50+ fencers in a club, 4 strips. How do they fit?

[darius]

We've been there. During my tenure at U of Rochester, the first two practices post-activity fair would often get upwards of 80-90 people in the gym (which was fortunately large).

Keep them moving, not milling around. Get one group doing the waivers, another doing games, another doing footwork and have them switch. If you don't have enough coaches, split up the advanced fencers and/or the folks with engaging personalities (I guess Rod would count as both, no?) and put them in charge of groups, then make them move.

It's important to note that there will be massive attrition no matter what you do; the culture you create determines who will be the ones to leave. So use your time/energy to find ways to allow the people you want at the club to self-select.

darius

[larkmaj]

Originally Posted by fencerbill

Why are you limited to only that room at only those times? Do the athletic facilities have any other spaces that have free time? Use hallways for the drills?

There are essentially no other athletic facilities available at even moderately reasonable hours.

[dberke]

Originally Posted by larkmaj

There are essentially no other athletic facilities available at even moderately reasonable hours.

You can't do some fencing or hold the group lesson upstairs in the armory?

Dan
RPI Class of '93

[MyrddinsPrecint]

If the activity is sufficiently athletic (read: you do conditioning. You could meet at the gym once or twice a week, you do 15 minutes of pushups/sit ups/run around campus... whatever), and your fencers have to complete academic work, you will lose people. That's fine. They didn't really like fencing anyway. And you have their money.

[larkmaj]

Originally Posted by dberke

You can't do some fencing or hold the group lesson upstairs in the armory?

Dan
RPI Class of '93

Heaven forbid I try to take some space that the basketball teams may need for practice.

That space is almost always reserved for varsity basketball practice or rec basketball. Since the athletic facility scheduler is the varsity girls basketball coach... Not going to happen.

[ladyofshalott99]

I suggest you approach the problem from a Project Managment/Scheduling perspective. As such, two questions:

1) For as many fencers as you have, why are you only fencing two nights a week?

2) Have you considered submitting a request to your Rec Sports (or whoever schedules time in the building) to extend your hours from 6-10 or 7-11 p.m.? Given that you have a SUBSTANTIALLY increased load, they should be more inclined to issue the space to address the capacity issues (especially if you explain the need to accomodate as many people as possible while not overloading the room, which may/may not be a fire code violation.

With option two, you might consider dividing the group into Beginners and Advanced classes, with Beginner classes twice a week for two hours (7pm to 9pm, for example), and Advanced classes on the alternate days at the same start time. The last two hours of practice would be used for open fencing.

Further, why would you give Beginners <electric> strip time at all? I can understand if you're just talking about using the *space* that a strip would otherwise require...but in this case, you wouldn't need to set out electric equipment until the "open fencing" portion of the night started.


This format worked well for my club when I was at Purdue. The Powers that Be would shift us around to different rooms (constant frustration), and at one point, the Rec Sports Talking Heads put a GIANT mat in the room that took up half the floor space. We requested a different room at that point, which was smaller, but we still made it work for as many people as we had: about 100 Beginners at the beginnning of the Semester, about 40 people at the end of the semester.

Should you choose to approach the issue with your Rec Sports dept., be sure to construct a logical argument, outline the issues, and be sure you're talking to the person in charge, not the peon at the front desk.

[the ancient one]

No problems with equipment, only floor space?

Expand to more than two club nights and divide them up.

Attrition will happen.

Try piggy-back fencing, use some of that wasted vertical space.

[larkmaj]

Originally Posted by ladyofshalott99

2) Have you considered submitting a request to your Rec Sports (or whoever schedules time in the building) to extend your hours from 6-10 or 7-11 p.m.? Given that you have a SUBSTANTIALLY increased load, they should be more inclined to issue the space to address the capacity issues (especially if you explain the need to accomodate as many people as possible while not overloading the room, which may/may not be a fire code violation.

