don t limit the size of your national events !!!

[rukovsoft]

for those who complain about the summer nationals being too long...here s how the national rankings (championship) works in France :

men epee : 9 national tournaments + 1 World cup + final of the national championship (best32)...it s in men epee where we have the Livry Gargan tournament with the 512 fencers tableau...
women epee : 7nt + 1 wc + nc
men foil : 7nt + 1 wc + nc
women foil : 6nt + 1 wc + nc
men sabre : 4nt + 1 wc + nc
women sabre : 5nt + 1 wc + nc

for cadets and junior it s the same:3 national tournaments a year.

why is epee so strong in france right now? we could have made 3 competitive team in men s epee...maybe it s because of thopse national tournaments...9 a year !!!

so, my advise, don t limit them in the US...don t limit the size and the number of fencer allowed (by rankings...)...and the overall level will get better.

[Alpha03]

the div 3 events should be harder to qualify for, or there should be cuts. y10, y12, y14 are not that big, dont count for anything, and they help develop fencing so let them be as big as the can. cadet, junior, and div 1 are fine. div 2 is fine, cause all th U's, and E's are afraid of doing badly (at least most of them). vets are fine. i think that just reducing div 3 would be fine.

[oiuyt]

div 2 is also fine in part because you need to have placed top 30% in a local qualifier... it's not just that U's and E's don't choose to participate, they frequently can't qualify. Have a local qualifier with 20 U's that want to go to nationals and only 6 of them even get to choose whether or not they feel they can handle the competition.

-B :)

[Dragonfly]

rukosoft, I like what you said, it looks like a solution, maybe our guys will borrow your plan to impliment. It seems a logical move, if usfa and fie standards could come together timewise it would be great; then we wouldn't hear a lot of complaints about fie; and so forth.

I am also wondering how epee became so popular in France, could you tell us a bit more?

[KShan5[PrFC]]

Originally posted by Alpha03
the div 3 events should be harder to qualify for, or there should be cuts. y10, y12, y14 are not that big, dont count for anything, and they help develop fencing so let them be as big as the can. cadet, junior, and div 1 are fine. div 2 is fine, cause all th U's, and E's are afraid of doing badly (at least most of them). vets are fine. i think that just reducing div 3 would be fine.

I agree completely, and also agree with oiuyt. Div 3 is just too big.

[Wizardly]

What kind of target size would you want for Div3? Most of the Div3's seem only slightly larget than Div2...it might be reaching the critical mass of "too much," I don't know...so I'm just wondering: what would be a good size?

[rukovsoft]

Originally posted by Dragonfly
rukosoft, I like what you said, it looks like a solution, maybe our guys will borrow your plan to impliment. It seems a logical move, if usfa and fie standards could come together timewise it would be great; then we wouldn't hear a lot of complaints about fie; and so forth.

I am also wondering how epee became so popular in France, could you tell us a bit more?

well, i don t know exactly. to me it seems that epee is easy enough for beginners to start with. whatever your age you can still be a descent or good fencer. it s more tactical than foil and saber. to be a really good foilist/sabrist you need amazing footwork...whcih is less true to become a really good epeist...
i swaped to epee because i was tired to fence the same people at foil...15 years of foil and fenciong always the same people was boring...then all this bull**** about foil interpretation change,m you know, your oponent rushes at you with the foil at the level of the knee or in his back and the referee calls "attack"...

then, epee equipment is less "compelling than foil ans saber" (stronger bodycords, don t need extra jacket...)

well i can t see more...but i ll ask. actually, i ve just launched a new thread on the french forum called escrime-info. i ll let you know about the results

[oiuyt]

Originally posted by KShan5[PrFC]
I agree completely, and also agree with oiuyt. Div 3 is just too big.

Whoops, I didn't say that I thought that Div III was too big. I merely gave an alternative (and more accurate, IMO) reason for the smaller size of Div II. I think that, at least for now, there should be at least one event at nationals that anyone can qualify for.

I see the argument that just being at nationals should be an achievement. Qualifying should be a worthwhile goal in its own right. I even agree with this point of view, and yes, I'm well aware that it is in direct conflict with the opinion that I express above. Oh well, so I'm not consistent.

Better solution is a different ordering of the events. It appeared that this year the scheduling tried to keep all of the non-age events close together and at the beginning of the week. Great for those that have 3 events and want them on 3 consecutive days. Not so great for load balancing. I'd be in favor of spacing the events more, making people stay an extra 2 days for that extra event and having the length of the days and the referee requirements be more equal day-to-day. 16 hour days at the beginning of the week and 8-9 hour days towards the end is really the problem IMO. It's a matter of figuring out which scheduling things are the best to deal with and which are the best to allow to be sub-optimal. This is a tricky problem with no easy answer and any choice WILL cause problems to a significant number of people. This year seemed to be trying a different idea than has been used in the past, and I think it didn't work as well. We'll see how next year gets scheduled.

-B :)

[a517dogg]

there's a fairly simple solution i'm surprised nobody has mentioned yet:

make div 3 and 2 two separate days.

[oiuyt]

Adrian- do you mean make div III a 2-day competition, move div II/III events to a weekend distinct from the rest of the competitions, or have a disignated 2 day period during nationals during which all div II/III events take place, or something else completely? It's unclear what your suggestion is.

-B :)

[hello?]

I think Div II and III should be a part of Nationals...It gives the less experienced fencers a chance to fence at more than one event, thereby justifying cost of travel, etc. I think the obvious, fair, solution is to make Div III something you also have to qualify for. Div III NACs could stay open for everybody, to give beginners a taste of a national event....but the experience shows that at Nationals it gets way too long, way too hard to time, etc.

[Inquartata]

Originally posted by hello?
Div III NACs could stay open for everybody

You mean, all one of them per year?

[Wizardly]

In light of the fact that nationals turn a profit for the USFA, I feel compelled to make an observation: Div 3 and 2 account for the largest and second largest number of competitors in the whole event. (The largest portion of income from Nationals comes from these groups). An E or U can potentially participate in over a half dozen events throughout the week in one weapon alone.

I would think it a bad idea to decrease the size of nationals, especially Div 2 and 3. Maybe nationals just needs to be longer? I'm thinking that any reasonable solution to the problem is going to require statistical data we just don't have.