in: PG; PG > 2007-10-03;
| # Posted 2007-10-04 08:43:43 | |
| Swampfox: | I can relate--on that last item, at least. Even as someone sitting on the sanctioning committee, and so theoretically having an inside view of things, for the life of me I can't figure out what's going on. Poor Bill Gookin/SDO is just trying to do something that probably most people going to the Anza-Borrega meet would be pleased to have happen--have the event designated as an "A" event--and which incidentally would also garner more revenues for USOF (sanctioning fees), but it's like he's in the middle of a maze of brick walls. It's very bizarre.
I have no idea what the problem is, but it sure would be nice if Gordion (knot slicer) were to appear on the scene and start swinging his sword. And if he got a little careless and left some heads rolling, maybe that wouldn't be so bad either. |
| # Posted 2007-10-04 10:37:51 | |
| jjcote: | Gordias was the father of the guy who tied the knot. The dude with the sword was Alexander the Great.
What nonstandard thing are they proposing to do that they need a waiver for, anyway? |
| # Posted 2007-10-04 16:30:27 | |
| PG: | Well, Randy posted the following:
I am getting a bunch e-mails on this, the question being, whether or not this will be an A meet. As I posted on clubnet, I realise that people who may want to go and who have no interests or cares in sanctioning procedures (and rightly so, IMHO), may need to buy airfare now. As someone who travels alot, I understand this. Unfortunately, I have no answer. The problem is that it needs a waiver from the VP of competition to proceed. It has been in this state for a very long time. If it receives this waiver, then it will go into santioning (where it will likely become an A meet 20 days later, and the sanctioning webpage will be updated when this transition happens). If you need more information, contact the VP of comp (contact info on the USOF web page). I apologize of behalf of USOF for this delay, but there is nothing I can do, (and, quite frankly, I have no idea what the reason for the delay is; I have received no communication on the matter myself). I hope this is useful to any prospective attendees. According to Randy's sanctioning page, you need a waiver from the VP Comp if the sanctioning request is made less than 6 months before the date of the event. And I'm pretty sure that's the case here. The sad irony being that the whole thing is in limbo because our new VP Comp (for 2 months now) apparently hasn't said either yes or no, or anything else. Since I'm still working my way through the Einstein book, I'm tempted to think maybe there is a black hole down in the Lone Star state? ------------------ And here's more fun from Randy's page: Championship bids for calendar year 2008 are due Dec 31, 2006. The USOF VP of Competition will not grant waivers for any championship bids that are received 9 months or less before the proposed date of your race. In general, championship bids for a particular calendar year are due Dec 31st of the calendar year 2 years before. On occasion, there will be exceptions to this which will be announced, typically for the Interscholastics and North Americans. Now I believe this policy was stated by the former VP Comp, now our Prez. And I saw someplace, though I can't put my hands on it right now, that her feeling was that if no clubs bid for a particular championships, no worry, we just don't have it. |
| # Posted 2007-10-04 17:13:13 | |
| jjcote: | So the problem is that SDO wasn't timely enough in their request, and the response is an inexplicable further delay? Nice... |
| # Posted 2007-10-04 20:45:06 | |
| Swampfox: | Alexander the Great, however able he was in his day, is too long dead to be of any utility in the present circumstance. My reference was of course instead to Gordion Philangie, infamous among rod-n-reelers who frequent the Miracle Mile out this way. With your vast command of trivia, JJ, surely Gordion has not slipped under your radar, eh?
