We're thrilled to be interviewing Dan Berke, the brilliant mind behind Fencing Time Live — a tool that has become indispensable in the world of fencing. In this episode, Dan will take us on an insightful journey through Fencing Time Live, revealing the untold story behind this powerful system. We'll delve into its functionalities, discuss how it revolutionizes tournament planning, and give you a rare peek behind the scenes of this ubiquitous tool that every fencer relies on but few truly understand. Scheduling And there's more! For the first time ever, we're also offering a video version of this episode. You can find the link in the show notes or on the USA Fencing YouTube channel. So, if you're listening, that's great, but you might also want to watch because Dan will be sharing his screen to give you a detailed walkthrough. A bit about our guest: Dan Berke is the creator and developer of the popular Fencing Time tournament management application, widely used by clubs, the FIE, and USA Fencing. Beyond his development work, Dan is a frequent bout committee chair at regional events and an occasional referee. He lives in the Pacific Northwest and competes in foil and épée both locally and at veteran NACs. Does all this while holding down a day job.
We're thrilled to be interviewing Dan Berke, the brilliant mind behind Fencing Time Live — a tool that has become indispensable in the world of fencing.
In this episode, Dan will take us on an insightful journey through Fencing Time Live, revealing the untold story behind this powerful system. We'll delve into its functionalities, discuss how it revolutionizes tournament planning, and give you a rare peek behind the scenes of this ubiquitous tool that every fencer relies on but few truly understand: Scheduling.
EPISODE 55
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:02] BW: Hello, and welcome to First to 15, the official podcast of USA Fencing. I'm your host, Bryan Wendell. In this show, you're going to hear from some of the most inspiring, interesting, and insanely talented people in this sport we all love. First to 15 is for anyone in the fencing community, and even for those just checking out fencing to see what it's all about. Whether you're an Olympian, or Paralympian, a newcomer, a seasoned veteran, a fencing parent, a fan, or anyone else in this wonderful community, this podcast is for you. With that, let's get to today's episode. Enjoy.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:40] BW: All right. Today, we have a special episode lined up. We are thrilled to be interviewing Dan Berke, who is the brilliant mind behind Fencing Time Live, which a lot of people know as a tool that is indispensable in the world of fencing. In today's episode, Dan's going to take us on a journey through Fencing Time Live, especially the scheduling aspect of it, and how tournament organizers use Fencing Time to schedule a tournament that runs smoothly and on time. We'll talk about the functionality there, and Dan will give us a behind the scenes peak.
As those of you watching on YouTube know, there's a video version of this episode. If you're listening to this, which is how most of our episodes are distributed, then be sure to check the show notes for the YouTube link, or go to the USA Fencing YouTube channel, because Dan's going to be showing some slides that might be enhanced if you're actually watching, instead of just listening. If you just want to listen, that's fine, too. We'll do our best to describe what you're seeing and make this a valuable conversation.
A bit about Dan, we said he's the creator and developer of Fencing Time, which is a tournament management application that anybody involved with fencing knows all about. It's used by clubs, the FIE, and of course, us at USA Fencing. Then beyond that, Dan is about committee chair at regional events and occasional referee. He lives in the Pacific Northwest and competes in foil in a little bit of epee locally and at Vet NACs. He does all this while holding down a day job. Fencing Time Live is not his day job. We're really grateful that he was able to take away some time from his day job to join us. With that introduction out of the way, hey, Dan, thanks for joining.
[0:02:15] DB: Sure thing. Glad to be here.
[0:02:17] BW: This is great. You and I have talked before. I'm really excited to put this on the record, so to speak, about all the work that you've done with Fencing Time. Before we talk about that, though, can you tell us your fencing journey? How long have you been fencing and what brought you into the sport?
[0:02:32] DB: I started fencing, it was 1989, right before I went off to college, thought, “Oh, this would be a cool thing to do as a – so I can get some exercise while I was in college.” I fenced just casually with the school club team for about a year and a year and a half, until my workload got so much that I didn't have time to fence. After graduating, I had jobs and didn't pursue fencing until around year 2000 when the Sydney Olympics were around their way.
