The 2007 NAFA Regional Champion winners have been selected and announced but has anything changed from last year or the year before that? The Regional Champions race against other clubs in their region but isn’t the outcome pretty much assured from year to year? The same club is selected year after year and all of the other clubs are left with nothing. If there are several fast clubs in the region, they may switch back and forth each year but for the most part club placement is pretty static.
I wrote about this before on my post, Focus on the Championships. I still think that NAFA should look into this so more clubs get a share of the recognition. After all, there are more clubs out there than just Division 1. The people that race in other divisional levels need a larger share of the recognition. After all, they pay the largest percentage of the bills and deserve a chance to win at their racing level.
I know that people have proposed this to NAFA, yet nothing has been done. Did this just die or was it buried. What happen to the suggestions submitted to the BoD on this?
Cynosport® Flyball Championship
The Cynosport Flyball Championship that NAFA has supported over the last couple of years is a meaningless championship. Sure, it’s a good way to promote Flyball but is it worth the cost? Could the money spent on this event be better utilized by some other advertising means?
I say that it is meaningless because the only clubs that benefit from this tournament are the clubs that can afford to attend the event. Winning means nothing, because it does nothing to change the outcome of the Regional Champions and overall Champion and the cost is way out of proportion to what is provided to the Regional Champions.
Cynospost vs. Regional Champion Cost
Any club fortunate enough to place first in the region for Regular and Multi Breed is awarded a plaque that cost $25.00. Only one plaque is given per club. If other members in the club wish to have a plaque, they can purchase one at the cost of $25.00 per plaque. The cost for Regional Championship plaques for 2006 came to roughly $750.00 (30 clubs x $25 = $750).
Now let’s look at what NAFA spent for awards (Shirts and Ribbons) at Cynosport. For 2006, NAFA spent $2928.37 for awards. They had about 24 teams (some from the same club) for a total of around 13 clubs. So let’s figure it out, for simple numbers lets just say there are 5 people per team, times 24 teams, for a total of 120 awards. Therefore, $2928.37 for 120 awards comes to an average of $24.40 per award. If you look at the overall cost of Cynospost, NAFA lost $7,038.63 in 2006 for this one event. I’m assuming this year, 2007, it should turn a small profit because of the 50-team entries but we will have to see the numbers when they are published.
For a meaningless event, as I explained above, it seems there’s a large disparity. The clubs that raced all season generated much more money for NAFA throughout the year, yet this one event (Cynosport) garnered a significant proportion of the award money. It doesn’t seem fair to me. Could the money lost on this event been better utilized promoting NAFA Flyball in another way?
Larry
Note: Information used in this post was obtained from the NAFA Profit & Loss Sheet.
6 comments ↓
Larry,
WOW! I think you are right on the money. As many have surmised, I am an admitted flyballholic. I like to check out the NAFA and U-FLI websites. I especially like to see what times teams in other regions are running. What I have noticed, is regions and teams tend to stay the same speed for the most part. The teams that run in the 15′s stay in the 15, and so on. Teams rarely “break out” into a much faster bracket that would put them in contention for a Regional Victory. I think we all want to get faster, but, for some reason most of us stay the same – even tho we really do try with better training, getting dogs bred for the sport, etc. Usually, just when we think we are going break into the next time/division – we have a dog break, team split, etc.
So, in reponse to your question, I think it would be very beneficial to the moral of the whole NAFA flyball community to be recognized within the time bracket they have continually raced.
That said, I hope more teams in the the Div 4-5(or6) give the U-FLI Championships a try this upcoming year in Memphis. It really is a blast to race against teams of your own speed. It is super competitive, and FUN!
I’ll say, when the teams are within a tenth of each other, that is FUN. As cliche as it sounds, I don’t care who wins, us or the other team, the rush is in the racing! Many times I have left the ring excited, even though the other team won–it’s more fun to race than to just show up and run my dogs. I use to be on a team that routinely finished in the bottom of the division. Yeah, it was fun to run my dog, but we never actually had a chance at beating the other team, unless they messed up. I really enjoy going out and pushing it. Sometimes we actually come in first–and, other times, dead last
Yep I think U-Fli has definitely done it right when it comes to the Championships.
I went to the Championships and ran in div 4 and had a blast. It was fun running with teams that could have gone either way…
Well, I don’t think it said U-FLI is better, but since they have divisional championships…it is the only comparison we can use..and the blog was about expanding NAFA’s Regional Championship system. So, to discuss another orgs Divisional system is not off topic with the blog.
I don’t mean to imply UFli is better, I have never been to the NAFA Cyno games. I was merely stating that I HAVE been to the UFli Championships and it rocks! People should be allowed/encouraged to try flyball with their dogs, no matter what the alphabet label is in front of the name.
Even though I thought a comment made by “Loblaw” was a valid argument, I found it necessary to delete the comment because this person used a false email address. Email addresses are not public but I require them to be valid.
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