Most fishermen pull out a penknife when their flies get in a fuss. But not Gordion. He draws a sword (actually it's a saber) which he we wears on a belt outside his waders. Woe to the fisherman whose line befouls Gordion's! By the time Gordion has finished swinging his sword, there is not much left of an offending line, or usually Gordion's either. There is widespread suspicion that he is D & D fanatic who only poses as a fisherman. He also wears a beanie with oversized props, and in typically windy Wyoming conditions, they give off a mighty whir, alerting other fishermen that Gordion is in the AO. Most wisely move off, giving him wide berth. |
| # Posted 2007-10-04 21:02:15 | |
| Sandy: | I thought I saw a note from VP Competition giving the appropriate waiver to SDO a week or two ago. Did I imagine that? |
| # Posted 2007-10-04 21:46:07 | |
| Swampfox: | I saw that note too. It was more recent than that and maybe just a shade unclear, but I took it to mean that the waiver had been approved. That would seem to clear the way for a sanctioning vote, but it hasn't happened yet. |
| # Posted 2007-10-07 08:18:36 | |
| PG: | Randy, as of today, has not yet seen a waiver. So things are still in limbo, where they have been since late August when the sanctioning request was made. |
| # Posted 2007-10-07 09:22:34 | |
| Swampfox: | Robert Paddock sent out a note to Bill Gookin and Randy (and copied sanctioning) on 9/30 which read:
"Hi Bill As per our last telephone conversation, I can grant a waiver on the USOF 6 month notice rule for this meet for ?A? meet sanctioning. Robert Paddock VP Competition" It looked to me like he was granting the waiver, though I suppose it could depend on how you read the word "can" above. I assumed he meant he was granting the waiver, but in the event someone doubting or being unsure, they could have asked about it to clarify the thing. Which I did tonight (where "this note below" was the copy of Paddock's note above): "Hi Robert, I'm just wondering if you intended this note below to Bill Gookin to be your declaration of waiver of the 6 month notice rule? Cheers, Mikell Platt" I got an answer just a few minutes later, which was, in its entirety: "Yup." It does seem that, for one reason or another, things somehow slipped into a limbo. But now that there is a little more clarity, one might hope that something positive will happen--and soon. It is puzzling to me (after looking over the posting above from Randy quoted by PG) why Randy didn't write himself, earlier. Could it be possible the note from Paddock reached everyone else, but not Randy? |
| # Posted 2007-10-07 14:44:28 | |
| PG: | Good, that's progress! (Interesting, though, that your post on 10/3 would indicate that you had seen nothing by then -- the vagaries of e-mail delivery?)
Now maybe SF can come up with a way to twist a few arms or do what ever they do out in Laramie to see that we have a few championship events in 2008 (and 2009) that it seems like we may not have. |
| # Posted 2007-10-07 17:18:28 | |
| randy: | For the record, I saw nothing. Obviously if I posted my note on 10/1 on AP, I did not see this alledged waiver on 9/30. Even if it was sent on 9/30, I am most certain it was not sent to me (the e-mail chain Mikell sent to me has no headers over the waiver part). You would think someone who saw this would have posted to my AP thread of 10/1, and, as Peter points out, the 10/3 post indicates no one saw anything.
In any case, we can move this now, and quickly. There may be a black hole in Texas, and after this moves, there will be another one in Chester County. I am beyond sick of USOF. I've taken all the personal heat on this. You would think VP of Comp would at least have the decency to explain the delay from late August even assuming it was granted 9/30, and would communicate whether or not this would be standard operating procedure going forward. But, I don't think anyone gives a damn that people will be paying more for airfare or that I'm taking heat. |
| # Posted 2007-10-07 22:44:07 | |
| Swampfox: | No, Peter, by 10/3 not only had I seen the message of waiver sent by Paddock on 9/30 (same email Sandy refers to) which Randy apparently didn't get, I had also seen the following from Bill Gookin on 9/29:
----- Original Message ----- From: BillGookin@aol.com To: robert@foundationprofessionals.com Cc: walkegg@mindspring.com; jweeks@attglobal.net; tehollowell@juno.com; brucemcal@msn.com; sshannonhouse@comcast.net; mikell@wyoming.com; bwolfe@waterboards.ca.gov; usofvpcomp@earthlink.net; janandar@yahoo.com; elis_eberlein@yahoo.com; sfillebr@sju.edu; DonnaBF@aol.com; USOF@comcast.net; randy@mapsurfer.com; BillGookin@aol.com Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2007 5:20 PM Subject: Waiver of 6-months rule for sanction > Hi Robert, > > I'm glad to get to talk with you ... hope you can make it to our > Anza-Borrego Meet January 19-21. > > I quess that all you need to do is to send a message to the effect of: "I > waive the 6-months rule before the meet for the application for A-Meet > Sanction > for the Anza-Borrego 2-day meet January 19-21, 2008." > > That should do it and thanks a lot! > > Bill G From that, it seemed to me the waiver question