Capital CRASH 2012

[jyoder]

After a very successful 2011 event, Capital Clash became Capital CRASH:

* Like all SYCs, added Cadet events. Even though this generated at least $24,920 in additional revenue, events were second flighted for 3 hours. Bout committee on site confirmed that this was a known situation weeks ago. No one was told, more refs weren't scheduled, event wasn't rescheduled. This ensured that EVERYONE was inconvenienced (except the Bout Committee).

* Aggressive promotion of very expensive venue hotel (over multiple hotels priced 50% less 200 feet away). May be good for the events bottom line, but not a good thing for everyone else's budget.

* FencingTime completely undependable. Last, worked great. This year, was up and down.

* Medals were awarded ... in front of an 8' folding table.

To be fair, Registration and Armory worked smooth as silk. Moved from a "must do" event last year to "we'll see" in my mind.

JY

[Conrad]

If you judge Capital Clash against a standard of perfection, there are some things an opinionated person may have changed. IMO, it all went very well. If you judge it against the other SYCs, there is no comparison. Capital Clash is the standard by which other SYCs should operate.

[wakeup]

I had a similar reaction to Conrad's. At first I found myself judging it by NAC standards and then laughed when I realized how that never even occurs to me as a frame of reference when I judge other SYCs.

RE the expensive hotel. I didn't think to do it in this case (in part because I was curious to see what the Gaylord was like), but generally with NACs, I shop around online because I don't expect the official hotels to always be the best or even the cheapest options.

[Mergs]

To be fair, Registration and Armory worked smooth as silk. Moved from a "must do" event last year to "we'll see" in my mind.

JY

Thanks for the shout out to the Armory - we worked very hard to make sure things moved along smoothly. I'm blessed to have an experienced crew that is used to working as a team.

As for being up to the standard of a NAC, I would say that we aren't there yet, but I can say we will be a heck of a lot closer, if not at that level, next year.

PS - the Armory crew is available for hire (as Armorers...... just in case anyone would be interested).

[Asibov Sobelo]

Cadet - I agree that the large Cadet events slowed things down, but it was a nice option for the Y14s who would usually spend all that money to come for 1 event. Possibly capping these events at 42 paid registrations would be a thought for the future.
Hotel - If someone hasn't learned to search for other nearby hotels, they have bigger problems than spending a few extra bucks to stay in a gorgeous, convenient hotel.
FencingTime - This comment just shows how extremely cynical you're being.
Medals - The table actually served well in keeping 8 kids' parents and coaches from crowding too much, but I would like having the medal podium for the top 4.
As I often try to point out when people complain about semi-trivial things, if this is the worst you have to complain about, it just goes to show what a great event it was.

[epeemike81]

Other than the OP wanting to show off his pithy pun, is there any reason this didn't just go into the already existing Capitol Clash feedback thread?

[dsapery]

After a very successful 2011 event, Capital Clash became Capital CRASH:

* Like all SYCs, added Cadet events. Even though this generated at least $24,920 in additional revenue, events were second flighted for 3 hours. Bout committee on site confirmed that this was a known situation weeks ago. No one was told, more refs weren't scheduled, event wasn't rescheduled. This ensured that EVERYONE was inconvenienced (except the Bout Committee).

* Aggressive promotion of very expensive venue hotel (over multiple hotels priced 50% less 200 feet away). May be good for the events bottom line, but not a good thing for everyone else's budget.

* FencingTime completely undependable. Last, worked great. This year, was up and down.

* Medals were awarded ... in front of an 8' folding table.

To be fair, Registration and Armory worked smooth as silk. Moved from a "must do" event last year to "we'll see" in my mind.

JY

We do appreciate the feedback. I only hope that your division events run to absolute perfection every time and nothing ever goes wrong.

I won't address all of your comments, because others have already said the same things I would.

We experienced growing pains, that's all. If the event didn't meet your expectations, I'm sorry for that and we'll miss you next year. For the same entry fees, you're more than welcome to go to Rochester or Louisville or Phoenix, for example. But don't expect your kid to find the same level of competition.

I don't know where you get your numbers, but the revenue from the Cadet events wasn't even close to $22k.

FencingTime did work great. The only issue we couldn't tackle was with the live results on the web, not with the tournament management parts. Although the live results are certainly a nice feature, if the choice were between having reliable live results on the web or having reliable seeding, pools, and DE tables, I'd choose the latter. Oh, btw the registration desk that ran "smooth as silk" was also using the "unreliable" FencingTime.