I thought, “Gee, this would be cool to watch the fencing.” That got me to look locally to see what fencing clubs were around. It turned out that the club I've been with since then, Rain City, was just a few miles from my house and it actually opened in May and this was November. I started going and got hooked again. Mostly, first, just competing and fencing, but then I got into the tournament organization side, which leads into the birth of Fencing Time. Yeah. I guess, I've been back at it since 2000, so 20, 24 years, which is hard to believe.
[0:03:57] BW: You've seen a lot of the growth of fencing and the evolution of it. For those of us who have been around the sport for less time than that, what was it like competing in tournaments before Fencing Time? Competing in, organizing, whatever angle you want to look at, before there was a tool like Fencing Time that really made it easy to see who's fencing, where and when.
[0:04:19] DB: Well, back in the old days, mostly everything was done on paper. You would show up at the tournament and they would basically fill out an index card with your name and your rating and to do the seeding, after everyone was there, they would sort the cards by rating and then they would lay out the pools by physically putting them on a table, playing them out in the snaking pattern that the software does and this five-minute rules and they'd manually check to see – they'd have what club you were part of and what division also on your index card. They'd manually swap people around to avoid club mates and that sort of thing.
Then they'd fill out a paper pool sheet, the names, they'd go off and fence it like usual. Then after the math was computed from the pools, which now of course, the program does for you, but you'd have to toggle up all the touches scored and touches received, they would then translate that onto everyone's card and then they would sort them again by your pool results, and then they would fill out Tableau by hand, putting people in the right place. All the while, there was usually nothing in terms of posting seedings, or results, or anything. If you want to see the Tableau, you'd have to come over to the Bout Committee Table and look at the handwritten Tableau. This was mostly for local events. There were no regional events, so that program hadn't started yet. I mean, it worked. I mean, it wasn't terribly efficient. A gust of wind could blow your index cards all the way and your pools would have to be redone.
[0:06:07] BW: Oh, my gosh.
[0:06:09] DB: It was a little bit primitive. Yet, the NACs, they were using an old piece of software that another guy named Dan, I forget his last name at the moment, he had written some software that USA Fencing was using and that was how they ran the NACs and this is back – I mean, when I started NACs, we're still 24 strips, 32 strips. I think Summer Nationals was maybe 48 or 50 something strips. It was –
[0:06:40] BW: Not the 105 that we're going to have in Columbus here in a couple weeks after recording this. Yeah, I can only imagine for some of these event sizes now, like junior men's epee, 400 something, like that many cards. You just couldn't do it. I mean, it would take you hours to make that many pools and using all the rules that are now just programmed into the software, right? It's like, given the tournament size.
One more question about the “olden days”, I'm putting that in quotes. Given all of the manual processes that you're describing, were the tournaments end later, or were the size is smaller, and so the timing was about the same?
[0:07:18] DB: Well, they were smaller in general, because this is also in the days before things like Ask Fred, where even publicizing your tournament was difficult. Back then, you would print out maybe a flyer and send it to the clubs in the area and hopefully, would hang it up on their walls. People would know about the tournaments and come. The events weren't that big. Even though you get maybe a 25% event would be a pretty good size for a local event, and things would take longer just because, again, you had to do all the tabulation and sorting of things and seeding and just a lot of the manual paperwork.
I mean, the fencing itself pretty much was the same, but there was more time. You'd finish the pools, and sometimes you'd have to wait 30 minutes before the deez would start, because the bout committee’s doing all the math and sorting things. I think it tended to be, they would be longer compared with a comparable size event these days.
[0:08:25] BW: Yeah, totally. Fencing Time, what was the inspiration there? What was the genesis of that invaluable tool that we now all just feel like is a natural part of our fencing experience?
