Hosting a Tournament

[Flunge]

What does it take to host a USFA tournament? Can it be impromptu, or must it be advertised ahead of time? Can it be age-restricted and still award letters? Must it be hosted by a USFA club? How much of the entry fee goes to the USFA?

What keeps USFA members from getting together every Saturday night and getting each other some easy rankings? Actually, maybe this is what we're supposed to be doing . . .

[oiuyt]

It must be announced ahead of time ("adequate notice must be given").

It can be age restricted and still give classifications.

It must be either run by the USFA (or a local division) or the local division must certify that it was run in accordance with USFA rules/policies in order to award classifications.

The USFA doesn't take any of the entry fee for local events. Local divisions frequently do (especially if the tournament is being run by the division).

Nothing prevents weekly (or daily) tournaments. Creating classifications by artificially creating certain results is easy to do but immoral.

How tournaments are organized and run depends based on location. Most divisions either have clubs run the majority of events, keeping the majority or all of the entry fees, or have the division run the events with the local division keeping the entry fees and possibly paying the hosting club some form of rent. It's also possible to have a blended strategy where some events are run by the division with profits going to the division, while other events are run by member clubs with the profits staying with the club. What is allowed in your area will depend on the by-laws of your division and how things are done where you are.

To award classifications a competition must be sanctioned by the local division. The local division does not have to actually run the competition.

If you're interested in hosting competitions, talk to your divisional officers. If you can get a copy of your local by-laws, great, that'll help. More important is learning how things are done locally to you, whether that's in the by-laws or not. Find out when the schedulign committee (assuming there is one) meets. Find out what it takes to get on your local calendar. These answers will be somewhat different in each division.

-B :)

[Wizardly]

Originally posted by oiuyt
It can be age restricted and still give classifications.

Last I heard, only the JO's were the only age-restricted classification-awarding tournaments. Any idea where I might look to verify that this is false?

[edew]

Was changed as of this season: all events will hand out classifications according to the classification reference chart. In other words, age restriction will no longer be a factor in preventing one from obtaining a classification.

[mollusk]

Originally posted by Wizardly
Last I heard, only the JO's were the only age-restricted classification-awarding tournaments. Any idea where I might look to verify that this is false?

http://www.usfencing.org/Documents/R...sMan/Class.asp

[Wizardly]

Wow, I never noticed that before. I wonder if this has led to a proliferation of E's and D's. Stick 6 munckins in a room and one of them walks away with an E. Interesting policy shift.

[whtouche]

Originally posted by Wizardly
Wow, I never noticed that before. I wonder if this has led to a proliferation of E's and D's. Stick 6 munckins in a room and one of them walks away with an E. Interesting policy shift.

There's a (rather lengthy) thread in the archives somewhere started by, vigia? subject was something like "6 twelve year olds and one gets an E". It was on the merits of allowing youth resstricted events to give out letters, and eventually became a debate on the merits of the rating system in general.

[MyrddinsPrecint]

tournaments are fun.

to be at. to fence at.

to run??

well, sometimes....

if it's 6 twelve year olds, and you're giving one an E, and you have a fairly decent working knowledge of tournaments, and you're interested in playing with en garde (the comp program)... you can do it.


but when they get bigger? and you only have one table? and there are 20 womens epeeists trying to register as 20 womens foilists are asking you when their DEs are starting, and you haven't entered in all the womens foil pools, and you've still got a couple mixed events fencing, and the womens epeeists that are still in line need to get back to fencing in their mixed events, and some people have prereged and some haven't... and you have to switch files from one laptop to another, and halfway through the whole process, you realize that you have to find someone else to run the second laptop, because the person that's been there most of the day is fencing sabre....... and then you run out of working floor cords... and you have to yell at the guys who's directing other people's bouts before fencing the bouts he has to fence, which is holding back both of the two weapons he's competing in..........

granted, if you're just asking how to run one now, you probably aren't interested in running a complex open event like the one i just retold with a dramatized version.... (epeemike, DJ Ap, how dramatized was it really though?)

en garde (the wickid cool comp program) makes things much easier, if you know how to use it, however.

for instance?

the novice i ran at my school was almost as chaotic, with MAYBE a third of the people at the open.

i had never run a tournament, my club was running it, they all thought i should fence, i didn't want to, so i joined bout committee. which was very good, since one of our coaches was off doing god knows what for significant portions, so, it was mostly me. thank god, however, for Adam Blake, because he told me how to do everything at least once before i had to do it.

so-- if you're still interested in running a tournament-

1. don't make it too big.
2. check what you have beforehand (what if something breaks? timers? shims/weights? pencils? and the more obvious things..)
3. use en garde.
4. have 2 tables. and friends you can boss around. or at least have a really big table, with some other area to put stuff when things overflow off the one table
5. have someone around that's run a tournament before. they don't necessarily need to be helping you, just around in case you realize you don't know what an indicator really is... or something else terribly crucial.

there are other things... other people will post them since i can't remember them however...

