Over the years there has been much talked about finding a fairer way to run competitions. The current, total points system DOES obviously benefit the larger schools who can enter more students, and the schools who are located closer to the tournament venue. (Though I accept that there have been cases where schools entering fewer students or coming a long distance have done well, this is not the usual case) Of course there is a need to encourage large numbers to enter the competition to pay the overall costs, however, I do feel that it might be worth running a second, "competition within the competition" to encourage smaller schools to enter. My idea is that as well as entering as many as possible in the overall competition, each school could nominate a fixed number of students into an "elite" (though I dont personally like that name...just couldn't think of an alternative right now) competition. These students would not compete twice, but their results within the "main" competition would be used to decide on the Elite ( or whatever name was given) school places. Also, time allowing, there could possibly be one or two "special" events which were only open to this elite group. (Team forms maybe? Or the old KS demonstration event?) If the numbers were kept small, maybe max of 10 per school with no more than 50% Brown belts or above then it would be a fair(er) competition of the best of each school and would mean that even relatively "young" schools would have a chance of recieving honours. Thoughts anyone..or any better/different ideas?
There's already an "elite" group competing within the bounds of regular competition - it's called GRAND CHAMPION. The 'school competition' you mentioned, which seems biased towards the schools with a larger enrollment, is actually quite fair if you think of entrepreneurial achievement as part of the competition. If you don't want to consider that aspect as part of it, then read on... Having at least a basic understanding of how math works (and therefore the FileMaker database system used by WKSA to calculate the scores in their tournaments), it would be extremely easy to calculate not just the total medal count per school, but a percentage based on the total medal count in contrast to the total number of competitors enrolled by a particular school (the more BBs a school has enrolled will still skew the data somewhat, however, since there are quite a few more events for the BBs to enter than are available to the color belts). Applying a more fair way of recognizing TRUE achievement shouldn't be that difficult and it ain't rocket science by any stretch of the imagination. :thinking:
Are you talking about sparring / free-fighting? If so, how about each school being restricted to only entering their top athlete in any given division? [Or their top two at most.] That way, each school would have to run their own in-house competition, prior the the inter-school / national / international competition, in order to decide their own school champion [and vice champions].
But of course... Silly me! I suppose everyone has to pay an entry fee to compete in the national / international competition, and the organisers of such events will always want to encourage as many entries as possible so that they can receive lots of ££$$'s.
Yes, silly you (Pugil). A tiered event taking place in several different locations across a span of days or weeks, would render the need to rent/hire a huge facility unnecessary. This may work fine and be more preferable for intercollegiate competition, but not where capital is concerned (who the *winners* are is NOT nearly as important as how much money is made - LOL). Also, don't forget about SPECTATOR tickets (more money into the coffers).
The only way I can think of to make it fair would be Percentage points for the school competition. For individual competition, I have always wished that you couldn't be judged by your own instructor. I think that is one flaw in the system that is going to be a permanent problem. I do think that bias comes into play with certain instructors. It just happens.
bias can work both ways. the obvious way is to over score so that you give them a better chance of getting a medal, thus helping the school. on the other hand its possible that you are more critical of them as you know what their strong and weak points are and give them a lower score than the other judges might.
Exactly Davefly. It would be better for both student and teacher to not be put in that situation. You also come into being biased toward one style. You can sometimes tell at tournament who comes from what school. How cool would it be to have some 3rd D and up Judges from the US come to Euro's to judge and then the UK instructors go to US...etc. It would be awesome, but an economical nightmare.
A bunch did come over to the states, they did IMO really good, better than some of the home judges. I only heard one complaint and it was trivial, so I ignored it. IIRC the competitor felt they deserved a medal, bc in their mind they did better than second to last.
mmm... not too sure that would work. It would probably lead to school owners entering only their best students to increase their school's percentage (as you pointed out this wouldn't be very good for the $£$£$). Under those rules (admittedly taken to an extreme :evil a school could enter 1 student who won gold in all their events giving the school a 100% record. P.S. I really should introduce myself at some point... I'll head over to the intro thread soon
True, but that is an individual competition. I was talking about ways in which smaller SCHOOLS or those at a distance from the venue could compete on (more) level terms. This might appear to be fair, but what it doesn't take into account is the fact that some schools would enter ONLY their best students, whereas others, in order to give as many as possible the tounramnet experience, encourage everyone to enter. What you end up with in one case is the average score of the best of a few students and in the other case the average of the performance of a whole school. Probably NOT a very fair comparison. And despite tyhe comments about money made in other posts, I can tell you, as someone who has organised very similar events (though not admitedly WKSA ones) I seriously doubt whether the org make much profit, if any. The cost of the venues is HUGE and requires a lot of competitors to simply break even. High turnover does not always equal high profit! This is why I accept the need to have a more open contest for everyone to enter, which does as you say, take acount of the success of the school. But alongside that I think that having a comp between the best ten students from each school would give the smaller schools, many of which are part time ventures rather than full time businesses, and those who have to travel along way, a better chance of sucess. It would of course, also give Kuk Sa Nim more photo opportunities!:evil:
In my experience part of the fun is getting as many members of the club to compete as possible. Travelling together as a large team - perhaps with the possibility of walking away with an award - is all part of the "team building" aspect of competitions. A fundamental part of the "Won". Any "levelling" of the scoring system would detract from this - although I fully accept that this disadvantages the smaller clubs.
very true but just because a smaller group of people don't get in the top 5 schools doesn't mean they can't have just as much fun as a larger group who could. isn't that what its all about? fun? :hat:
