USATF XC Club Nationals – Observations

Many people feel differently about club membership. Now you can see how they consider themselves members of clubs 3000 miles away. That was simple.

There's situations like Katie McGregor moving to MIchigan but retaining Team USA Minnesota membership. Sponsored athletes shouldn't have to lose support because they moved.

So is your definition of a club narrowly defined as only a group of people who train together? How do you know he never sees other members? What is your definition of "race with the club" and how is that different than wearing a singlet in a race?

You might want to broaden your horizons because there actually are people who are on clubs, move away but, nonetheless, still want to be a member of and run for that same club.

Do these residence rules apply for the USATF Club Track meet as well?

I have been hoping to run at that meet with some former college teammates one day. Our "club" doesn't really have a geographic base, we are spread out all over the place.

But, we do stay in contact about running, and none of us really run for any other established club.

Yes and your loose association of former college teammates won't be eligible -- you need to be a member of a USATF club. Even if you formed a new USATF club, you won't be able to satisfy the residency requirements.

I just don't see the point of staying with a club once you've moved across the country. I have some great friends at my old club who I keep in touch with, but since joining my new club, I've, gasp, met new friends and new people to train and race with. It makes no sense to me to train and hang out with Club A, but when raceday comes I wear Club B's singlet.

Keith bitches about the NC USATF association not doing anything, so he maintained his membership in an association 3000 miles away. Well, what can that club offer him that a local club can't? Friendship? Guess what, you can have that even without a club membership.

clubber wrote:

Yes and your loose association of former college teammates won't be eligible -- you need to be a member of a USATF club. Even if you formed a new USATF club, you won't be able to satisfy the residency requirements.

Ok yeah I knew about registering with the USATF but didn't know about the residency requirements. Bummer. Thanks for the info.

frank pembleton wrote:

I just don't see the point of staying with a club once you've moved across the country. I have some great friends at my old club who I keep in touch with, but since joining my new club, I've, gasp, met new friends and new people to train and race with. It makes no sense to me to train and hang out with Club A, but when raceday comes I wear Club B's singlet.

Keith bitches about the NC USATF association not doing anything, so he maintained his membership in an association 3000 miles away. Well, what can that club offer him that a local club can't? Friendship? Guess what, you can have that even without a club membership.

The distant club is a competitive club that is working to develop potential Olympic qualifiers as well as be strong competitively at other levels. I'm not one of those people but feel it's important to do that work. The local club I've also been a member of for years has a lot of people that are more at my (former) level, from your viewpoint it would seem a more logical fit. I will note that in Charlotte the California club was there with open and master's teams, the NC club was not. If I had thrown on a singlet and ran it would have been by myself.

We all have our associations with groups for various reasons. Mine today is primarily administrative but being prohibited from slapping on a singlet and running just because of an address despite a long term club association seems pretty silly. Sure I can assist in club operations and see my friends a few times a year and not maintain a PA membership, but why should I have to? What harm to the whole club and competitive structure does maintaining non-geographic relationship do?

I see a legitimate reason to restrict teams slapped together at the last minute that vanish into the night after the meet. That happens today with the geographic restrictions in place so they clearly are ineffective. What have the geographic restrictions done to foster association competitions? Nothing.

Address the real problem, weak clubs and associations being done in by LACK OF LONG TERM COMMITMENT. Promote that, and not silly geographic boundaries. Heck, I could be an NC association member and move 35 miles north and not be eligible for a meet within 150 miles. The current rules make no sense even if the spirit of them is well intentioned.

Maybe people in Oregon, where he could do the best job of contributing to the running community? Or maybe he's just above all that? I guess he could just lock himself in his man-cave and only emerge to go run in VA association events and national championships with the team back in VA. Seems pointlessly self-centered and conceited, but whatever.

NC is far from the largest association, geographically speaking. While you are busy whining about inconvenience, people elsewhere with vision and leadership make it happen. How many NC clubs are located in Asheville or along the Outer Banks, anyway? On the other hand, how many are in RTP and Charlotte? It's about what's most probable and what's most realistic, not using extreme hypotheticals to rationalize apathy and half-assedness. It's only more convenient to remain a member of a club 3000 miles away if you want an excuse to not really be involved in either that club or one close to where you life.

