2004 Nationals in Charlotte

[Demothenes]

Originally Posted by fresfisher929

this may be a little bit too late,

It may be a good idea to try to get local highschools involved, organizations such as nhs and key club. Their members could get volunteer hours? working at nationals, this would give you a volunteer force of excellent calibre as well as generating interest in fencing in a good population.

I dunno but it seems like a tad late to get the highschoolers out and working on it, what with it being the middle of summer vacation and all. But from what I've heard the charlotte HS's are pretty good, so who knows.

[edew]

Originally Posted by Stryder

As I understand it, the reason the USFA won't commit to a future schedule and improve all of our lives immensely, is their fear of conflicting with the FIE schedule, which is only announced at the beginning of each competition year. Making fencers scramble for hotels and plane tix for the first event seems to be part of the fun.

As has been discussed here before, how much would it matter if we did conflict with the FIE schedule? They aren't coming here to fence, and only a select few or our fencers from each weapon are going to each WC. These fencers are often in Europe training while we are fencing our NAC's anyway.

PRO: Too many to name but lets start with:
1 Advance scheduling would drop prices in every way while giving more money to the USFA.
2 It would also make it easier to schedule vacation time.
3 Reusing the same venues would reduce the problems encountered during events. (Not enough chairs, not enough space, too few buses, etc.)

CON:
1 A few of our top fencers would miss some of our NAC's (How often have we had them all there anyway?) These fencers would be getting better experience at WC's anyway.
2 Our top referees and armorers might also be away. Not all of them, the FIE requires a certain amount of each for each WC Im not sure how many.


Can anyone list other CONs?

Eric, why don't you make a name for yourself by proposing this at the next USFA board meeting? One day you could be famous.

I'm not a member of the board, so I won't be making any such proposals, although I guess I can push some buttons with various folks so that such a proposal can be made.

Certainly, it makes far more sense for USFA to deal with the 99.5% of the fencers in the US than the 0.5% who are at the international level. Some coaches might ***** and moan, and they certainly have a case: their presence at WCs do help their fencers, and they should also be at the local (heh, I mean National, but local as well) events to help those fencers. Again, it's the same as the USFA: the coaches have to determine how to set priorities. Should they stay and help coach their five or fifteen fencers at the upcoming NAC or should they travel to Cuba to support their two WC-level fencers?

USFA can help by assigning national coaches to attend the WC events, as long as those national coaches can see to it that they're not too selfish and self-indulgent to help only their fencers and not other US fencers (and those non-national coaches can see to it that they're not going to lose a student just because that student is being coached by some competing coach over a weekend in Como...).

But I think the bottom line is the need for USFA national to take the initiative and set a two- or maybe even a four-year plan for venues and other locations. Certainly, I would like to see that happen even at the local and sectional levels.

[Sabresque]

The FIE schedule is now up, btw. It came out officially last week or something, so that's how long they'd have to wait for that. Although, for a long time a temporary (not all the dates for certain) schedule has been up on the FIE website.

[oiuyt]

According to the FIE website the NYC world cup next year is WS/WF only... no MS. WF will be Grand Prix though.

MS will have only 2 world cup events in this hemisphere, Santiago and Caracas on back-to-back weekends at the beginning of June.

Havana drops from having all 6 weapons to 4 (losing MS and ME) and will a bit more spread out (WE a week before the other three).

Vancouver ends up with 4 events (all except MS and WF) in July (final weekend of summer nationals presumably). The women's events will be candidature A events. Mmmmm, so is MF, although it's not named as such.

I knew the FIE was changing things around a lot with the calendar, I just hadn't realized that US MS got hosed in the process. Must've missed that fact when I glanced at the planning calendar.

-B :)

[Schiavona]

Originally Posted by edew

Certainly, it makes far more sense for USFA to deal with the 99.5% of the fencers in the US than the 0.5% who are at the international level.

We have 831 fencers competiting at the international level!?

[.05% of 16621, roughly the number of fencers in the USFA]

[oiuyt]

Uhm, let's check that math, shall we?

Even correcting for your typo of ".05%" to the .5% claimed.

.5% of 16621 = ~83. We have considerably more than 83 fencers active internationally. We had 284 different fencers participate just in the Junior World Cup events held in Louisville last fall. Add to that number any seniors active internationally, any junior or cadet fencers that didn't fence the world cup, our vets that fence in vet worlds, etc. Add in anyone who crosses the border for Canadian or Mexican events (or not, as you wish, depending on what you count as "active internationally").

