Tournament Secretary
Roles:
The main role of the tournament secretary is to organise the Edinburgh International Korfball Tournament.
Other roles organising the clubs participation in the St Andrews Beach Tournament, beginners tournaments as well as organising transport to other tournaments including Nationals and the BSKA Club Championship (2nd Team Nationals)
Hints / Tips :
Edinburgh International Korfball Tournament
- It is suggested that the date is kept the same (last weekend in January) so as to avoid other clashes in the korfballing calendar.
- Booking a venue as soon as possible is crucial (in 2014 the venue was booked by the end of August). Generally the options that we have had in the past include George Watson’s, the CSE/St Leonard’s, Meadowbank or Sighthill at Napier. All provide their pros and cons. Sighthill was used for 2013 and this cost 1400.00 for the weekend. George Watson’s was used for 2014 and it cost £1020 for the weekend.
- Get some snazzy looking booklets / documents together to publicise it (see the Invitation documents attached below). The same style of tournament pack has been used for the past three years, but feel free to craft your own! The 2014 tournament pack cost £129.00 to print (in colour) from GreenPrint.
- Do some scouting for international teams – and get others to help! Discuss with previous tournament sec about interested teams and for contact details of the teams that have visited before. Check through the old inbox to see who was interested in getting involved! (Some generally keen international teams are the Serbian team, Paal Centraal, the catalunyan team, Galaxias-Athens, Welsh team)
- Sort out fixture scheduling etc – decide whether 24 teams is better than 20 (or any other number). Ffion did an ace excel spreadsheet for 2013 which made sorting results and placings on the day much easier. The template for this spreadsheet is attached below, along with the instructions.
- Offer accommodation to teams – prod people until they offer their floor! Propose a few hostels that they might want to use as well, as older teams / international teams prefer somewhere a little more comfortable to stay. If you ensure teams are staying near each other you can help them meet each other and travel to things together.
- Get everyone in the club to help out leading up to and over the weekend of the tournament – don’t be afraid to ask for help and set up a tournament sub-committee – helping hands are really useful and someone who helps you could take on the role next year.
- Write everything that you are doing down, and keep lists, it’s easy to forget little things when you’re in a rush!
- Make sure that you have a bag of ‘tournament essentials’ for the day, i.e. sets of bibs, some whistles, a tape measure, poly pockets, masking tape, electrical tape, marker pens, normal bic biros (other brands available), reffing cards (use revision cards torn in half), countdown clock, honker.
- The club owns a laminator, use it to make signs and tournament schedules more durable!
- Tournament fees were upped from £100.00 to 105.00 in 2014. Make sure you collect payment in November and state clearly it is a non-refundable deposit.
Transport
- Make sure there are lots of people in the club who have minibus licences and able to drive to tournaments – they need to be 21 with a clean 2 year driving licence to be able to take the eye test, minibus test and defensive driving course (check the Transport Procedures on the SU wiki at the start of each year for any changes to driver requirements).
- Book buses for the beginners tournaments – email Duncan Veitch or use the forms on the SU wiki (below). Advised to book a month in advance, but can be left to a minimum of two if there are no drivers trained before then.
- No special permit is needed to driver a 7-seater car, so this might be a good alternative if there are no trained minibus drivers in time for the beginners tournament.
- N.B. You can cancel a booking up to a week in advance without incurring a penalty
Beginners Tournaments
- Wait for the invitations to come out and then pick which one/ones that we should pitch to the freshers (make sure to email people, post polls on Facebook and make announcements at 3rds training sessions).
- Discuss the money situation with the treasurer so as not to charge too much and not to bankrupt the club!
- Push freshers to go as much as possible (if space, let oldies go – especially those who haven’t been before)
- Freshers tournaments are a ridiculous amount of fun so get some people who have been before to shout about how amazing they are.
Summer Tournaments
- We have been trying to go to more summer tournaments in recent years. They are all announced on korfball.com/forums in the tournaments section, so find the dates for them, ask the club who wants to go to which and pick a couple to organise – if five people want to go to one tournament then they won’t have a full team, so learn to focus your efforts.