With option two, you might consider dividing the group into Beginners and Advanced classes, with Beginner classes twice a week for two hours (7pm to 9pm, for example), and Advanced classes on the alternate days at the same start time. The last two hours of practice would be used for open fencing.

Thank you! Excellent idea. I've started to put this into action. We're stretching our hours to 7:30-11 and having the beginners come in 7:30-9 (or so) and the advanced fencers go 9-11. This will allow more space for both groups and we'll get more experienced fencers to volunteer to help out the beginners.

I felt like an idiot for not thinking of this myself when I read it... It is an excellent solution for this situation.

[Wafath]

(Am I the only one who thought this was a lead in to existing internet solutions?)

The numbers will go down. This is the normal surge. You need to plan for this every year. In good years you will keep 20% of them. In bad years, expect to keep 2% of them.

My experience has been that the school isn't too keen on giving out additional space after the semester has started, but your school may be different, and it rarely hurts to ask. What you need to do is to figure out how you are going to deal with this for next year; chances are you will be back to sane numbers in a week, and depressing numbers the week after that.

If not, come up with a plan to split into groups (as noted by others), focus on conditioning & footwork that can be done outside (as noted by others), and abuse the resources you have (ditto).

W

[larkmaj]

Originally Posted by Wafath

(Am I the only one who thought this was a lead in to existing internet solutions?)

The numbers will go down. This is the normal surge. You need to plan for this every year. In good years you will keep 20% of them. In bad years, expect to keep 2% of them.

I do understand the numbers will dwindle, and I fully expect that. The issue is the numbers the second week were significantly more than in previous years. This is my fifth year at the club so I know well the general rules of turnover that govern it, but these numbers are remaining high longer than expected.

[ladyofshalott99]

Originally Posted by larkmaj

Thank you! Excellent idea. I've started to put this into action. We're stretching our hours to 7:30-11 and having the beginners come in 7:30-9 (or so) and the advanced fencers go 9-11. This will allow more space for both groups and we'll get more experienced fencers to volunteer to help out the beginners.

I felt like an idiot for not thinking of this myself when I read it... It is an excellent solution for this situation.

You're welcome, and you're not an idiot. Trying to quickly come up with a solution to a resources problem in a short period of time can be stressful, and stress can eliminate points of view other than the one that seems most direct.

You did good by polling others for perspective, and there were a lot of good perspectives in this thread. Anyway, that's what we're here for.

[Inquartata]

This is not a problem. Just let the sabre fencers have the strips. They will fence, and the foilists and epeeists will be perfectly happy just sitting around tinkering with their tips and chatting. That's about what goes on in my club, anyway.

[Gav]

In addition to the LadyOfShalot's ideas.

I've not been able to find a good description of the size of your hall. How big is it?

I agree with someone else here who asks "why give beginners strip time at all". After a week and half they can barely stand correctly let alone hold a weapon. No strip time for them. It will just annoy your regulars, the beginners aren't learning anything and your retention rates will go down.

Keep the beginners away from your advanced fencers in the short term. That allows them to build a rapport amongst themselves and their coach.

So:

• Get more time in the hall. Especially extra nights.
• Allocate some of that time to beginners only. How you do that depends on your resources. We have beginners in a seperate hall on Thursdays
• Consider making some nights weapon specific.
  • day 1 Foil and Epee
  • day 2 Sabre and Foil
  • day 3 Epee and Sabre
• Come up with a plan for dealing with beginners.
  • Don't take on more fencers than you can reasonably handle. If you don't have the capacity- tell prospective members. Make it clear there's a waiting list. If people think that there's demand then they will think what you have to offer is more attractive.
  • Come up with a plan for phasing your beginners into the pool of general fencers.

    e.g. Beginners are not allowed into the general pool of fencers until they've completed some basic competency test (entry level fencing award - good for giving newbies goals) and/or time with a coach (say 6 weeks).

  • Look at your funds and see if you can afford more pistes. Space may be an issue but see if you can get creative.
• Look for a new hall...