Please send comments to Debra Andrews, Executive Secretary by January 15, 2020)
There are a lot of rules associated with the ISAC target, dart diameter, distances, etc., but not many rules for events themselves—just 1 main one: events must be published 30 days in advance on the WAA website. The publishing rule was established as a method to notify members of events that they could attend and to prevent someone from submitting an ISAC score from a really good backyard practice session.
The underlying thought was that members would practice, then intermittently attend Events (with a capital E) in order to compete in an ISAC. In recent years, WAA has seen an increase in sparsely attended back-yard type events. Some of these events have started to become long-term, running from one day to one month in nature. If these are allowed, how do we prevent someone from posting an “event” that runs from January 1 through November 30? There is, in fact, no rule against doing so.
The ISAC committee does not see how a month-long, or 2-week long event can really qualify as an event, unless there is a structured overall activity occurring every day that brings in a higher number of participants, something comparable to multi-day knap-ins or archaeology expos, or some of our WAA annual meetings. We know that hosts would honestly welcome anyone who came to a day of the small event, but in fact, very few would or could, making it essentially a private event for very few local participants.
We are uneasy about the many small weekend events that several individuals now hold, for much the same reason, but at least those are weekends when more people could theoretically come, and we continue to allow those. We feel that events should be Events, for which you practice, and then compete at intervals. Although we do not want to discourage enthusiastic ISAC competitors, having a running continuous event where a small group can throw for record every day gives that inner circle an unfair advantage. For the same reason, fairness, it is not allowed to throw for record more than once a day. The more ISAC throws per day or daily for a month improve the likelihood of a high score for the small group that has access to such events.
We do realize that some throwers make great efforts to attend many events, and some throwers are in places where there are fewer events to go to, but we can’t produce a perfectly even playing field. In order to provide regulation of the minimum amount of time and attendees that constitute an Event, the ISAC committee proposes the following set of rules to be added into the current ISAC rules. We understand that not all members will agree with all of these rules, and welcome comments. Please address such comments to the committee:
The 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Rule–Proposed
- An individual may participate in no more than one ISAC per day.
Rationale: This is an existing ISAC rule: no change.
2. No more than two Events per month can be held at the same site. Rationale: This rule is to cut down on the growing number of “back-yard” events that are currently being held. We feel that this number of events per site is quite reasonable.
3. Each ISAC flight must have at least three participants and no more than five participants.
Rationale: This is an existing ISAC rule: no change.
4. No more than four ISACs can be held per Event.
Rationale: This is an attempt to ensure that the Events are reasonable in length. A waiver system might be developed so that longer, well-attended Events are not penalized.
5. At each event, there must be at least five individuals attending and throwing an ISAC.
Rationale: This is meant to cut down on the numerous small gatherings to mainly throw an ISAC. This rule could be interpreted in two ways: a) a minimum of five individuals throwing the ISAC every day of an Event, or b) a minimum of five throwing individuals attending the Event, but do not throw an ISAC every day. Example: A 3-day event starts on a Friday afternoon and lasts until Sunday afternoon. A total of five throwers attend the event, but for some reason, one or two of them arrive late on Friday and are unable to throw. On Saturday, all five throw, and on Sunday, one or two of them have to leave before the ISAC is thrown. Since there were a total of 5 throwers attending the event, all ISACs having at least 3 throwers are legal ISACs.