[0:08:39] DB: At my club, every month, we would run a couple events. It was like a Thursday night be in under foil that they would run every month. Then we also had just lots of internal events, more just practice for fun kinds of things. There was some program, I don't even remember what it was called, but there was a program that someone had written to run the fencing tournaments. My coach was trying to use it for one of these events. He was just going crazy trying to figure it out. It wasn't very easy to use. It was not intuitive. It just wasn't that great. I mean, it was one of the only things available, because the one the US Fe used wasn't available to the wider public. I'm standing there over his shoulder watching him struggle with this program. I think to myself, “The heck. I could write a better program than this.”
It also gave, was an excuse to learn some new technology that had just come out. In the software world, you learn pretty much by doing, rather than reading a book. I just decided, okay, I'm going to build this app, which named Fencing Time after the terminology of a tempo of fencing time. It was intended, really, just for our club to use. It took me, I don't remember exactly how long to build it, maybe six months, or nine months to build the very basic version. Because at that time, it really just did putting in the fencers, creating the pools, tabulating the results, running people through that and having the final results.
[0:10:24] BW: Just digitizing the index card system, right? Just a strict, like take this manual process and make it digital.
[0:10:30] DB: Yeah, it was basically just get the basics of a tournament, so you didn't have to do all that paperwork. Yeah, we were using that at the club. Then I gave copies of it to some of the other local clubs that were running tournaments. They were starting to use it. Word got around; friends in other parts of the country. I was like, “I'll give you a copy. You can play with it.” Eventually, I realized this is something that everyone could find useful. I wrote a instruction manual and polished it, so that it was more of a professional product than just a hobby thing, built a website where you could download it.
I even, just to date how long ago this was, because I think this was 2001 or so, 2002, I would burn copies of it to CDs. I printed some little flyers. I would leave the flyers and the stack of CDs on the table at the NACs, where you could pick up tournament brochures, or all the flyers for summer camps and things like that.
[0:11:44] BW: Were you selling it at this point? Or were you just like, “I’m giving this to people who are in my same boat”?
[0:11:50] DB: Yeah. I added the licensing at that point. People pay, I forgot what the price was back then. It was not too much. It was, I think, about 50 bucks or something like that. Back then when they would pay me, I would then send them a CD with the full version of it, because the one that was on the ones that I put out at the NACs were, it's just like a trial version.
[0:12:14] BW: Got you.
[0:12:15] DB: Eventually, over the years, obviously, I moved to just a digital download, buy a license online. I was very happy to stop burning CDs and packaging them in bubble wrap mailers and sending them each week.
[0:12:30] BW: Yeah, of course. Saving you some trips to the post office. We've been talking about the tournament organization side, but also, there's the fan/fencer/parent/caregiver side of just following a tournament, which thanks to your development, it's super easy to follow a fencer through their journey. You've got some really innovative tools for doing that. I guess, my question is, what are you most proud of about that side of it? Because I do this every weekend during the FIE season. I'm following Team USA when that tournament is running with Fencing Time, which I'm always hopeful that they are, honestly.
If it's a Fencing Time tournament, I'm like, “Okay, thank goodness. This is going to be easy to follow.” Then I'm checking in to see how Colin Heathcock is doing. It makes it very easy to follow. I can even see live in real time. Talk about that side of it, not the tournament organization side, but more just the fan side.
[0:13:25] DB: Yeah. In the original version, there were no live results. It was still a print out the Tableau and print out the pools and hang them on the wall.
[0:13:35] BW: You didn't go to fencingtimelive.com, find the tournament and all that. This was all just stuff that was happening locally on someone's computer, in other words?
[0:13:43] DB: Yeah. Then some years later, I was like, okay, I should have a ability for people to publish the live results to a website. For years, even before Fencing Time Live came along, I had the ability to – you could publish their results, but you basically had to put them on your own website, so a club would have it on their website. It was a little technically difficult to do. You need some technical know-how to be able to set that up. Eventually, I realized, I should build this centralized repository for results, which would get rid of the serve – people would have to hunt down like, “Where are the results for this tournament? What's the club website that has it, or its division website?” It eliminated all the technical challenges that people had to get that even set up from the tournament organizer side. And so, I built Fencing Time Live.
