Level B proposals for 2011

[pete.owens]

Email received today,

...
A change will be made today to the website to accommodated the 4 tier event structure. All registered events will be re-categorised as follows:
...
Current National Events – Level B

The National and Association Fixtures Secretaries will then change any Level B events that need re-categorising to Level A or Level C.

But shouldn't they ALL be categorised at level A?

[seabird]

Let's hope that Clive is right and what we are seeing is an implementation blip.

A quick flick through our region's events showed a confusion of genuinely regionwide events with local events in Level D. For example Regional Night & Urban League events vs the smaller Club midweek and Saturday morning series and leagues. (It sounds like what Eddieh found in Scotland)

Similarly at Level C there is grouped together large weekend events on better terrain with a full range of courses, alongside the smaller scale Sunday event on more mundane terrain. I'm not being rude about other club's terrain. The distinction we wanted for are own club's events through the new system is not occurring. (The time I have wasted trying to get those scarce Grade 2 controllers from other clubs seems to have been time misspent.)

From being an advocate of a 3 tier system, I find myself bemused to find myself considering the only solution is a 5 tier system - so that the genuinely club-orientated race can be distinguished from that attracting a regionwide audience.

But then, has been observed, if BOC is only shown as Level B there should be a lot of sorting out to do yet.

[Clive Coles]

If you remember BOF implemented 3-tiers in a similar way ~ they dumped District events into level 3 and then encouraged clubs to upgrade their main 7 course colour coded events into Level 2. Some clubs did, most left them where they were put.

Our club did not because they did not feel the events could be staged within the spirit of the new Level 2 guidelines. We were using maps that had been used before, the areas were familiar for those who regularly compete in out region. We wanted to keep level 2 for our special higher profile events.

With 4 levels we now have the headroom to move our regular Sunday morning 7 course colour coded events into Level C. A big advantage for our EA members is that level C events will now be included in the Ranking System. Level D will be used for the truly Local events such as our club CATI's and our mid-week summer series.

A few Level C events will be upgraded to Level B. We, as an Association, are going to try to ensure that the quality guidelines for level B ( what ever they turn out to be) are respected by the club which stages the event. These events must justify their "worth travelling to " billing. Many more events will be moved from level D to level C. I anticipate something like a 50/50 split between levels C & D and up to half a dozen Level B events in EA land each year. Mainly our multi-day fixtures and our EA Championship.

This upgrade is a manual task and therefore has yet to be undertaken. I understand that the facility to allow Association Fixtures Secretaries to do this move has not yet been released. We thought this was happening yesterday.

So we are in a transitional phase. It is of course quite possible that different Regions (and Nations) will have different ideas.

[SJC]

But shouldn't they ALL be categorised at level A?

A quick search on the BOF web site appears to show all the events you would expect to find at level A to be there.

However there are no level B events, so presumably this is the manual process that Clive is talking about. The national fixtures secretary has to re-allocate all the current level C events that should be level B into that category.

[Spookster]

The website, including the events registration system, is being upgraded presently. I suggest leaving it at least 24 hours before worrying about what level any event is!