What could you possibly contribute from 3000 miles away that you couldn't do as good as or better than from <30 miles away? Don't you make new friends when you move? Or are you just far too socially awkward to make new friends and establish new relationships?

So how do we come up with "longer lasting clubs"? By clinging to ones that already have sufficient support or by making meaningful contributions to ones that need that injection of energy and stability?

Right, they need active and involved members in those clubs willing to step up and help foster those competitive opportunities. Someone other than you, in other words. Please do everyone a favor and excuse your aloof self from this type of discussion from now on.

hardset nipples wrote: Right, they need active and involved members in those clubs willing to step up and help foster those competitive opportunities. Someone other than you, in other words. Please do everyone a favor and excuse your aloof self from this type of discussion from now on.

Let's see, in the NC club I've been president, race and equipment manager, newsletter editor, and webmaster at various times over the last dozen or so years. I've measured dozens of courses and directed or worked hundreds of races. Even was the state rep for RRCA for a few years.

The fact I do some of those jobs, and want to race with, another club on the opposite coast makes me aloof. Interesting analysis to say the least.

But that's just it Keith. You're involved with the club in NC. You've been an officer and an integral part of the club. Why on earth wouldn't you want to represent them in competition? If I were on the club I'd take it as a slap in the face that my club president wore the singlet of another club at major meets.

If you're really a leader of the NC club, but no one wants to compete at a high level, you're a bad leader. Sorry, but that's just the way it is.

It's pretty simple and I mentioned this previously. Last Saturday there were 20 people for my club in CA in CLT. As TrackCoach mentioned there was not much of a showing from any club in NC even though it was home turf. The local club here hasn't put together a team for any national event since the 80's, and that's pretty much the case for most of the clubs in the area outside of ZAP.

Possibly true, in the 90's when I was president the primary goal was stopping the financial hemorrhaging of the club and rebuilding membership, not on competition. That's the way it was. My effort of the day to start a club series was met with open hostility and the feeling it would drive away less-talented members we needed to pay the bills and run the organization. My efforts to convince them to send teams to Charlotte this year wasn't greeted enthusiastically either so clearly it's not my destiny to be a team organizer. Oh well.

How I ended up bi-coastal isn't terribly interesting, but it should be pretty clear why it was appealing. Why do I spend every Labor Day weekend in the Sierra Nevada's? It's fun as hell. Why tag along to national meets with a team that 3000 miles away? Competition is in their blood and it's a totally different atmosphere than what's primary a social club here locally. Not to say there aren't individuals in the local club that aren't highly competitive, but as a team it's not in their DNA. I pay my dues for both, but just wear one singlet. Shouldn't be that hard to understand why.

So outside of using it as a venue for some personal attacks, I still haven't seen a valid argument for the geographic rules as they stand. If someone wants to be part of a team with a historical basis for competition and is willing to do what they can to contribute and not simply leach of a club's notoriety why shouldn't they be allowed to join? Are the club's not capable of determining on their own who's a contributor and who's not?

In any case for 99% of the population if they pay their dues who gives a rip anyway. I still feel the issue is team continuity not geography. Five guys from NC can create a team in November and compete in Clubs Nats in December and never run together again as long as none of them has competed in a USATF event for anyone else in the last 90 days. That's "good", but someone being a member of a club that's sent teams to nationals for years but doesn't live nearby is "bad".

Worse yet, I could live in Fort Mill, SC which is a suburb of Charlotte and be denied a waiver to run for a club 10 miles away. Even if my waiver is approved I'll need to renew my membership by mail directly with the NC association every year because if I use renew online with USATF I'm automatically removed the club and association and placed in my geographic association. Then I have to get another waiver. I know that process well.

USATF needs to get out of the 80's. 10% of the population moves every year. The vast majority of those moving are in their prime competitive years. I work in NC, my company headquarters is in CA, my boss lives in CO. My work team is comprised of people from Argentina, China, India, and Switzerland internationally along with every time zone in the US domestically, yet USATF thinks the only way you can have a team is if they all live in the same city, preferably sharing bunk beds. It's been a long time since the only means of communicating with someone was over a table.