I think the most gratifying thing about it, aside from just it becoming a much more public face of Fencing Time, but I had no idea how widespread it was used. I would be selling licenses every – they come in every few days, depending on what part of the season it was. As Fencing Time, especially once it got certification by the FIE and could be used worldwide, I was getting orders from all over the world. Yeah, I didn't really keep track of that. But once Fencing Time Live was out there, suddenly, I was like, “Oh, my god. It's running 50 [inaudible 0:15:23] on every weekend from every corner of the globe.” That blew my mind, but was really gratifying to see that.
[0:15:32] BW: Yeah. Anybody who goes to Fencing Time, and if you click off of USA and click for the whole world, you can see in season, any given weekend, there's all these youth tournaments. Sometimes I do click into those, just to see what's happening in Brazil, or Sweden, or whatever, right? To what kind of tournaments are going on. It's really fun. Okay. Well, I could talk about this aspect all day, but I want to move into another reason we brought you on, which is to chat about tournament scheduling, which obviously ties directly into fencing time and is part of your role as well.
At the April NAC, we had a Vet town hall and you were the guest of honor there. A lot of our Vet professors were able to ask you questions about why certain events start at certain times. That was a very popular presentation. The only problem was that only those in the room were able to see it. That's one reason we wanted to have you on was to discuss, kind of give us that presentation. Then I'll chime in with a couple of questions if I have them. If you don't mind sharing your screen and showing us that presentation that you gave there, I think it'd be really fascinating to people and would allow that message from that April NAC to spread a little bit wider.
[0:16:45] DB: This presentation mostly focuses on national events. As some people may know, I have been assisting USA Fencing with scheduling all the NACs, and some of the nationals, Jos, and even some of the SJCCs now for quite some time. It's been probably at least eight years, maybe, 10 years now. I can't quite remember.
[0:17:12] BW: Essentially, USA fencing, our events team will say, “Okay, Dan. During these four days, we have these events. Go have fun.” You're the one who says, “Okay, this is going to be on this day at 8 a.m. This is going to be on this day at 1 p.m.” Am I understanding that right?
[0:17:29] DB: Yeah. Let me go into the scheduling process. To start out with the, some guidelines or warnings about scheduling, I call them inconvenient truths, because when we are scheduling things, there's just a lot of things that have to be taken into account, things that you just can't avoid. The first thing is that we have a limited number of resources, primarily that strips and referees. For NACs, obviously, it includes replay pods, and ultimately, it comes down to time, because we can't run the tournament still 3 in the morning. These are the limitations that have to be considered when doing the scheduling.
[0:18:12] BW: Yeah, I think everybody appreciates that the tournaments don't go till midnight, or later. In fact, in some venues, we actually can't. They would kick us out, right? It's more than just consideration to family members and fencers.
[0:18:25] DB: Well, there's also an obscure rule. I think it's somewhere buried in the athlete's handbook, that states that no bouts can start after midnight.
[0:18:35] BW: Oh, well, there you go. I actually didn't know that and I've read that handbook, so that's interesting.
[0:18:40] DB: Yeah, there have been a few rare cases where that had to be overridden and it was – they had to actually call an emergency meeting of the board of directors to get them to wave that rule.
[0:18:51] BW: Oh, wow.
[0:18:53] DB: I think that's happened on the, thankfully, rare occasions where the equipment didn't show up, because of some snow storm, or some problem. Everything didn't get started until late in the day, because the equipment wasn't there until the first day of competition. Anyway, going back to my list of inconvenient truths, when doing scheduling, it's really important that we have to take into account the overall greater good. A lot of people tend to focus on their schedules for their events that they are fencing. As a scheduler, I have to equally look at everything. I can't favor one weapon over another, or one age category over another. There are certain priorities around point events get a little more priority.
In general, we have to take into account the greater good, because there are thousands of people fencing. Which leads into the other unfortunate truth is that because of that, it's impossible to make everyone happy. Every time you do a schedule, there's always some people that grumble that it's not convenient for them, which unfortunately, is true. But there's really nothing you can do about that, because you can't make everyone's schedule optimal for them, which ultimately means that compromises have to be made.
