Meeting Summary: NAC Locations, National Points and Standby Competitors at June NAC
A group of 5 West Coast parents met with US Fencing National Office personnel Christine Simmons (Director of Operations) and Kris Ekeren (CEO) in Richmond today, May 8, 2021:
Below is a summary of the meeting:
NAC Venues
The parents expressed their concerns about the choices made for venues over a period of many years. Some of the specific issues were:
Time involved in traveling long distances from West Coast to revenues such as Richmond, Cleveland, Columbus, etc.
Lack of direct flights
Disadvantage that West Coast fencers have due to time change (morning events require kids to fence at what is essentially 4 in the morning)
The feeling that years of promises were never followed up with meaningful action.
The personnel from USFA had repeated retorts to these concerns, along the lines of:
We hear you;
Putting these venues together isn't as simple as you think;
We've tried our best
We HAVE had venues like San Jose in the past. (It was pointed out by the parents that this was a true rarity)
The pandemic was offered up as a reason, multiple times, that things were especially difficult, but the parents made clear that these issues were persistent long before Covid.
There were no meaningful promises made or ideas offered. Really the only positive thing was that the parents expressed themselves clearly and with specific examples.
Fencing Parents’ Observation: US Fencing responses are nothing new, it’s like being given the run around repeatedly. FAIRNESS should be a guiding principle in the selection of NAC venues. It is patently unfair to skew venue locations towards 2nd tier mid-western and east coast cities so that US Fencing saves costs despite the fact that the NACs are actually highly profitable. In prioritizing cost savings over fairness, US Fencing is effectively pushing off some their costs onto West Coast fencers who end up paying a high price in expensive flights, extra hotel room nights and extra lost school days for fencers and lost work days for parents.
Roster of fencers
It was acknowledged that procedures should have been put into place for adding in fencers who were qualified and ready to fence when approved fencers dropped out of an event at the last minute. This will be done at the next event - pool fillers.
National Points
Provision of National points given that event size disrupted by pandemic.
The June NAC will be larger than April or May due to loosening rules so points given in each event can be greater than the top 32. This was pointed out to be patently unfair to fencers in the other NACs since the conditions for more points were not permitted. Many west coast fencers can’t attend both NACs due to time/money constraints.
Parents were told USFA couldn’t have predicted the loosening of the rules that will allow larger events. Parents countered all this required was planning at the start with a calculus such as “if events of y size are allowed, x% of fencers earn points; when events are allowed to increase in size to z size, w% of fencers will earn points... until the normal event sizes are allowed.” It was pointed out that this change of rules for June will mostly hurt west coast fencers since they were more likely to chose 1 v 2 events due to difficulty of getting to venue.
Fencing Parents’ Observation: Scenario planning usually makes for better decision making. US fencing might consider adopting this as a standard practice.