What if we re-envisioned Regionals and Nationals.

[Horton]

Many of you would rather not get on an airplane this summer so even if the event was held in West Palm it is debatable how many would attend. Since West Palm has canceled there are rumors of other sites but that still means air travel for most of us.

 

What if Regionals was Nationals? The schedule is the same at every location and at the end of the day the skier with the highest score from all of the local National events is the National Champion. In other words there would not be a Regionals but in its place is Nationals for skiers in your region.

 

@JeffSurdej what do you think?

 

[LiquidZone]

You would not be the National Champion

[LiquidZone]

That would be like winning a local Tennis Tournament and then saying you won Wimbledon

 

[gjohnson]

It’s been twenty years since an American man won the most prestigious tennis tournament on the planet.

 

This is the year to experiment and think creatively. It wouldn’t be the same, but could provide a tournament format that brings fun and excitement to tournaments. Or we can just keep doing the same old thing. That’s been great for membership numbers since Pete won at the All England Club.

[Luv2Ski]

I had a similar thought, but the biggest issue would be the wide variance in conditions across divisions. It could be blowing 20mph at one site, rainy and cold at another, and perfect glass & 90 degrees at another. With everyone at the same location, people are competing on much more equal ground. I'm not sure what the creative answer is, but I really don't want to fly myself yet.

[Horton]

I think the choice is do something wildly creative that is potentially uneven or stick to the old formula and watch hardly anyone show up

[skierjp]

@Luv2Ski I remember a few years back at a Okeeheelee Nationals it being white caps for the middle of I think it was men’s 4 and then glassed out for the top 10.

[ALPJr]

Why not? Good thought @Horton . I imagine that it would spark increased interest across the country.

[MISkier]

I think Nationals should be a consolidated event.

 

If you want to rework something, remove the requirement to attend Regionals as a final Nationals qualifying step. Yes, I am aware this would reduce Regionals participation significantly, since it is basically a checkbox for Nationals or a last chance qualifier for some. The question then shifts to how to maintain Regionals participation or even increase it. The answer there is smaller regions to minimize travel. In this very thread, what is the perceived limiter to Nationals attendance this year? Travel. It's likely that it is the limiter to high levels of Regionals participation as well. The Regionals tournaments need to be driveable during daylight hours - like 10 hours max for 80% of the skier population in that region. Something else to consider might be to hold the Regionals as a class C, to minimize the amount of officials, especially Regular and above, needed to conduct the tournament.

 

I've suggested it before, but below is a proposed example of Regional redistricting. There was some feedback from @klindy about this structure causing more issues with the governance and board, so there might need to be something created to consolidate representation on the AWSA board and have a single representative for multiple regions.

 

Great Lakes

Illinois

Indiana

Michigan

Ohio

Wisconsin

 

Great Plains

Iowa

North Dakota

Minnesota

Nebraska

South Dakota

 

South Central

Arkansas

Louisiana

Kansas

Mississippi

Missouri

Oklahoma

Texas

 

Northeast

Connecticut

Delaware

Maine

Massachusetts

New Hampshire

New Jersey

New York

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

Vermont

 

Northwest

Alaska

Oregon

Washington

 

Southwest

Arizona

California

Hawaii

New Mexico

Nevada

 

West

Colorado

Idaho

Montana

Wyoming

Utah

 

South

Alabama

Florida

Georgia

South Carolina

 

Southeast

DC

Kentucky

Maryland

North Carolina

Tennessee

Virginia

West Virginia

 

 

[Horton]

@MISkier I 100% agree. the regions are way too big. It is more than 1300 miles from the south end to the North end of the western region ( and that's just from Imperial to Seattle). Don't even get me started on Colorado or Idaho.

[wski1831]

I like the idea of Regionals is Nationals. If there ever was a year we should experiment, this is it. I really like the idea of shrinking the Western Region, as Horton said it is ridiculously big.

[JeffSurdej]

@Horton along your line of thinking I was thinking what if we let everyone ski at home, have the normal nationals running order and live stream it from every site in the country. And you literally ski in order as if you were at the same site, knowing what you have to do to win. Granted yes we are talking different boats, conditions, drivers, possible cheating but it would make sure we have a huge Nationals. The hard part would be the technical side, the NFL draft is what I was thinking, how they did it all virtually, but I'm not so sure we could set up hundreds of sites on live streams, maybe we do the same concept of live stream but with 10-20 remote sites around the country. It could even be judges an a central location if we could get all the cameras to live stream to a central location in the country.

[ALPJr]

Yes, @JeffSurdej . Like the Compete app that JLL and @Luzz were chatting about on the podcast.

[JeffSurdej]

@ALPJr yes to some extent, I think we could use some features of the APP possibly to pull it off, but I'm thinking more of a true live streamed nationals from 20 sites across the nation, no officials needed at each one as a central place would judges them all, we would literally have a 5 day running order like Nationals, we need to survey members soon and see how people are feeling about traveling, if a virtual national will get us 1000 participants and a regular nationals only 250, its something to really think about this year. We could even live stream the end course, oh boy @horton would have a field day with that :)

[JeffSurdej]

What entry fee would people pay for a virtual nationals? Also jump is the tough one, how do you judge that one from a central spot in the country.

[Jump150]

Jeff, so instead of having 1 site running during the work week, you expect to have 20. As much as I want to find new ways for people to participate, I dont see people skiing in order all over the country with different time zones and logistics of having rated drivers and all to make that plausible.

[Luv2Ski]

I think it would be hard for people to ski "in order", but we could arrange for everyone in a particular division to all ski on the same day. It wouldn't be exact, but by the end of the day we could have all of the scores for a specific division tallied (or maybe within a few hours?). I don't see any real way to have it live to where we could all know what the competition was doing given the different time zones, and number of skiers in each division in each area, etc.... If you can figure that out, that would be awesome though. I do agree with what someone said earlier in that it should not be called "nationals". I like the idea of "Covid Challenge 2020" as an alternate to nationals. We certainly would be making history with this type of new format.

[unksskis]

The Ranking list can crown the National champion much easier. Get's rid of this hectic Regionals as Nationals, numerous sites for Nationals, etc., and encourages more local participation which is something that was needed well before Covid hit, and keeps skiers safe.

[Luv2Ski]

@unksskis Not a bad idea either during this crazy time.

[gjohnson]

What about making it more of a huge water ski off. You could have a two or three round tournament. The first/second round would qualify the skier for a group in the final round. For slalom, the qualifying rounds would place you into a line length group. In the final round, your competing against everyone else in the country in the qualified group from the previous rounds.

[6_Buoys]

On board with @Horton on this one. Regionals is Nationals. I would add remove the qualifying scores, get everyone involved. It would be nice if they could all be on the same day with the same schedule, but let's not limit this anymore than necessary. Even if they are on different weeks, who cares. Different site, different driver, different boat, different days, does it really matter that much. Sure some people will have better conditions than others, with skiers skiing 3, 4, 5 hours apart on the same day, the conditions are different anyway. Let the regions run their tournament the best they can in this current environment.

 

@JeffSurdej I do applaud your efforts to make this work in some fashion. I don't think you are going to get multiple sites to sit idle while they wait for another site to pull their skier.

 

A central Nationals with 150 skiers that can drive to the site, isn't that really just a Regionals anyway. Either way this year's Champion will always have an * by their name.

[RichardDoane]

@MISkier +1 on the re-distribution of states into more even sized regions

@unksskis local participation is important, but so is the "big stage" of some kind

 

whatever form this season's "Nationals" takes, it will be historic