Woody Cavenaugh

As predicted 200 fencers decended on an unsuspecting Burlington YMCA and the winners of their respective events are truly the best that NC has to offer and I didn't get to see any of it.

My job at this event was to manage entrants, and run the event. Project Management to the rescue right? First, if any of you have ever been involved with any activity, especially with parents involved you know how interesting things can get. I had all of that in spades.

"The schedule says that Under 16 Women's Foil was supposed to start at 8:30. It is now 11am and they have not started yet. I just wanted you to know that I am complaining to the USFA and the Division about this."

My reply, "Good morning to you! Here's our situation, four events were scheduled for 8:30am, two large ones and two small ones. We finally got the two big events up and running, and much to our surprise they are using twelve out of a possible twelve strips. Currently we are at 100% capacity in strips and referees. As soon as the pools are finished and we can start direct eliminiation in those events, we should be able to get a strip or two back to start your child's event. What we learned from this is next year we should make pre-registration manditory so we know in advance exactly how many fencers we are going to have for each event. This way we can tell you for sure when you come in at 7:15am that you aren't fencing until later in the morning."

It was like that all Saturday. Mistakes were made, and several of them were mine. When you have 200 people that are all going to want to check in with you at 7:15am you can't try to run things like you would in a small tournament. Ooops. Sunday was much better thanks to lessons learned and 5 hours of fitful sleep dreaming every possible senerio for the registration desk until one came up that was the most efficient.

Day one, the building opened at 7am and we didn't leave until 10pm.
Day two, the building opened at 7am and we didn't leave until 9:40.

My lessons learned:
0. Divisionals should take place over 2 weekends. Perhaps we could do the Opens on one weekend and the Junior, Cadet and Team events on another.
1. Pre-registration must be manditory.
2. Pre-registration ends on the Thursday before the tournament.
3. Check in will be staggered. If your event's scheduled check in time ends at 11am, I don't want to see you before 10am.
4. All fencer's ratings come off of the USFA report. If it says unrated and you claim you are a "C" tough.
5. If the USFA report says you are a South Carolina Fencer you WILL NOT fence in this event.
6. A white board will be posted with updated estimated start times.
7. Said white board will be 50 feet away from the registration area.
8. When the fencers check in they will show their USFA card, they will:

• Pay for all events they plan to fence.
  
• Sign a waiver.
  
• Show their USFA card again to me and they will tell me what event they are checking in for. (If they are fencing in six events they will repeat this step six times over the course of the weekend.)
  
• Go away.
  
• Get their gear inspected at the armory.
  

If these things happen, the event will run much smoother and everyone will be much happier, parents, fencers, the division officers, and me.

In the relm of the good stuff, we had about 20 fencers from our club compete and most of them qualified to compete in Division II/III summer nationals being held this year in Atlanta Georga. This makes me very happy. In fact only four of my fencers have reported that they were disappointed in their outcomes. In every case, we both knew exactly why they did not perform as well as they hoped.