USFA Nationals Schedule Posted

[Dee EffEll]

The USFA just posted the daily schedules on their web site for the events at this year's summer nationals (Austin, TX.) Interesting that a tournament listed to start 6/27 dosn't have any events scheduled until 6/28. Hmmm...

But thank you USFA for getting this out so early! Good job! Makes it easy to make plans for this big event.

[135711]

try to contact them, it could be a typo?

[Inquartata]

This simply CANNOT be the correct schedule. All of the MS events are consecutive. Impossible! Those events MUST be strung out over the entire week, so as to inconvenience people as much as possible.

BTW, when did they begin fencing the Veteran events as age groups, with no Combined? Is that only at Nationals?

[edew]

USFA has also removed from this year the open team events. Thus, there's only Div I teams and U-19 teams.

I think they should have gotten rid of the U-19 teams and kept the open teams.

The Open teams are huge, and thus are good money makers for the USFA, although they're incredibly tiresome for the referees. The epee team events would regularly have 30+ teams. That's five team matches for the winning (and losing, and third- and fourth-place) team(s).

I can see that the open teams may be a real bear to run. On the other hand, $60 a pop for each team, and say, 24 teams per weapon/gender category (on average) and you get $8640 right there. That's a good sum of money to ignore. (Last year, a total of 145 teams competed in the open teams, which makes for $8700 straight up.)

Comparatively, the U-19 teams had max of 24 teams (U19MET) and as few as 7 (U19WFT). The women's foil seems to be the smallest in any category, probably because of the overwhelming dominance by the Rochester (and now, Rochester and NYFC), which makes a bunch of clubs think twice about wanting to send in a team. But hey, there's always a bronze medal, ya know?

[135711]

he is still sizzling!!!

[Dee EffEll]

How can we tell the "team" on the schedule means "div 1 team" and not "open team?" Do all members of an Div1 team have to be on the Div 1 points list?

[MikeHarm]

It seems exciting, so far a big tourney for me had like 30 folks, and this is a lot bigger than anything I've gone to before. I got the ok at work to have the time off to go to it, so I'll be there definately. If anyone has an advice for my first time at Summer Nationals feel free to give it to me.

[Peach]

It's a lot of fun. It's very big. All the fencing vendors come. I always end up spending whole days in the venue talking to people, strip-coaching clubmates, and watching fencing, when I'm not fencing myself. The Austin venue is very big and very air-conditioned, which is good because the last two times they held it there the outside temperature was consistently in the 90s.

By the end of the thing, everybody is a little brain-fried and cranky, so if you're fencing, be nice to the bout committee, local organizing committee, and referees. Or at least try not to drive them any more nuts than they are already (who else would do something like this for basically free for 10 15-hour days?)

Check in for your event, find out where the seeding, strips, and DEs are posted (they're usually in at least two places in the venue) and try to be where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there.

I recommend coming in the day before your event or long before check-in and getting your equipment checked by the armorers. Otherwise you'll be standing in a looooong line just before your event when you would really rather be warming up.

Some people come in for one event and go home. Others are doing something like 10 different tournaments in various weapons, categories, and age groups. My daughter was once entered in 8. I'll probably be doing two (or three if I'm lucky) and maybe refereeing.

If you get a chance, watch the finals in events in your weapon. I always come home from Summer Nationals with a new repertoire of tactics, strategy, and technical tricks I've seen and want to master.

Have fun!

[big poppa]

Mike : get ready to have a great time, win or lose. The nats are by far my favorite tournament(not ! the ones the Sw ohio division used to have with the all you can eat spread are). Thats all I can say this won't be your last, trust me on this one.