[retardedspleen]

MyrddinsPrecint, man, we used to run a 2 tournaments every friday, one for the higher level of fencers, and one for the lower half (and younger kids) it was all mock, we had no bout commite, and the majority of it was self refereed, or if somebody was availble (except for the kids, they always had ref's) I remember writing out all of the tablues and going over all the pool sheets, and all and it took me about 10, to 15 minutes to figure ALL of it out, we had about 40 fencers total, this wasnt difficult, the tablue slips didnt seem complicated at all to me, just a basic understanding of how it works.. a couple years back, we had an SFC invitational, where practicly ALL of OFA came down to sacto..we had 66 people in the first event, we fenced off for EVERY position....it took the whole day, but we did that all by hand too, i dont remember it being that hard. once you get your barring about you, and you know where to put which places...its easy.



Chris Triplett

[DJ Apostrophe]

using a computer program (such as en-garde) makes my life as a tournament organizer that much easier... I don't have to wait for 20 minutes as people try to figure out why the indicators don't balance, I don't have to figure out club conflicts for pools, I don't have to write the pool sheets out, I don't have to order the fencers and stick them all in a tableaux... It certainly makes things easier... deciding if running it by hand is 'hard' that's your decision... It _is_ more time consuming though, there is no argument there, and that is why I prefer to use the computer (that and my handwriting sucks)
-w

[MyrddinsPrecint]

if you do it right the first time... it's not hard. if you mess up the math on the pools sheet and the indicators get weird... if other things are going wrong at the same time...

i think the real problem, is with my div, things are generally really well run- the people that run most of the tournaments really really know what they're doing, how to get it done, and who to delegate tasks to. when the tournaments get big and the people who are running it aren't the people that are normally doing it... things get crazy.

not nececarily hard... in fact, i find it fun. more than half of the time, i'd rather run a tourny than fence in it...

however... while you're doing it, you want to pull your hair out quite a bit....

last tourny i helped at-- my jobs were mostly taking money, and making sure that those people actually doing things didn't kill anyone. which mostly involved me telling the people that we would announce things over the intercom that they needed to know.... after the fifth and sixth time i nicely told them that "no, sabre registration was not open yet", i started gettin terribly rude. it was kinda fun....

i think that most fencers should have to volunteer to help with bout committee--- it would help them understand what the hell is going on, and they'd harass us less frequently... : )

and writing out tableaux of 66 is tiring.. much rather print it out... MUCH rather print it out...

[Dee EffEll]

My $.02 worth:

Check out:

http://askfred.net
and
http://www.fencingtime.com

Makes running tournaments *much* easier.

Can anyone cite the rule prohibiting an age restricted *and* classification limited event? I think the USFA rules do not allow a "D and under" (a/k/a Div III) that is also a junior (or veteran) only event.

[DHCJr]

Dee EffEll, I can answer your question, BUT!

In the Operation Manual (2000.9, latest on the USFA web site) page 14, under the section C. Restricted - Part 3. Restricted competitions limited to fencers of a certain age or academic shall not be further restricted on the basis of clasification or rank unless the contrary is specifically announced in the schedule.

That unless puts in a big question mark.

The only other argument would deal with the definition of or. Is it an exclusive or? Does is mean and/or? The first sentence of the section C, if you used the definition of exclusive or as classification OR age restricted.

I hope this helps.

[DJ Apostrophe]

on the fencingtime thought...

tried fencing time
tried x-seed
tried point control
tried En Garde
tried writing my own (still ongoing)

result...
like En Garde the best.
-w

[epeemike81]

Originally posted by DJ Apostrophe
on the fencingtime thought...

tried fencing time
tried x-seed
tried point control
tried En Garde
tried writing my own (still ongoing)

result...
like En Garde the best.
-w

seconded.

en garde IS the best.

-m

[edew]

Originally posted by Dee EffEll
My $.02 worth:

Check out:

http://askfred.net
and
http://www.fencingtime.com

Makes running tournaments *much* easier.

Can anyone cite the rule prohibiting an age restricted *and* classification limited event? I think the USFA rules do not allow a "D and under" (a/k/a Div III) that is also a junior (or veteran) only event.

I don't think there is any reason why you can't run an age and strength restricted tournament. Frankly, in many cases, it would be redundant. Having a C-and-under Y12 foil tournament isn't really restricting too many people in most cases. We have only one B rated Y12 fencer in the Bay Area.

[Wizardly]

My goodness, there are B rated 12 year olds?

[JEC]

There was a B rated 13 year old in my club, but he got it by winning a Div. II NAC. I think that counts!!!

[Wizardly]

So the real quesion (off topic) is: is a 13 year old B as good as a Senior B?

[epeemike81]

Originally posted by Wizardly
So the real quesion (off topic) is: is a 13 year old B as good as a Senior B?

um, the answer here is so obvious so as to make the question not worth asking:

Depends on the B's.

Age is at this point fairly irrelevant. if the age restricted tournaments continue to be able to give as many ratings as the adult ones, this will change, and the average young B will be very different from the average Senior B. however, I believe this rule is likely to change again.

-m