Nationals Schedule Posted

[passata_sotto]

http://usfencing.org/pages/4260

[hello?]

http://usfencing.org/pages/4260

&^%$#@*@(@(! Veteran Team for Women's Epee the day before the individual Vet events. I cannot imagine anybody taking the individual event seriously wanting to compete.

Thanks for nothing, guys.

[fdad]

&^%$#@*@(@(! Veteran Team for Women's Epee the day before the individual Vet events. I cannot imagine anybody taking the individual event seriously wanting to compete.

Thanks for nothing, guys.

They could not have created more conflicts for team events if they had tried.
Men's Epee: Div3+Vets Team
Men's Sabre: Div 1A+U19 Team
Women's Epee: U19+Senior Team
Women's Foil: Div 1A+Senior Team
Women's Sabre: Div 1A+U19 Team and Div 2+Vets Team

[alpine]

They could not have created more conflicts for team events if they had tried.
Men's Epee: Div3+Vets Team
Men's Sabre: Div 1A+U19 Team
Women's Epee: U19+Senior Team
Women's Foil: Div 1A+Senior Team
Women's Sabre: Div 1A+U19 Team and Div 2+Vets Team

What makes you think they weren't trying?

[gatun.czone]

My daughter is bummed. The events she wanted to try for are so spread out that our budget cannot accomodate them. Oh well, maybe next year.

[mdstasinos]

Create your own schedule and balance it so there are no conflicts. This is what you have to work with:

*102 events in 10 days
*The days that have the Membership Meeting, Congress and Board of Directors needs to end at a earlier hour.
*Also balance strip usage throughout the day to minimize down time and delays in start times.
*Balance the schedule with the needs of referees (Minimize conflicts between foil and sabre where your multi-leveled referees can be maximized and reduce the potential for double flighting.)
*Balance the combinations between Div.1, Div1A, Div.2 and 3, and Juniors
(if you spread these out with out teams, one per day and you consume 5 days in rotation.)
*balance the use of the schedule to protect the national team selection events ( Div.1. Veterans, Juniors and Cadets)

Give it a try.

Mark Stasinos
Vice-President
US Fencing Asssociation

[pillow]

My daughter is bummed. The events she wanted to try for are so spread out that our budget cannot accomodate them. Oh well, maybe next year.

Since you brought up the financial issue, I assume you will not mind if I make a suggestion. I of course do not know what events your daughter is considering, nor do I know her fencing level. Nevertheless, you live in the Northeast, therefore you can drive, rather than fly. If your daughter is school-age, she should be out in plenty of time to make the trip to Atlanta. That will save lots on airfare. Secondly, there are long-term stay hotels--Residence Inns, Days Inn type stuff, where you can get a bargain rate for a week. These rooms have kitchens, so you can cook and save on meals. You will be farther from the venue, but you will save a ton by not paying for one of the THS hotels near the competition. You will have your car so it will be easy to drive to the event. You can even share costs with another family if your fencers are similar and need to be in Atlanta during the same time period. On the other hand, if your daughter is older, she can fly to Atlanta herself, and stay with a variety of folks from her club (sleeping on a fold out couch) and switch hotels as needed. Not the most elegant solution, but it's done all the time. Good luck!

[hello?]

*balance the use of the schedule to protect the national team selection events (...Veterans,

Well, it would have been nice if the much brandished carrot of Veteran team events had been held after the individual veteran events for WS and WE -- or, at the very least, not the day before. At least in epee, unless the four team slots are firmly decided in Dallas (has not happened, at least in recent years) I cannot imagine that anybody for whom the individual event matters will fence the vet teams (making it a much weaker event).

I don't even know if I could get three other club-mates to make up a Senior Team without the juniors -- who will be fencing U-19 the day of the Senior Team.

And, of course, I cannot do the Div 2 team in Dallas since it's on the same day as Vets.

Another disappointment. Oh well.

[eac]

You know, this is sort of what computers are for. You can just tell them all the things you want, and it can chug for a while, and spit out an answer that satisfied everything you told it as close as it could, and it'll in general be vastly better than anything you could have come up with yourself.

[mdstasinos]

You know, this is sort of what computers are for. You can just tell them all the things you want, and it can chug for a while, and spit out an answer that satisfied everything you told it as close as it could, and it'll in general be vastly better than anything you could have come up with yourself.

I posted the basic criteria. Go for it. Show me your results.

Mark Stasinos
Vice-President
US Fencing Association

[eac]

Well, that was a somewhat incomplete list. How many strips are there? Is there a current-ish approximate list of the available referees and their ratings in each weapon? Are there available ballpark estimates for DE rounds/pools/teams for each gender/weapon combination? What time does the venue open? What time does it close?

How much downtime does each referee need? How long can a referee go without a break? What are the mappings between ratings and approximate eligibility for each round?

[mgriff]

Mark beat me to it--I've been thinking for the past few days that it would be interesting to try a SN Schedule Challenge, so I'll enlarge a bit on the idea, based on my occasional experience helping to review proposed schedules.

Here's what you need:

--event numbers (these are checked-in numbers from last year, plus a pulled-out-of-the-air guess for Vet teams):event numbers.doc

--scheduling criteria (this is an older 2007 list I happened to have; I've deleted a few less relevant items that relate either to year-to-year considerations or to NACs only, but this gives a pretty good picture of what needs to be considered for a SN schedule): Scheduling criteria.doc

Your goal:

--Use the criteria and the numbers to create a 10-day schedule grid (weapons across, days down) with the earliest events closing at 8:00 am and the latest events finishing before midnight. Ideally, fencing should conclude by 7:00 pm, but that's not been an achievable goal for some years now. This is just a day schedule, so you don't need to set times, but you'll have to consider how long the various events would take in order to decide what to put on which days.

