NAQT ICT in LA

kostovz <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Sun, 13 Oct 2002 04:34:31 -0000

If I may add to this discussion: 
I don't think it's a really great idea to hold national tournaments in 
the worst possible places (locationwise) for most clubs. Let's assume 
that airline tickets costs were negligible (and they aren't), it still 
takes more than 5 hours to fly from coast to coast. Since most teams 
are in the northeast/southeast/midwest, this means that most teams 
will be spending almost two days in transit. 
Let's do some reasonable estimation:
>2 hours to airport(including the early arrival for checkin and such)
>5 hours in flight
>1 hour to hotel/tournament. 
That's two 8-hour stretches for one tournament. 
For those of us with senior theses due in April, spending four days to 
play fifteen rounds of NAQT is sort of a questionable call. I mean, 
would NAQT host the ICT in Hawaii or Guam, if those places could 
provide a "fun" and "well-run" tournament"? There should be some 
balance between a good host and a good host-city for the vast majority 
of teams. Now, perhaps LA was the ONLY bid, and all others would have 
brought disaster, then I can understand this decision, but otherwise, 
it's shaky.

I won't dwell on the financial difficulties that clubs which don't get 
any assistance (like Princeton) will face. We usually host 2 
tournaments each year, and hosted three last year to have money to fly 
to N.C., and we're still really short on cash. Hopefully, we'll be 
able to bring a Div1 and a Div2 team this year (if we can qualify them 
:) ), but it will be a close call. $2500 (which I estimate to be the 
price tag for tickets, car rental, and fees) is not easily found.
-Lenny Kostovetsky