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Post by schlager7 on Dec 12, 2005 14:58:44 GMT -6
These days a typical tournament in my division (Gulf Coast) usually includes either "mixed & women's" or "men's & women's" competitions in each of the three weapons. Often there are also various youth age group parallels as well.
A decade ago, a purely local (non-qualifier, non-SSCC) tournament might pull 24 fencers in the best-attended event.
Today a quiet event's main draw generally pulls in the 30s-40s. Often there are at least two such (Mens/Mixed Epee, Men's/Mixed Foil) with a good 20+ in the women's as often as not.
In the North Texas Division they hold single weapon tournaments (such as Sabre Cave, to give but one example) and single gender (Yellow Rose). One salle in San Antonio does a youth epee tournament.
On a more local note, I've noticed Kevin O'Neill in Lake Jackson has done pretty well with his epee-only tournament.
I guess my question is where or not the Mixed-Open in every weapon plus women's/vet/cadet/junior/Y-whatever default is any longer feasible, or even, desirable in areas with large and growing concentrations of fencers.
Anyone else's thoughts?
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Post by Dan Gorman on Dec 12, 2005 21:50:06 GMT -6
Single weapon tournaments make sense to me. It comes down to turning a profit and it seems that the sport is growing to the point that that's feasible. It would probably make a lot of the logistics easier in regards to referees invited, planning the time-line of the tournament (which would allow the planning of an audience for the finals maybe), and equipment needed. Nothing stopping people from doing it.
Dan
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Post by Dan Gorman on Dec 12, 2005 21:51:17 GMT -6
On another note, is there anyway to turn off the bullet feature that causes long dead threads to linger at the top of the page and make interesting threads like this that much less noticable?
Dan
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Post by LongBlade on Dec 12, 2005 22:50:39 GMT -6
The bullets are for coming tournaments, and I usually post them a month or so out and pull them a few days after they pass or once the results are posted.
I don't know that any of them are "long dead". The least current tournament just passed 2 days ago.
It is the "Tournaments" area, so that's why I do it that way. I'm open to suggestions if you have a better way.
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Post by schlager7 on Dec 13, 2005 8:21:18 GMT -6
We could create either a sub-board of tournaments or a second tournaments board, one for upcoming tournaments/announcements and one for discussions of topics regarding tournaments in the general sense. I'm sure there are other ways to organize things better.
(There are ALWAYS better ways to organize things.)
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Post by fox on Dec 13, 2005 12:04:34 GMT -6
Single weapon tournaments make sense to me. It comes down to turning a profit and it seems that the sport is growing to the point that that's feasible. It would probably make a lot of the logistics easier in regards to referees invited, planning the time-line of the tournament (which would allow the planning of an audience for the finals maybe), and equipment needed. Nothing stopping people from doing it. Dan I'll have to agree with Dan. I think there are enough fencers in each weapon for single-weapon events to be worth the while.
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Post by schlager7 on Dec 14, 2005 8:07:36 GMT -6
On a related note, see JEC's idea in the Southwest Section board on a proposed circuit of veteran's events (A Veterans' Melee, Nevot, Fete de Lune, Max Wright...).
I noted BCFA is planning a women's-only event, Babes With Blades. North Texas has had the Yellow Rose for awhile.
Sabre Cave in Dallas is well-attended. Kevin O'Neill has been getting a respectable turnout for his epee-only tournaments in Lake Jackson.
I think that for many clubs, by keeping the tournament limited somehow (weapon, gender, age) it does make some aspects of allocating manpower and resources easier.
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nemo
Blademaster
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Posts: 729
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Post by nemo on Dec 20, 2005 9:40:26 GMT -6
I would think an all-foil, all-epee or all-sabre tournament would be preferable to the current 3-weapon events. At least you don't hold things up for the fencer switching from foil pools to sabre DEs to foil pools, etc...
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