Summer Nationals scheduling

[demon_fencer]

What the h@## does the USFA think they are doing?!?!?! I just got back from Austin where I had a 3-3 1/2 hour wait from the close of registration to the start of my pool bouts. How do they expect people to be mentally on for their event when you don't get told when the pools will start until at least 1 hour after registration closes, and even then the time is inaccurate. If you happen to be unlucky enough to be in the last event of the day, you don't start fencing until well after 6pm!!!!

[picojeff]

This is an unfortunate fact of life at all levels of fencing. I have had equally long waits at WCs, even well run ones. With a limited number of pistes and a large number of fencers, there is sometimes just no way to accomodate everyone.

And I believe Summer Nationals is the biggest tournament in the world. Is that true?

I have a story that might make you feel better. What do you think would be the best run tournament every year? I would think it was World Championships. Overall, it is well run, but with twelve huge events, sometimes there are glitches. Here is Paul Soter's recouting of what happened.

"As the men's epee field was so large, there were more pools than strips in the venue. The Directoire Technique, on orders from the FIE, was obsessed with keeping on schedule, so instead of double-flighting one strip, they picked a pool to be fenced in a different venue. The pool was allegedly selected at random, but cynics noted that it contained no Italian or German fencers. For some reason, too, although it was not one of the last pools in the seeding chain, it was one of the few pools of six fencers, rather than seven. The fencers in this pool, which included Jeff, were ordered to report to a special bus at 10:30 to be driven to a salle 30 minutes away, for a noon start time. They were told they could warm up with each other. After protesting the situation unsuccessfully, we decided to have Jeff warm up in the main venue with his teammates, and be driven to the venue in the team van. This turned out to be a wise decision, as the start of that pool was delayed for an hour, because no one had thought to send a first aid team to the site, and, since the deadly accident in 1982, no World Championship event may be fenced without one. Anyhow, this pool was fenced amid near-total silence, although the U.S. Women's Epee team, DCFC coach Robert Suchorski, U.S. team trainer Lonnie Sellars, and volunteer coach Terrence Lasker were there to help Jeff out. Jeff fenced sluggishly at the beginning of the pool, then better, but it wasn't enough. His only win was a quality bout, though, against Ivan Kovacs of Hungary."

How indeed are you supposed to fence your best under these conditions? It is a question I have given a lot of thought to in the past 10 months, and I'll be sure to let you know when I've figured it out.

[AndrewH]

Wow, my experience was the exact opposite. Checked in at quarter to 8, waited through a huge armory line only to find that my mask, overglove, and a body cord failed. By the time I had run around to all the vendors, gotten new ones, and taken them back to inspection, I had just started to put my knickers on when they announced that D3MS pools were now posted. And I was in the first flight! This was at a quarter to 9, 45 minutes after registration closed. Thankfully, the director didn't get there for another 10 minutes but that still left me with no warmup time.

[darius]

D3MF was the first time that we've ever started with a[n albeit incomplete] tableau of 512.

When my fencers finally got knocked out, and we came back from dinner at 9:30pm, they were just starting the Y14WF DEs, and D3MF was still going...

darius

[AndrewH]

Originally posted by darius
D3MF was the first time that we've ever started with a[n albeit incomplete] tableau of 512.

512...wow, and I thought our (incomplete) 256 was big. At least that's a good sign that fencing is gaining popularity... it's also a good hint that next season's NAC's will have bigger turnouts (of course there will be less NAC's).

[Dragonfly]

Was it great? Was the atmosphere charged or was it blah? We started to have a hurricane here, but I told it to go away. [smile]

I don't think it's USFA. There's so many fencers, and so little volunteering, how can things get done so quickly. [deleted bellyache]

Other than that everyone....HOW WAS IT???? I would have been totally psyched, running around like a lunatic. [ackkkkkkkk]

also: if the nationals have grown with so many fencers, and waiting lines etc. is there a chance they'll split it by weapon? Or here's the other thing, there are many categories for kids. Can they combine some of them?