When I'm doing the scheduling, it really comes down to balancing the number of events each day, the number of fencers that will be fencing, again, allocating resources in a smart way. Eventually, you just have to make some compromises. That's just a fact of life. If people realize that, I think it'll make a lot of people more understanding of why things may not be ideal for them. Again, I try to spread these compromises out across the season, and across events, across the age categories, across the genders, so that one particular group isn't always being inconvenienced. I to try to spread it around, so that everyone has a little bit of pain every now and then, but also, they also get schedules that may be more beneficial to them occasionally.
[0:21:21] BW: In other words, junior women's saber might be 8 a.m. on the very first day, 8 a.m. on Friday at one tournament, but then the next tournament, you're going to try to – and it doesn't always work out, but in the next tournament, you're going to try to maybe make them 2 or 3 p.m. on Saturday or Sunday at a time that for a high school student is a little bit more convenient. Is that a good example?
[0:21:44] DB: Yeah. Actually, before the season starts, once the event combinations have been decided, I'll work to lay out the schedules for each NAC and JOs and select what events are on what day. I expect, actually, that's probably going to start soon now that we've, I think, finalized on what events are at each NAC next season.
[0:22:06] BW: Right. The day schedules are the next step in that, knowing which events are happening on each of those days. I got you.
[0:22:12] DB: Yeah. I'll try, definitely, I put together a spreadsheet where I keep track of, okay, if junior women's saber say, is on a Friday, then at the next NAC, or the one after, I'll try to put that on the weekend. I try to balance weekend and weekday times for across all the weapons, so that one weapon is not always on a school day. Again, there's limitations about how much I can do that. I've got a spreadsheet that I'm tracking everything and juggling things around to do that as much as I can.
With all that said about compromising and trying to make things equal, ultimately, it's a fact that Division 1 tends to take priority, if there's a call to be made between two events. Since Division 1 events are pinnacle events for choosing national teams, and not just Division 1, but junior and cadet also fall in there right behind Division 1. Those are picking world teams. Their needs take a little bit of priority. An example would be, if there's a World Cup for say, men's foil, the following weekend after the NAC, I'll try to put the men's foil event, the Division 1 men's foil event, or junior men's foil on Friday, or Saturday, so that they have more time to travel to the World Cup the following weekend. Those are the other considerations that I wind up having to put into the scheduling.
Okay, so that leads into what I was alluding to just a minute ago is day schedules, which, like I said, it's basically, once the dates and locations have been determined, I'll put together what events are on what day for all the entire season, although I don't do it for summer nationals, because that's a whole separate monster on its own. The big thing that I need when I do this is I need to know the number of strips that we'll have. What I'll do is I will go and I'll make projections about the event sizes based on historical data, projected growth. I need, basically, the number of fencers and the number of strips, so that I can put together a schedule that's somewhat balanced.
The way I predict the attendance is I assume a 5% to 10% growth in the numbers each year. One thing which people frequently ask is, why can't you do the event times earlier, rather than wait until the entry deadline? It turns out that the attendance numbers are much more variable than one would think. I think I have something 10 or 12 years of data that shows how sometimes the numbers just take a huge nosedive, or have a huge spike. It varies greatly based on what time of year it is, where the NAC is located, if there's holidays and things like that, and what other events are at that NAC, the combination, some of them tend to draw more fencers, because they can fence two or three events, while others are smaller, if there's not as much crossover.
The attendance numbers are a bit trickier than you would think. I was a little surprised by that when I started doing this. The only thing that's consistent is that growth is, if the numbers are going up, it's at least 5% to 10%, which I guess that's a good problem to have, because with more people that want to fence.
[0:26:03] BW: Let's talk about an example there then. I know we're talking about day schedules, but jumping ahead to the time schedule. Let's say, for example, that we lived in a universe where you put out those time schedules right at the beginning when the calendar was announced. Not only did you know which events were going to be on this random Saturday in April, but you also said, these are the times that they're all happening. Then March rolls around and the registration closes. What could go wrong if you had already announced all the different times for the events happening on that day?