--Day 6 should start an hour later and end relatively early, to accommodate the early morning Membership/Congress meetings and the evening Hall of Fame reception.

The days do not need to be exactly the same size. The 2010 schedule just posted for instance, has days of around 675-750 individual entries for the first five days, day 6 at around 440, day 7 just under 600, and the remaining two days considerably smaller, essentially to ease teardown and the cumulative effects of officials' exhaustion. (Team entries vary from 0 up to nearly 70 on any one day.) Days larger than 800, though, could probably not finish by the mandated midnight deadline (and would undoubtedly be just plain ugly, with numerous painful cascading delays).

EDIT: forgot strips--figure 60-65 strips, which has been pretty typical for the last few SN.


My guess is that you'll find the exercise enlightening. It is my belief that SN is already broken--it is no longer possible to create a schedule that meets all--or even most of--the criteria for all weapons. Given the growth in the sport that has only been delayed by the current economy, this will only get worse--I expect SN in its current configuration will be completely unworkable by the end of this quad.

On the other hand, if you can come up with a decent schedule that meets all the criteria, I know some people who will try to recruit you for planning future schedules.

If you've got questions, I'd be happy to try to answer them. (If there's a lot of interest, we could always start a new thread on schedule-making.)

Mary

[hello?]

Who at the National Office is in charge of the National Schedule?

Last year, for summer nationals, we had 30 Vet 40, 28 Vet 50, and 7 Vet 60 (Vet 70 is canceled for Dallas; would imagine the same thing would happen at Nationals). Rather than vent on the cesspool, I'd like to write to see just how difficult it would be to switch the Vet Team and the individual events.

[mgriff]

Well, that was a somewhat incomplete list. How many strips are there? Is there a current-ish approximate list of the available referees and their ratings in each weapon? Are there available ballpark estimates for DE rounds/pools/teams for each gender/weapon combination? What time does the venue open? What time does it close?

How much downtime does each referee need? How long can a referee go without a break? What are the mappings between ratings and approximate eligibility for each round?

LOL! I suspect most working referees would laugh that anyone would think to ask those questions. We've been beyond scheduling livable days for tournament officials for years.

Referees are hired to meet the requirements of the schedule. There are usually, I think, about half again as many referees as strips each day (though an FOC member could correct me on that). Referees usually get 20 minutes or so for lunch (if they're lucky) and whatever down time the schedule allows; they work until they are released for the day.

You can use the number of entries to figure out the number of pools required; pools should be maximized to 7 if possible. DEs bouts are the number of fencers promoted minus one. We try to assign DEs in blocks of strips, usually 8, 12, or 16, depending on the size of the event, though both larger (24 and 32) and smaller (1-4) blocks can be used for the extremes.

In general, these days we figure times as follows:

Pool bouts: foil and epee - 7 minutes, saber - 4 minutes
DEs: foil and epee - 15 mintues, saber - 10 minutes
Team matches: foil and epee - 60 minutes, saber - 50 minutes
(Last SN, though, team foil matches actually ran 90-120 minutes.)

Mary

[mgriff]

Who at the National Office is in charge of the National Schedule?

Last year, for summer nationals, we had 30 Vet 40, 28 Vet 50, and 7 Vet 60 (Vet 70 is canceled for Dallas; would imagine the same thing would happen at Nationals). Rather than vent on the cesspool, I'd like to write to see just how difficult it would be to switch the Vet Team and the individual events.

It would be difficult. One of the criteria is to avoid having events in the same age category in different weapons on the same day--that is, you don't want two veteran women's team events on the same day because there's some crossover. If you move the team to a day that doesn't have other women's veteran events, you make conflicts with other events, like the divs, which veterans also like to fence.

There will be conflicts--it's just a matter of trying to spread them around so no one group gets hit more than any other.

Mary

[hello?]

It would be difficult. One of the criteria is to avoid having events in the same age category in different weapons on the same day--that is, you don't want two veteran women's team events on the same day because there's some crossover. If you move the team to a day that doesn't have other women's veteran events, you make conflicts with other events, like the divs, which veterans also like to fence.

There will be conflicts--it's just a matter of trying to spread them around so no one group gets hit more than any other.

Mary

"Some crossover" is picked over making the team event the day before the individual (team selection) event for that weapon?????! What kind of criteria is that?

But, again, please, WHO IS THE APPROPRIATE PERSON TO WRITE TO REGARDING THIS?

[epeelion]

D1ME is day 2. Senior ME team is the second to last day. That's absolutely ridiculous.

[mdstasinos]

D1ME is day 2. Senior ME team is the second to last day. That's absolutely ridiculous.

I would recommend you look again at the schedule, then repost your retraction. It is not as you say. I went to the US Fencing web site and that it not what is on the schedule on that site. Day 2 is Div.1 ME and I think it was Day 5 ME Senior Team.

Mark Stasinos
Vice-President
US Fencing Association

[mdstasinos]

How many strips?

60 to 65.

Mark Stasinos
Vice-President
US Fencing Association

[hello?]

WHO is the right person to address regarding this issue at the USFA? (Before I start urging vets to write to 15 or so people...)