[Peach]

Summer Nationals are tremendously popular. I don't think that the NACs grow at the same rate.

A bout committee member told me that the attendance in some of the larger events was up 20% over last year. The first couple of days were bad but things started going faster after that. The Vet-50 WS started very promptly and ended fast, with a close of check-in at 8:00 and finishing by 10:00.

[i'mnottelling]

I feel that the USFA could have done better strip and time management. They should know that the div 3 events are always the largest events. I would like to see better scheduling of the team events too. Epee and sabre individual events are a week apart from the team events. People don't want to stay the entire week between the events.

i'mnt

[picojeff]

They used to have "open team", which was close to Div-Ia, and "Div-I team", which was close to Div-I. They had different qualifying paths, with a pretty easy path to open team.

I belive the team event we have now is just Div-I team, and each is the day after its respective Div-I individual event. To me that makes perfect sense.

Can anyone comment on why they got rid of open team? It may just be a shortage of space, time and referees.

[three_hundred_fifty_five]

Originally posted by demon_fencer
What the h@## does the USFA think they are doing?!?!?! I just got back from Austin where I had a 3-3 1/2 hour wait from the close of registration to the start of my pool bouts. How do they expect people to be mentally on for their event when you don't get told when the pools will start until at least 1 hour after registration closes, and even then the time is inaccurate. If you happen to be unlucky enough to be in the last event of the day, you don't start fencing until well after 6pm!!!!

The world doesn't revolve around you. Unfortunately, they weren't prepared to run the event as scheduled, most likely because of the large number of people attending. There's this direct relation to the lateness of the starting time to the number of fencers at the event, for most events I've attended.

[Peach]

I have found it useful at USFA events to follow a careful, systematic warm-up routine which gets me focused, and then to put on all my warm-ups. Until the pools are called, I either sit down or move around, no standing, and I eat a little bit and drink. It paid off for both my events this year, one of which started very late and took many hours more to finish than you might expect, and the other of which started nearly on time and was over less than an hour later because they ran us through at breakneck speed.

[KShan5[PrFC]]

Originally posted by AndrewH
Wow, my experience was the exact opposite. Checked in at quarter to 8, waited through a huge armory line only to find that my mask, overglove, and a body cord failed. By the time I had run around to all the vendors, gotten new ones, and taken them back to inspection, I had just started to put my knickers on when they announced that D3MS pools were now posted. And I was in the first flight! This was at a quarter to 9, 45 minutes after registration closed. Thankfully, the director didn't get there for another 10 minutes but that still left me with no warmup time.

Same thing happened to me. All 3 of my events were 7-8 reistrations. And that worked out well for me because they all ran fairly quickly. But what you fail to realize is that all those 7-8 starts take time, which has other events lag behind. I believe Div 1A WS whic closed at 2 or 3 was told that they would be fencing at 4. Then at around 3:30 they were told it was starting at 5, because some 7-8 event was running late. There is not much that can be done except to maybe extend the week of nationals. The only problem I have is when there are youth girls fencing at midnight.

[Inquartata]

They juggle the events so that it isn't the same ones together every year. Next year the team events might be closer to the individuals, and the age groups three days apart...or Div II and Div III in this or that weapon at opposite ends of the week...or whatever.

Last year I didn't go because the mens sabre events were thus separated. This year they were all on successive days. Next year who knows?

Scheduling is a nightmare. It's impossible to satisfy everyone. Not a task I'd wish on my worst enemy ( if I HAD a worst enemy, that is ).

[susanloper]

You all are being too hard on demon_fencer. There were some awful delays at the beginning of the week.
Sunday, I fenced Div IA women's foil with 62 other fencers (not a huge event). The delays before each round were really long, and it definitely affected the level of fencing by the time the top 8 started at 11:30 pm. I especially regretted the half hour break between the round of 16 and 8. (Can you guess where I finished?) What's the point of taking a break before the quarterfinals when 1) there's no reseeding of the table, 2) there are hardly any spectators left, and 3) it's after 11pm?
We get to whine a little bit.