I think a lot of you are not familiar with what the actual USATF rules are. USATF rules now allow any athlete to compete for any club in any association. HOWEVER, they are generally not eligible to score points for that team unless they reside in the same association. So if a club wants to sponsor an Olympic hopeful that lives outside their association, that athlete can compete for them at the Olympic Trials, but they can't necessarily The biggest exception to this rule has to do with historic membership. If an athlete resides in an association and is a competing member of a club there for three years or more, then if they move away, they can still compete for that club.

Keith Stone wrote:

. Even if my waiver is approved I'll need to renew my membership by mail directly with the NC association every year because if I use renew online with USATF I'm automatically removed the club and association and placed in my geographic association. Then I have to get another waiver. I know that process well.

It's true that you can't change your club via the USATF website, but you can handle that by email. I help my athletes with that stuff all the time. It doesn't have to involve snail mail. You shouldn't have to get a waiver every year either.

Choppy reading with all the comma splicing going on in your writing. If it's not out of aloofness then explain why you wouldn't race with the "NC club" that you've "been president, race and equipment manager, newsletter editor and webmaster at various times over the last dozen or so years." It's pretty clear you think you're above racing with any NC team.

frank pembleton wrote:

If I were on the club I'd take it as a slap in the face that my club president wore the singlet of another club at major meets.

Especially since he'd be far from the best runner for any but the worst clubs in NC.

If you're really a leader of the NC club, but no one wants to compete at a high level, you're a bad leader. Sorry, but that's just the way it is.

QFE

polevaultpower wrote:

It's true that you can't change your club via the USATF website, but you can handle that by email. I help my athletes with that stuff all the time. It doesn't have to involve snail mail. You shouldn't have to get a waiver every year either.

The USATF web site automatically changes your club and association if your mailing address is outside your existing association. This is where the mail comes in. If you don't mail your renewal in to your association you get reassigned. For someone that understands the rules it's no really big deal. From my standpoint I'm covered under the existing rules as long as I do things the right way, but as I found out if I go out and click renew at usatf.org I get reassigned then I have to contact both the NC and PA associations via email to fix things. So no I don't have to get a waiver every year unless I screw up and renew online.

This can lead to interesting problems. I've helped guys on the team that were on assignment somewhere outside of PA and use their temporary apartment as their address because that's where they have their mail forwarded to. For someone that's not expecting that to happen during renewal it's pretty disconcerting. Workable for sure but it's pretty silly to have to do it at all.

When you consider that I can take a look at the roster for the club on the PA site and see 4 people that claim to be members of the club but have never been on our roster it's clear the process of assigning people to clubs has holes if you live if the area, but takes considerable effort if you don't. When you consider all this rigmarole is just to try to keep teams from having "ringers" it's pretty ridiculous.

hardset nipples wrote: It's pretty clear you think you're above racing with any NC team.

Keith Stone wrote:

Commas or not, exactly what part of "my local club hasn't sent a team to nationals since the 80's" don't you understand?

And what part of "grab your NC training partners and head to nationals" don't you understand? Maybe the first year it's just you and one guy. Then you come back and talk it up, saying "wow, that was awesome." The next year you get four guys. Then five. Suddenly you've started a new tradition and you've built up a new club.

But you're content to say: "Well they haven't been in a while, so screw then, I'm running for the Aggies."

In fact, and this is funny, I don't even see Keith Stone's name in the result for this year's meet! (http://www.usatf.org/events/2010/USATFClubXCChampionships/results/mastermen.asp)

hardset nipples wrote:Especially since he'd be far from the best runner for any but the worst clubs in NC.

I assume you really think you're scoring style points for being personally insulting. As I noted earlier on this thread, and multiple times on others, there isn't a club in this country that would recruit me as a ringer.

While I know it's not terribly likely anyone in my age group will live in fear of my presence on the starting line any time soon I'm not ready to say the hell with it, get the knee replacement and send the spikes and singlet off to Goodwill just yet. I'm old enough to know desire, commitment, and ability don't always align the way you want. Apparently that's a bit of knowledge you haven't become acquainted with.