Jonathan, now's your big chance.
~jim.
-----Original Message-----
From:
mtnvalley@yahoogroups.com [mailto:
mtnvalley@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of Mary Griffith
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2005 11:17 AM
To:
mtnvalley@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [mtnvalley] Bay Cup update
The following message has been posted to the Bay Cup website. If you are
a current Mountain Valley USFA member and are interested in serving on
the Bay Cup Task Force descibed here, please let me know at
mary.griff@.... The divisional executive committee decide on the
three MV representatives by the end of the year.
Mary
-----
A message from the Chairs of the Northern California, Central
California, and Mountain Valley Divisions:
A great deal of confusion and misunderstanding has arisen over this
season's Bay Cup tournaments. We hope this explanation will clarify
matters for fencers and their families, and we ask that you consider
carefully what Bay Cup is and ought to be and help to develop a
healthier Bay Cup for future seasons.
I. Background
On August 15, we three division chairs were notified by USFA that Eric
Dew was ineligible to act in any official capacity in USFA matters due
to a pending disciplinary investigation. We inquired of USFA for
specifics of how this would affect Mr. Dew's role as Bay Cup
administrator, and were told that we should wait for clarification until
the disciplinary panel's report was made at a September 11 meeting of
the USFA Board of Directors.
On September 16, we received official notification that Mr. Dew's USFA
membership had been suspended by the USFA Board of Directors for the
remainder of the 2005-2006 membership year, and that he was therefore
prohibited "from taking part in USFA sanctioned events as a competitor,
or referee, from holding any office, appointment or position in the
USFA, including its divisions and sections, or voting in USFA elections.
It also means that any actions taken by him may not be covered by USFA
liability, medical or other insurance." Eric will be eligible to apply
for reinstatement to the USFA after the end of the 2005-2006 membership
year, subject to his meeting certain preconditions. (This action is
documented in the Minutes of the September Board of Directors meeting,
posted on the USFA Web site.)
Since the extent to which these prohibitions affected the tasks Mr.
Dew has performed for several years as Bay Cup administrator was not
entirely clear, we sent a list of questions regarding such matters as
handling Bay Cup funds, running tournaments, maintaining the Bay Cup
website, etc., to USFA, asking for specific guidance.
On September 28, USFA Executive Director Michael Massik and USFA General
Counsel Donald Alperstein arranged and participated in a conference call
with the three division chairs, as well as Buzz Hurst, USFA Divisions
and Sections Committee Chair, to discuss the consequences, for both Bay
Cup and the three divisions, of Mr. Dew's suspension. In the course of
the discussion, in order to get answers about what Mr. Dew was and was
not allowed to do, we had to explain what Bay Cup was, what Mr. Dew's
role with Bay Cup was, and how Bay Cup has been managed over the past
several years. As the discussion progressed, we chairs were told in no
uncertain terms that we had been derelict in allowing Bay Cup as much
independence as it had had over the past several years, and that in
order for Bay Cup events to be sanctioned (that is, covered by USFA
liability insurance and able to award new classifications), Bay Cup
governance had to be clearly subordinate to the divisions.
Specifically, we were told that:
-- an independent bank account with access by only one non-elected
individual was improper.
-- classification changes must be submitted through the division where
the event is held and not through any independent entity.
-- the division is the basic unit of USFA administration; while
divisions may choose to cooperate in scheduling events open to USFA
members, there is no provision for any independent entity to run
sanctioned events outside the divisional/sectional structure. While
there is nothing to prevent a private entity from organizing and running
tournaments, those events would be private, unsanctioned events not
covered by USFA liability insurance and unable to award ratings.
-- during the period of his suspension, which will run until he is
reinstated by the USFA, Mr. Dew may not perform through an agent any
tasks or duties he is prohibited from performing himself directly.
After this conference call, we three division chairs decided
emphatically that we wanted the Bay Cup to continue through this season,
and we began to consider steps to take to make sure that it could.
Fortunately, the schedule for the season had already been set; had it
not been, we doubt that Bay Cup could have worked at all for this
season.
We arranged with Mr. Dew for someone to take over access to the Bay Cup
bank account, and considered options for maintaining the website.
(USFA told us that Mr. Dew could do anything he wanted with the website,
but that if he maintained it himself, it could only be
unofficial--official information concerning schedules, closing times,
results, etc., could only come through regular divisional communications
channels.) After some fits and starts (Mary Griffith, for instance,
while willing, discovered that the website maintenance was more than she
had the knowledge or time for), we have found a suitable volunteer, Beau
Mitchum, to maintain the Bay Cup website, and we now expect to get
caught up with website updates fairly quickly.
We also considered the issue of the Bay Cup registration fee of $40 per
series. While we did not discuss the specifics of this fee in any detail
during our conference call with the USFA officials, there is some
question whether such a fee is in fact proper. In order to eliminate
that issue until we could get a definitive ruling from USFA and to
eliminate the task of tracking who is and isn't a Bay Cup member, we
decided to substitute a $5 per event surcharge for this season. While
most fencers in the Bay Cup area had no objection, a small but
exceedingly vocal minority, mostly in the NorCal Division, objected
vehemently. Given the controversy, we opted to allow fencers to choose
to pay either the $40 fee or the $5 surcharge, though this neither
eliminates the issue of the legitimacy of the fee nor simplifies the Bay
Cup membership recordkeeping.
II. Consequences
The Bay Cup tournaments are a huge and vital part of USFA fencing in
northern California. Eric Dew has done an unbelievable amount of work in
organizing and maintaining a growing series of events over the past
several years. We expect Bay Cup to continue to grow in popularity in
the future as it has over the past few years, and will do our best to
help it do so.
However, it is clear from our discussions with Michael Massik and Donald
Alperstein that we cannot simply return to the same structure and
administration for Bay Cup when and if Mr. Dew's USFA membership is
reinstated.
Generally, the USFA national office stays out of divisional business
until and unless a problem develops. In our case, until Mr. Dew's
suspension required it to take a closer look, the USFA was unaware of
how Bay Cup was structured and run. Now that USFA has taken notice, we
must change Bay Cup's structure to conform with current USFA rules.
We view this season as an interim year--one during which we will use the
schedule as it was created for this season, and do our best to make sure
events run as smoothly as possible under proper division oversight.
What we also want to do this season is create a viable permanent
structure and operations manual for the Bay Cup to use next season and
the years following. To that end, we propose the creation of a Bay Cup
Task Force, composed of three (3) representatives, including at least
one elected divisional officer, from each of the three Bay Cup
divisions. This committee would be charged with considering the purpose
and goals of the Bay Cup tournaments and creating an operations manual
outlining a permanent structure and procedures in compliance with USFA
regulations.
This committee should consider, among other things, what the goals and
objectives of the Bay Cup are, who fences in Bay Cup tournaments, how
many events should be held, what age and ability levels should be
included, how such categories should be determined and changed, how
tournaments should be managed, what standards and compensation for
referees should be, how seasonal awards should be determined, etc.--
everything from the specific and concrete details of administration to
the more philosophical issues of how events should be balanced between
the more recreational fencers and the ferociously competitive, and how
much one category should subsidize others.
To stimulate your thinking about these issues, you might like to take a
look at the fencer numbers from last season in this Excel sheet which
shows how many events were fenced by fencers in each category.
(Surprisingly, in almost every category except Youth-14 Boys' Foil, more
than 75% fenced in three or fewer events.)
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