Organizing Tournament Schedules

I think it would be nice if we (local clubs, state coordinators, PDGA) could have our PDGA tournaments for next year scheduled by the end of the year. Our club had a tournament scheduled for Sept 10 and then two weeks ago we had to move it up to Sept 3 so it wouldn't conflict with another tournament. I try to do what I can to support our club and I am one of its officers. Due to the change in date we didn't get our letter soliciting sponsorship done until last week so when I go to businesses seeking donations some of them have to get OK's from their corporate offices and the cutoff date to get their logo on the tournament shirt is Thursday so it seems like we are just shooting ourselves in the foot and automatically excluding what could be our biggest contributors. I'm not saying I'm the smartest disc golfer around and I don't know that I could do any better job than what we are doing now, I'm just saying it would be nice if we could get our schedules done sooner.

[David Sauls]

Our State Coordinator does a good job with this, not only within the state but with regards to neighboring states.  Though occasionally non-sanctioned events trespass.  Disc golf is growing fast around here, and it's getting harder to schedule without stepping on someone's toes.  As TDs, we try to look at other events' traditional dates and accommodate them first.

 

It's not always possible to schedule events long in advance.  For a variety of reasons, some events have to wait to determine course availability, or even volunteer availability.  For a late-year event, scheduling a year in advance may not be practical.

 

I'm curious how your event got bumped.  Majors, NTs, and A-tiers ARE scheduled before the start of the calendar year.   Were you on the calendar, and someone scheduled a B-tier which put you in their exclusion zone?  (You need not mention the specific event, just curious as to how it could happen).

[Dan Wilkinson]

This will be our 4th annual Breeze Through The Trees. We did have it on the 3rd Sat of Sept. the last 3 years. We moved it up 1 week so as not to interfere with an A tier event about 3 hours away which some of our club members want to participate in. After we scheduled it for Sept. 10 we discovered a B tier event about 90 miles away on that date and we didn't want to compete for players against that tournament so we moved ours to Sept.3. I'm not saying it is the state coordinators fault - it's probably our own fault for dragging our feet. I was just kind of frustrated trying to get sponsors lined up on short notice.

[David Sauls]

One thing that's complicated this a little is that the PDGA changed their event schedule policy to require payment of the sanctioning fees before an event is listed.  Before this year, events appeared with an asterisk (sanctioning pending).  I've no doubt there were problems with late-payers, maybe non-payers.  But it did have the benefit that people could put their events on the schedule long before they were ready to submit payment, so at least other TDs could see their intentions.

 

We do our best to avoid conflicts on the calendar.  Our state has a points series with a website that lists all known events, sanctioned and non-sanctioned, as far out as possible (even sometimes with tentative dates).  We check the PDGA schedule, and the PDGA schedule for the previous years to determine as best we can what events might overlap, both in our state and neighboring states, and contact other TDs when there are questions.  Finally, when we ask our state coordinator for approval, he contacts the SCs in neighboring states to see what conflicts they may know of.

 

Which isn't perfect; conflicts still occur.  But if everyone involved makes a strong effort to coordinate their scheduling, they can be minimized.

 

(Our 2-day tournament is in early or mid April.  Along with everything else, the ever-changing Easter holiday scrambles the schedule as TDs try to work around it).