had most likely been settled, even if we hadn't heard directly from the VP Competition. On the same day I wrote the following note in response to the above note, and copied to all in the above header: From Bill's note below, it sounds like the waiver is forthcoming. And that means Randy will be asking for a sanctioning vote, once the waiver is received. This thing has taken long enough already to get to this point, and it will be in everyone's interest to take a decision one way or the other as quickly as possible. I have seen all I need to see, and I intend to vote to sanction the event (and Randy, you can take this as my affirmative vote if you like). There's no way that a real scheduling conflict is posed by two non-championship "A" events on either side of the country. Even if the events were on separate weekends, you could expect there would only be a few competitors at most attending both events. And in any case, the SDO event *is* going to take place, so it's only a question as to whether it takes place as a sanctioned "A" event or not. I fail to see how US orienteering would be advanced in any way by denying sanctioning here. Of course, that's only my opinion, and others may disagree, and, if so, that's fine. But what's not fine and won't be fine is letting this thing drag on much longer! Also my opinion only. ; ) --Mikell Platt You assume that in the usual case emails go through and hit their intended recipients. When I saw Randy's post on 10/1, it was therefore extra baffling to me, given the various emails referred to above. He was saying he hadn't seen anything, nobody else was writing in to his post, and I had already written my piece on 9/29. This then directly led to my post at top here on 10/3. Whew! I wonder if anyone can follow that without getting too confused! The good news is that Randy has been very quick to set things in motion this morning to either grant sanctioning or not-- and there should be ultimate resolution soon (2 more affirmative votes and it will be sanctioned.) The bad news is that Randy has gotten to the point where he's totally sick of it all. Randy has done a great job as head of Sanctioning to improve the overall sanctioning process in general, and especially to improve communication to USOF membership about what events are scheduled, sanctioning status, and so on. In such a position, the tendency is that he catches all the heat/flack/blame when things go wrong (which happens rarely) but gets little credit when things go right (which is almost all the time.) And that's a real shame. |
| # Posted 2007-10-08 05:43:52 | |
| PG: | I agree with you totally about how good Randy has been. Sent the following note to him yesterday:
"Hang in there with the sanctioning as long as you can. You are so much better than previous chairs, and the calendar you keep is wonderful. I use it all the time." |
| # Posted 2007-10-08 08:10:41 | |
| danf: | While I can't of course speak for Bill, I doubt anyone else in San Diego is overly upset with USOF or the sanctioning committee. On my part at least, it has been more of an issue of being uninformed during the process. |
| # Posted 2007-10-08 08:46:56 | |
| randy: | it has been more of an issue of being uninformed during the process.
I have the same objection :) I'm not going to rant about this anymore, especially not here. I'm a simple county bumpkin who believes in simplicity, transparency, efficiency, and ethics. But most of all about having a good time. And sanctioning is no fun. As I wrote to Mikell, its all downside. It is a bad bet, and no rational person would volunteer to do it. And I don't like being irrational. Be all that as it may, SDO now has 4 votes, so it is a done deal unless someone objects over the next few days (I believe Bill will make his stated goal of the ONA deadline, although I have no idea when that is). But, it is only fair to give everyone at least a couple of days to read the material and object if they see something. |
| # Posted 2007-10-08 09:14:09 | |
| danf: | And sanctioning is no fun, its all downside.
I've never been involved in the process, but I can believe it, with all the strong personalities (and, unfortunately, as I am finding out, politics) in our sport. That was a very fast approval vote. I guess it was an attempt to make up for time lost, but I wouldn't want any application to be rushed through for that reason alone. |
| # Posted 2007-10-08 09:50:47 | |
| randy: | but I wouldn't want any application to be rushed through for that reason alone.
Well, its still about people who actually want to go to the meet, and thus the airfare issue is still germaine. And it is less rushed than it appears, as Bill had sent the documents to most of the committee in August. And they still have a few days to object. If Bill prints maps as he says he will print, and uses 4mil map cases, as he says he will, it will be a fine meet. The more I look back on all this, the more stupid it appears. What is the purpose of this 6 month waiver rule anyway? The real pressure is now on SDO to deliver the goods. I can just imagine the fallout now if there are problems with the meet. Good luck, wish I could come. |
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