Greensboro's Regional Fencing Circuit 2007 Wrap-up
Over the weekend we had 50 fencers competing between the ages of 9 and 14 in 18 events, that puts us at about 200 people with coaches, parents, grandparents, siblings, and the competitors themselves. We received no complaints, and everyone seemed to have a good time.
The Downtown Fencing Club fielded 11 fencers with 16 entries total on our roster. We brought home a total of 9 medals, 1 first, 4 seconds, and 4 thirds. It was a good two days for our club.
On the running side, we had few obvious goofs, and a couple of quite goofs. Our biggest unforseen goof was that thanks to new technologies fencers can now preregister and prepay for tournaments through a website called askFRED. This is a very good thing. As now when we hold a tournament we know in advance how many to expect and can plan referees, and strips accordingly. It also allows word of our events to reach a wider audience. For instance this RYC attracted youth from as far south as Florida and as far north as Maryland. For the fencers it is a good thing because they are able to pay for the event with a credit card. The site takes a modest cut and mails us a check after the results are posted. Everyone wins. The drawback we stumbled onto at the last moment was this. We wanted the fencers to have a great experience so we hired five referees and two armorers. It took half of our gross to do this, but we felt it was worth it for the quality of the event.
Then suddenly Sunday afternoon, someone said, "If almost everyone paid with a credit card online how are we going to pay the referees today?" Panic!!! Through selling bottled water, and a few last minute entries at the door, we had about a forth of what we needed. We ended up having to pass the hat amoung the leadership of the club and write IOU's. At the final hour we had managed to scrape up enough to pay the referees and armorers.
Lesson Learned: Have the YWCA write checks for the referees time in advance. We don't have to give them their checks until the end, but we need to have to them.
Other lesson learned: Booser clubs rock! Thanks to the generous donations of food from the parents and local businesses we were able to feed our referees, armorers, and volunteer staff. This meant that for once we were able to host a quality event with a good turnout that didn't end up being a loss or a break even financial situation. All clubs hold tournaments as fund raisers, because we focus on youth events, we can never hope to get the draw and the money that opens bring in. At least now we can be sure that our program doesn't cost the YWCA anything.