[0:26:39] DB: Let's say that we've got 65 strips at this NAC in question. If I project the numbers out months in advance and I schedule, let's say, three events that start at 8 a.m., and I've scheduled them based on the numbers and I basically am filling all 65 strips that start at 8 a.m. based on my projection. Well, when the entry deadline passes, if the projection is higher than what I projected and suddenly, let's say, the numbers were much greater and in each of the three events you've got say, 20 additional fencers that I projected. Well, each of those events, that's three more pools. Suddenly, instead of having 65 strips worth of pools, you have 74 strips worth of pools, but we don't have more strips.
Suddenly, you're in a bind because you might have to then double flight an event. If you double flight the event, then the events that you had scheduled for say, 2.00, suddenly, they might be delayed, because that morning event now is going to still be on those strips, when if you hadn't double flighted, they wouldn't be.
[0:28:02] BW: The problem just cascades all day, until it's nearing midnight and you haven't finished all the events, right?
[0:28:09] DB: Yeah. So, by waiving, you really avoid those kinds of problems. Even a small number of fencers, if each event grew by one pool, that still could be too much and you'd have to suddenly start double flighting and that delays everything. There's a very solid reason behind why we have to wait till we have accurate numbers, because again, sometimes my projections are on, but sometimes I over-project, just because it happens to be that a certain NAC doesn't draw as many people as we thought. But more often than not, the numbers are greater than my projections. I mean, over time, I try to adjust them to account for that, but the sport seems to keep growing at a faster pace than even I can keep up with.
[0:28:59] BW: Yeah. There's so many variables, like you said. Someone might say, “Well, if you need nine more pools, then just add nine more strips.” But when I've talked to Glenn Hollingsworth, who's our director of events who makes these detailed CAD drawings for the venues, there's some venues where you literally could not fit one more strip, let alone nine. It's truly, where we need to – by we, I mean you, need to deal with the hand you’re dealt, right? Play the hand your dealt and find a way to make it work.
[0:29:28] DB: Even not just finding strips. I mean, even if you were able to get more strips into the venue the last minute, you still need – if you have nine more strips, you need at least nine additional referees. Usually, they have a multiplier, so nine strips you probably need 12, or 13 additional referees. Hiring referees last minute can be difficult and expensive. There's just so many potential problems that come up if you have to scramble, because your projections were off.
Anyway, so after I've created the day schedules for all the NACs and JOs and presumably, also the SJCC, I'm not the only one who looks at it. I pass this along to the review committee, which has people from both the tournament committee, the referees commission, the national offense, the high-performance group replay. Actually, we've recently added some representatives from the coaches. I think there's three coaches, one for each weapon, that's now on the review group, and they actually had some input on to the summer national schedule. This was a recent addition, I think, after one of the board meetings.
Once, the group, they'll review it, point out any potential issues with again, if I missed some balancing, again, maybe the weapons across weekends, or weekdays, they'll call any issues, or things like that, they all make adjustments. Ultimately, they'll approve the set of schedules and then that goes off to the national office to be published.
Okay, so when creating these day schedules, there's actually a huge list of criteria that I'm supposed to follow. There's a document that I was given when I started doing this, which had a list of over 20 guidelines that I was supposed to meet. They were grouped into must follow these rules, things that really would be good and then things that would be nice if possible. There's, like I had mentioned with the Division 1 events, these additional constraints like with scheduling around world cups, things like that. Those are a little more variable, while the big list is, that would be a good example of the thing that's on that list is for example, with the Vet ages, you can't have say, Vet 40 women's foil and Vet 40 women's saber on the same day, or maybe Vet 50 would be a better example, because there are people who are offense multiple weapons in the same age category. Having both events on the same day, you're denying them the ability to try to make both the foil team and the saber team.
