WAG Rules & Policies Update

[chalkbowl]

I was looking through the updated Women's Rules & Policies for the 2015-2016 Competition Season and ran across this on page 96:

"Meet Directors may not refuse entries from competitors who wish to enter a competition that serves as a Sectional Meet or any competition that serves as a qualifier to State Championships and above."

I understand that for a place like Southern California where athletes qualify to State Championship from only a handful of sectional competitions this may be an important rule. However, I know in several states almost all invitationals are considered state qualifiers and the meet director just pays a per competitor fee to their state board. Seems like some of the larger invitationals, that are also state qualifiers, could end up having competitions that last for well over 3 days if this rule was applied...

 

[kayjaybe]

Wait. Does this mean that if your gym holds an invitational (which allows people to qualify for states) that you can't limit the size of it? If so, that's crazy!

 

[gymbeam]

that does sound nuts. and kinda impossible... will be interested in knowing the answer to this.

 

[wandrewsjr]

They should have worded this more clearly. The way I heard it explained at congress, it just means you can't refuse entry to a team just because you don't want them in your facility(wouldn't apply to invitationals limiting size). Apparently there was a case of a gym being refused entry in a state that uses the sectional system because the host gym didn't want them there, and the host thought they had the right since they were hosting.

States that use the sectional system should be broken into sections small enough so size won't need to be limited. And with states that use invitationals to directly qualify to state there are many meets available so ok to limit each individual meet's size.

 

[chalkbowl]

Thanks for the clarification wandrewsjr!

 

[gymdog]

Yeah, I think this is a case of poor wording that will likely get edited. It definitely makes sense with regards to sectional meets that are clearly defined as limited opportunities to qualify for states. But in states where you just score a certain score at any sanctioned meet to qualify, it doesn't make sense. Most states you don't have to even get this score in state, so that would mean literally every invitational in the country is a state qualifier.

I would think for an invitational you could refuse entry for a reason other than space...like what if this team caused a documented problem. Especially when someone is hosting a meet in their own facility it seems like it would be hard to insist they have to accept everyone. But I think if you bid to host a sectional or state meet you are AGREEING tacitly to accept everyone in the state. If you have a problem with xyz and absolutely can't stand the idea of hosting them, then don't bid. This could probably be solved by states having gyms sign an agreement stating this when they bid as well. Otherwise gyms could use hosting these meets as a way to impede their competition which is not appropriate.

 

[kayjaybe]

I like the way you explained that, gymdog, and that sounds right to me.

My ydd's field hockey team had an issue with a team that came to a tournament we hosted and we've changed it to an invitation-only tournament and that team is not invited. I could see why a team might not want to host a trouble-making team at an invitational.

(If you are interested - this is 3-6 grade field hockey and parents from this one team were threatening refs and our parent volunteers regarding what they thought were bad calls to the extent that we needed to call the police. Over field hockey. For elementary kids.)

It is unbelieveable how some people act.

 

[Muddlethru]

They should have worded this more clearly. The way I heard it explained at congress, it just means you can't refuse entry to a team just because you don't want them in your facility(wouldn't apply to invitationals limiting size). Apparently there was a case of a gym being refused entry in a state that uses the sectional system because the host gym didn't want them there, and the host thought they had the right since they were hosting.

States that use the sectional system should be broken into sections small enough so size won't need to be limited. And with states that use invitationals to directly qualify to state there are many meets available so ok to limit each individual meet's size.

This makes sense. There are actually host gyms in our area that refuses certain teams to compete at their meets because they don't like the coach, their gymnasts switched to the gym, etc. How about individual gymnasts? I know gyms have let whole teams compete but exclude one gymnasts because they switched gyms, the mom caused problems in the gym, non payment?

 

[Natasha]

Our state board already had this rule that if you wanted your invitational to be sanctioned and count for state qualifying (Which all invitationals in our state are) you could not refuse a gym from attending (but you can still have a deadline and a limit on #'s). When I was at old gym and was responsible for our coordinating our home meet, our owner was upset when former HC registered his team from his new gym…we just pointed out to owner how much money he would be making off of that team by coming to our meet.