Friday-Sunday is Bad for Nationals(was Re: tournament dates)

koszul <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Tue, 22 Apr 2003 21:51:45 -0000

--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, oilbaronsball <no_reply_at_y...> wrote:
> 4.  If ACF Nationals is held on Easter weekend, having a Friday-____
   > Saturday tournament might help the problem.  It would not solve ____
   > airfare cost issues, unfortunately._________________________________
   > ____________________________________________________________________
I think this is a terrible idea for teams that have to go significant distances east.  The only options are to leave very early on Friday--I had to take a 5:30 am flight to last year's NAQT ICT and arrived exhausted--or miss an extra day of work or school.  The former is not only unpleasant, but often expensive, since you can't use priceline and you're very limited as to what flights will get you there on time.  This year, priceline made the difference between going and not going for Berkeley--$375 versus $210 per ticket--and we couldn't have done this and arrived early enough to play friday rounds.  And leaving thursday is just as bad in different ways; I couldn't skip teaching that day, and I'm sure the others wouldn't have enjoyed missing an extra day of work.
If Saturday can't contain the tournament, do it saturday-sunday instead: everyone will still have plenty of time to get home from a tournament ending midday sunday due to the time difference.  I realize that dan was talking about easter, so saturday-sunday isn't compatible with that, but an earlier poster was simply unhappy with the duration of play on saturday.  Even this year, with a low west-coast turnout, our 4 berkeley players outnumber the 3 people I'm aware of that had conflicts with easter (Joon and the michigan b folks dan referred to ).
I think this is something NAQT should fix, too; other west coast teams should speak up and write to R.  Or teams closer to the middle: Suzy Rivoire has told me that Texas had the same transportation issues even if is an hour or two closer.
Of course, the time difference makes it easier to go west on friday than to go east, so one solution would be to hold all future nationals on the west coast.
David