I'm not saying our internationally active fencers are a huge percentage of the USFA, but it's more than you're crediting. ~2-3% sound reasonable? Still a small enough proportion for the original poster to make his point, and close enough to his off-hand guesstimate that it makes little difference. But don't claim he overstated the number of internationals when the opposite is actually the case.

-B :)

[misha]

Originally Posted by Sabresque

The FIE schedule is now up, btw.

ME lost 5(!) events in Europe and one in Cuba

Now all weapons have the same number of competitions
5 GPs and 9 regular WCs




.

[oiuyt]

Yeah, but that's because they had so many extra to start with. The stated intention was to bring all weapons down to those numbers. I'm just surprised that MS got hit so hard from the US perspective. Well, that and Vancouver making out so well from the changes.

-B :)

[Schiavona]

Originally Posted by oiuyt

Uhm, let's check that math, shall we?

Sorry, my bad. I typed .05 into my calculator in stead of .005. Still I agree compleatly with Eric's point. I came up with the figure for 5%(once again, ) 831 more or less. So, the fact remains that more than 95% of the membership gets jerked around on tournament dates.

[MikeHarm]

On another Charlotte subject.. are there any fencing clubs in North/South Carolina that are good to visit around July 6-13 or is everything mostly shut down to help with Nationals or such?

[The0ne]

I have another question. . . What are the best nice resteraunts in the area? Also is there somewhere you can go just to hang out?

[edew]

Originally Posted by Schiavona

Sorry, my bad. I typed .05 into my calculator in stead of .005. Still I agree compleatly with Eric's point. I came up with the figure for 5%(once again, ) 831 more or less. So, the fact remains that more than 95% of the membership gets jerked around on tournament dates.

You're still a bit off base. While .5% or so go to international competitions (or have their calendar greatly dictated by the international competition schedule), it does not imply the remaining 95% of the membership are screwed left and right. Approximately 30% of that remaining 95% don't fence in any competitions at all. They may be part of the family membership, which entitles them voting privileges for their children. The remaining fencers may only compete in local competitions, so even the national schedule has no effect on their calendars. Approximately 2000 fencers are affected by when the national schedule is set up, and how that merges with their regional/sectional/divisional schedules.

[CaptCosmo1]

Originally Posted by MikeHarm

On another Charlotte subject.. are there any fencing clubs in North/South Carolina that are good to visit around July 6-13 or is everything mostly shut down to help with Nationals or such?

At www.fencecharlotte.com under "About Us" are 3 clubs helping with the event. I do not know their hours during the event, but you can email them for information. I suspect they'll find ways to meet and entertain visitors if they have some notice.

[CaptCosmo1]

Originally Posted by The0ne

I have another question. . . What are the best nice resteraunts in the area? Also is there somewhere you can go just to hang out?

There are lots of choices of nice places to eat and hang out. People's notion of "nice" varies, but there are options in terms of price, quality, decor, event proximity, cuisine, etc. We seem to get by...

Also, Visit Charlotte - the visitor's bureau will provide city guides available at the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) table. And, folks there will be able to provide ideas...

[FencerMom]

At the NYC World Cup, the program had helpful information about restaurants near the venue, addresses and directions to get there. You could put the price range they are in, and hours of the restaurant as well. I remember a NAC that got over at 11:30pm, and we had to find a place for dinner. You could also have directions to the closest Starbucks, smoothie place (Jamba Juice here in CA), ATM machines. Having a map of the venue with the strips and numbers on them, along with bathrooms would help.

[HillBilly]

Originally Posted by CaptCosmo1

There are lots of choices of nice places to eat and hang out. People's notion of "nice" varies, but there are options in terms of price, quality, decor, event proximity, cuisine, etc. We seem to get by...

Also, Visit Charlotte - the visitor's bureau will provide city guides available at the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) table. And, folks there will be able to provide ideas...

heh, guess my question was a little vague! Somewhere you could take someone out for dinner is what I was thinking. . . I'll make sure to visit that Visit Charlotte thing when I get there, thanks!

[The0ne]

Originally Posted by CaptCosmo1

There are lots of choices of nice places to eat and hang out. People's notion of "nice" varies, but there are options in terms of price, quality, decor, event proximity, cuisine, etc. We seem to get by...

Also, Visit Charlotte - the visitor's bureau will provide city guides available at the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) table. And, folks there will be able to provide ideas...

heh, guess my question was a little vague! Somewhere you could take someone out for dinner is what I was thinking. . . I'll make sure to visit that Visit Charlotte thing when I get there, thanks!