[DJ Apostrophe]

After a very successful 2011 event, Capital Clash became Capital CRASH:

* Like all SYCs, added Cadet events. Even though this generated at least $24,920 in additional revenue, events were second flighted for 3 hours. Bout committee on site confirmed that this was a known situation weeks ago. No one was told, more refs weren't scheduled, event wasn't rescheduled. This ensured that EVERYONE was inconvenienced (except the Bout Committee).

* Aggressive promotion of very expensive venue hotel (over multiple hotels priced 50% less 200 feet away). May be good for the events bottom line, but not a good thing for everyone else's budget.

* FencingTime completely undependable. Last, worked great. This year, was up and down.

* Medals were awarded ... in front of an 8' folding table.

To be fair, Registration and Armory worked smooth as silk. Moved from a "must do" event last year to "we'll see" in my mind.

JY

Hi. I was the BC chair for this event as well as last year's event... So I thought I'd reply with my thoughts on the things that were under my purview.

I'm sorry that you didn't have a wonderful experience...

As DSapery said, we had some growing pains. Last year, there were 692 event entries on FRED before the event. This year, 1315. 315 of those entries were for the cadet events. So that's an apples to apples growth of approx 45%. That's SERIOUS growth. When I run events from year to year that I know are growing, I plan for anywhere between 15%-20% growth. This is the first time I've ever seen this drastic of an increase in entries year to year.

The youth events were treated as the priority. This meant that the cadet events were the ones that were flighted. And if my memory serves me correctly, there were only two events all weekend that were flighted. The Cadet Men's Epee was one, and I believe a Cadet Sabre as well.

FencingTime: "Completely undependable" can only be described as a GROSS exaggeration. We found a bug in the software that wouldn't allow us to push live results to the internet on Friday. Once we worked around that, it was fine for the rest of the weekend. There was ONE case of FT swapping a couple of fencers that (In my opinion) it shouldn't have in the Y14MF, we had that fixed in less than ten minutes. I can't think of any other case this weekend where FT underperformed.

Thanks for the feedback.

-Wayne Jenness

[bigdawg2121]

We do appreciate the feedback. I only hope that your division events run to absolute perfection every time and nothing ever goes wrong.

I won't address all of your comments, because others have already said the same things I would.

We experienced growing pains, that's all. If the event didn't meet your expectations, I'm sorry for that and we'll miss you next year. For the same entry fees, you're more than welcome to go to Rochester or Louisville or Phoenix. Just don't expect your kid to find the same caliber of fencing nor a bout committee with the experience that ours had, not to mention the high level of refereeing.

I don't know where you get your numbers, but the revenue from the Cadet events wasn't even close to $22k.

FencingTime did work great. The only issue we couldn't tackle was with the live results on the web, not with the tournament management parts. Although the live results are certainly a nice feature, if the choice were between having reliable live results on the web or having reliable seeding, pools, and DE tables, I'd choose the latter. Oh, btw the registration desk that ran "smooth as silk" was also using the "unreliable" FencingTime.

Dave, while I tend to agree with everything you've said but there's really no reason bash other events. Frankly, from what I've seen thus far this season (and expect to continue seeing) SYC events tend to be fairly professionally run and have very qualified refereeing and DT cadres. Rochester ran an excellent event this year (I heard last year's wasn't great but clearly they learned). Obviously I might be a tad partial but I think the Phoenix event was pretty well run as well and most definitely retained a high class cadre. I expect the sane to be true of the Rain City event in a few weeks. Having reffed the CC in the past and knowing the level of respect with which the organizers treat it I have no doubts that it was a great event but I don't think it was the only great event this season.

[dsapery]

Dave, while I tend to agree with everything you've said but there's really no reason bash other events. Frankly, from what I've seen thus far this season (and expect to continue seeing) SYC events tend to be fairly professionally run and have very qualified refereeing and DT cadres. Rochester ran an excellent event this year (I heard last year's wasn't great but clearly they learned). Obviously I might be a tad partial but I think the Phoenix event was pretty well run as well and most definitely retained a high class cadre. I expect the sane to be true of the Rain City event in a few weeks. Having reffed the CC in the past and knowing the level of respect with which the organizers treat it I have no doubts that it was a great event but I don't think it was the only great event this season.

Point taken, and I didn't mean to bash the other events, but I agree with you that's the obvious interpretation of my words. All of the other events are run well (and in fact I was brought in to run Rochester this past year to fix the problems from 2010).

