... she tried hard and had a lot of fun. That was our goal for her, so it was a success. We knew it would be a tough event. She's a big fish in our little pond - there aren't many 14 year old (or younger) girl epee fencers in our division, or the neighboring divisions. There's one other girl in her club that she's evenly matched with, but other than that, she usually wins against the other girls her age in the area. But we knew from the SYCs last year (Y12) that there are a lot of much better fencers out there. She was looking forward to the challenge, and she got it. She went 0-6 in her pool, lost her DE, but fenced stronger with each bout, and felt really good about it.

[Phincer]

Originally Posted by BrokenPenGuy

She went 0-6 in her pool, lost her DE, but fenced stronger with each bout, and felt really good about it.

If she fenced stronger with each bout, felt good about her day then the whole thing was a success. Attitude is everything!