Revision as of 22:06, 14 June 2009

The Tournament Committee is a NASPA committee established to supervise sanctioned North American SCRABBLE tournaments.

To contact the Tournament Committee send an email to naspa-tourney@yahoogroups.com.

Current Members

It currently consists of the following:

• Andy Saunders
• Carol Dustin
• Joe Edley
• John Chew
• Siri Tillekeratne

New members are welcome.

Agenda

The committee has the following items on its agenda:

• Decide on a certification process for tournament directors in coordination with a similar process for club directors being developed by the Club Committee
• Debate whether certification can be suspended for directors who take longer than a week to submit ratings data
• Liaise with the WESPA Tournament Committee
• Review the existing criteria for sanctioning tournaments, consider in particular whether there should be limits on the number of events a director can list or how far in advance an event may be listed; prepare options for the Advisory Board to choose from
• On an ongoing basis, supervise tournament directors, including
  • Maintaining the tournament calendar
  • Receiving and processing incident reports, passing them up to the Advisory Board as necessary
  • Making sure that tournament directors receive the news and information they need to perform their function
  • Overseeing the mentor/apprentice system when it is implemented

Sanctioning Tournaments

NASPA maintains its calendar of sanctioned tournaments as an information resource for its members. Registered directors may apply to the Committee to add fully rated tournaments to the calendar, provided the following conditions are met:

• the director’s membership expires after the end of the planned event
• For a multi-day event, no other events are already sanctioned within two weekends and 200 miles of the planned event. For a one-day event, no other one-day events are already sanctioned on the same day within 200 miles of the planned event, and no other multi-day events are already sanctioned on the same weekend within 200 miles of the planned event.
• the application is submitted eight weeks before the planned event

Furthermore, unless there are exceptional circumstances and permission is obtained in advance, an event cannot be rated unless:

• each division has at least four players
• each division has at least two rated players

Local Club Tournaments, currently 1/3-rated, also continue to require advance sanctioning. They incur a reduced participation fee and rating multipliers, and are not listed in the calendar.

Tools

The committee has access to the following web tools:

• Tournament Calendar editor