I was simply trying to point out that we had 5 members of the national bout committee working the event, 4 FOC members, plus 5 referee examiners. Not many events (other than NACs) can claim that level of expertise. But that in no way means that the other events are bad.

[piste off]

I've been involved with the sport for three and a half decades and have fenced in a variety of tournaments from local to the international level. The Capital Clash was a stellar event, no suprise to me since the Capital Division throws great events such as the CBO.

Really, really well done.

This was the first "big" event for my kids and I have to thank you; experiences like they had there are helping them fall in love with the sport. They can't wait until next year.

The only downside is that they will now expect other comps to live up to that standard.

I'll keep them believing in Santa until then.

[noahz]

FencingTime - This comment just shows how extremely cynical you're being.

Agree. I have no skin in this game (didn't attend the SYC and don't know who organized it) and read the op out of curiosity. I was a little shocked to see a condemnation of Fencing Time. Probably the first ever complaint about that software slowing down a tournament? Seems specious.

[jyoder]

To clarify a few points ...

Comparison to NAC (or perfection): I am comparing this year's event to last year's very successful event, not to a NAC. I was so impressed with the 2011 event that I encouraged and recruited other families from our Academy to attend. I don't believe that events should be allowed to grow beyond the capability that of the venue or the available refs, irrespectove of the financial rewards.

Delays: Everyone understands that can delays happen ... my frustration is that the organizers had both the time and money (x participants multiplied by entry fee + event fee = $22,920) to address known issues and they did not. I don't think a three hour delay in an event is trivial by any standard.

FencingTime: While I'm glad that FencingTime managed the event well, it was down for significant periods on Sat PM and Sun AM from until 9 AM. Picture throngs of parents and kids pushing and stretching to get strip assignements - all with smartphones and ipads in their hands. Not cynical or specious, just observing that the system was unstable and thus unreliable.

Hotel Promotion: I shop around for hotels too ... but SYCs exist to bring in new, young participants into this wonderful sport and that means supporting all types of families.

I'm ABSOLUTELY ECSTATIC that you experienced growth, and I hope it continues. But when you see that growth coming, you should either make arrangements to deliver the same quality event as last year, or limit the participants.


JY

[epeemike81]

(x participants multiplied by entry fee + event fee = $22,920) to address known issues and they did not. I don't think a three hour delay in an event is trivial by any standard.

This math is very wrong due to the silly assumption that every entry into the Cadet event brings in not only an event fee but a separate registration fee. I would venture to guess that the majority of fencers in the cadet events were also fencing in Y-14 and had thus already paid the reg fee.

-m

[dsapery]

To clarify a few points ...

Comparison to NAC (or perfection): I am comparing this year's event to last year's very successful event, not to a NAC. I was so impressed with the 2011 event that I encouraged and recruited other families from our Academy to attend. I don't believe that events should be allowed to grow beyond the capability that of the venue or the available refs, irrespectove of the financial rewards.

Delays: Everyone understands that can delays happen ... my frustration is that the organizers had both the time and money (x participants multiplied by entry fee + event fee = $22,920) to address known issues and they did not. I don't think a three hour delay in an event is trivial by any standard.

FencingTime: While I'm glad that FencingTime managed the event well, it was down for significant periods on Sat PM and Sun AM from until 9 AM. Picture throngs of parents and kids pushing and stretching to get strip assignements - all with smartphones and ipads in their hands. Not cynical or specious, just observing that the system was unstable and thus unreliable.

Hotel Promotion: I shop around for hotels too ... but SYCs exist to bring in new, young participants into this wonderful sport and that means supporting all types of families.

I'm ABSOLUTELY ECSTATIC that you experienced growth, and I hope it continues. But when you see that growth coming, you should either make arrangements to deliver the same quality event as last year, or limit the participants.


JY

Even the 2011 tournament was too big for the old facility. Strips were shoehorned into the venue. We did plan for growth this year (hence the new venue), but the turnout far exceeded anything we imagined. We had estimated an increase to 1000 entries from last year's 700. No one could have imagined that it would grow to 1300. By comparison, the largest locally-run tournament prior to CC2012 was only 866 entries.

Because the youth events are "point events" we are not allowed to limit the number of participants. So that suggestion is moot. We possibly could have limited the entries of the cadet events, but even that would have ended up with complaints.

Events get flighted from time to time, even at NACs. It's a necessary evil that we try to avoid whenever possible. It just wasn't possible this year. Theoretically we could have had more strips and more referees. The reality is that we had already hired 62 qualified referees, and hiring more was beyond anyone's ability. Especially when we were up against the Phoenix world cup and two NCAA megameets (and please don't suggest that we could have held our tournament another weekend, because the dates weren't set by us, but by the Youth Development Committee).

And it's naive to assume that we can hire more referees and get more strips when (by the rules of the SYCs), we're not allowed to close registration until 3 days prior to the tournament.

Your calculation of the revenue is assuming that all of the participants in the cadet events were only fencing the 1 event. This couldn't be further from the truth. The vast majority were fencing Y14 and Cadet, so you can't include the registration fee in the revenue calculation.

As for your complaints about FencingTime, again you're focussing on the information pushed onto the web. I'm sorry that this particular function of FT wasn't working as you expected and you couldn't get the information on your iPad, but we did have all of the strip assignments and DE tables posted on large screen TV monitors in 2 locations, plus paper copies posted in 3 locations in the venue.

[dberke]

FencingTime: While I'm glad that FencingTime managed the event well, it was down for significant periods on Sat PM and Sun AM from until 9 AM. Picture throngs of parents and kids pushing and stretching to get strip assignements - all with smartphones and ipads in their hands. Not cynical or specious, just observing that the system was unstable and thus unreliable.

As others have explained, there were a couple glitches with Fencing Time, mainly with the live results. I was in contact with dsapery all weekend (mainly via email) and fixed a couple issues for him on Friday night. From what he and others on the BC have told me, things ran fine otherwise.

Dan

[edew]

...

Especially when we were up against the Phoenix world cup and two NCAA megameets (and please don't suggest that we could have held our tournament another weekend, because the dates weren't set by us, but by the Youth Development Committee).

...

Dave, why is the YDC dictating when SYCs are held? Isn't it better for the local organizer of the SYC to set an available date based on where they can get the best prices from convention centers, submit the whole bid to YDC and then get an up-or-down vote? These are supposedly regional YOUTH events, so it shouldn't conflict with other regional events nor would they impact most of the cadet/junior/senior events where important points for national teams are determined.

Maybe, it would be a better compromise if the YDC can offer a range of weekends to use and then the local organizers can go to their respective convention and visitors bureau to see what's available at those dates.

[academe]

To clarify a few points ...

Comparison to NAC (or perfection): I am comparing this year's event to last year's very successful event, not to a NAC. I was so impressed with the 2011 event that I encouraged and recruited other families from our Academy to attend. I don't believe that events should be allowed to grow beyond the capability that of the venue or the available refs, irrespectove of the financial rewards.

Delays: Everyone understands that can delays happen ... my frustration is that the organizers had both the time and money (x participants multiplied by entry fee + event fee = $22,920) to address known issues and they did not. I don't think a three hour delay in an event is trivial by any standard.

FencingTime: While I'm glad that FencingTime managed the event well, it was down for significant periods on Sat PM and Sun AM from until 9 AM. Picture throngs of parents and kids pushing and stretching to get strip assignements - all with smartphones and ipads in their hands. Not cynical or specious, just observing that the system was unstable and thus unreliable.

Hotel Promotion: I shop around for hotels too ... but SYCs exist to bring in new, young participants into this wonderful sport and that means supporting all types of families.

I'm ABSOLUTELY ECSTATIC that you experienced growth, and I hope it continues. But when you see that growth coming, you should either make arrangements to deliver the same quality event as last year, or limit the participants.


JY

So, sounds like you will volunteer to help make it better next year rather than whining about how bad it was handled? Great, I'm sure your kids will learn from your positive example of how to work in a positive way to improve the sport they love.

Good for you!

[lovefoil]

The quality of competition was very high. The tournament was well organized, thank you for putting up such a great event! Adding the older age group was an excellent idea that gave many fencer additional opportunities to fence. Refs were pretty good as well as the awards. Dallas by the Badawis and Arizona by Bill were also great events, but the number of entries, quality of fencers, the refs, the old age group, the effort to have live updates put this event over the others. Next year it will be better...

[dsapery]

These are supposedly regional YOUTH events, so it shouldn't conflict with other regional events nor would they impact most of the cadet/junior/senior events where important points for national teams are determined.

It doesn't conflict with other events as far as the ATHLETES are concerned. But it definitely conflicts as far as getting REFEREES.