[0:32:29] BW: Whereas, you know, no one's going to be fencing both Vet 40 and Vet 50 women's foil, right? Because you can't be in two. I see. Okay, so that's why you see those clusters of with the Vet event specifically, all the Vet women's foil age events are on the same day, if not necessarily the same time.
[0:32:48] DB: There's other guidelines about like, proximity of events with junior and cadet should be close to each other, if they're at the same NAC. Ideally, you wouldn't put junior on Friday and cadet on Monday, because there's generally a lot of crossover between those two. Again, that's one of the softer rules which sometimes has to be broken, but all these guidelines are just – I've internalized them. They make a lot of sense. Their goal is to both maximize the number of events people can fence, and also, to try to give them adequate rest between events, things like that.
Like I had mentioned earlier, I try to balance the weekend and weekday distribution over the season. This is where we start to see some interesting opinions, where everyone's preferences vary. Like I had mentioned earlier, it's impossible to satisfy everyone. A few examples include, if you've got two events, say junior and cadet, you schedule it where junior is on say, Friday. Then you have a day of rest on Saturday and then cadets on Sunday. Some people prefer that, because they want to rest between events.
Other people wanted junior on Friday, cadet on Saturday, so that's one less day they have to take away from school, or a night at the hotel. Again, every individual's different as to what they prefer. Generally, we put them closer together just a sequential days, rather than having rest days. Or if there's a rest day, I'll put an event that people could fence maybe, but they don't have to. Again, it's one of those things that you can't make everyone happy, because everyone's got a different opinion. This is another one of those things that I try to spread out over the season if there's no other option. Another preference that people can be rather vocal about is in the Vet categories is whether we have the age group Vet events before the combined, or the combined before the age group.
[0:35:02] BW: Combined, for those who don't fence Vets yet is anybody 40 and up, fences in one single event, right? Whether you're 45, or 75, you're fencing in that one, that one event, I say. Some people want first, and some want the other to come first in the order.
[0:35:20] DB: Yeah. The age specific ones are the ones that count towards placement in the running for the national team, so those are arguably the more important event. Some people want to fence that first, because they don't want to do the combined first, because if they maybe injure themselves, then they can't fence in the one that counts. There's other people that would like to have the combined event first, so it's a warm up for the real one. Again, there's valid reasons for both ordering.
Generally, the larger, at least we've traditionally put the age group ones first and then the combined, because again, combined is really a just for fun. There's no team that’s based on it. I think the Vet committee is actually going to be doing a poll of the Vets that are fencing at the NACs frequently to find out what the preference is.
[0:36:21] BW: Oh, yeah. I'm glad you said that, because we did send that out. If you're a Vet fencer listening to this, you should have gotten that poll in your email. I'm glad you said that. I mean, and you could apply that same opinion to div 1 and junior, right? Like, I want to do div 1 first, or I want to do junior first and warm up for the div 1, for people, obviously, who are the right age to fence both.
[0:36:42] DB: Yeah. Again, the orders that we've been using mostly are – I mean, with the Vets, it's been pretty consistent although, if the voting – if the poll comes back and tells us that they want to combine first, then okay, we can schedule it that way. With div 1 and junior, that one is more based on, because those events are so huge, those are based on, how can I fit both of them into the schedule? They tend to flip all throughout the season.
[0:37:15] BW: Sure, sure.
[0:37:18] DB: That perfectly rolls into the ultimate rule when creating a schedule is to make it all fit, given the sizes of our events these days and the fact that our events are growing faster than we can add strips and referees, it ultimately, comes down to a rather complicated puzzle of trying to squeeze everything in and make everything fit, such that we're not there till midnight each night. I'll mention that summer nationals is a nightmare itself. I mean, this year, I think, I think you said, or maybe was in the newsletter that went out today, that it's the biggest fencing event ever run. Every year, it seems to be the biggest one. It just keeps breaking its own record.
[0:38:04] BW: 6,200 individuals. 13,000 entries and a 105 strips is the latest numbers I saw. That's, yeah, good luck.
[0:38:15] DB: Yeah. I mean, there's so much that has to be taken to account when scheduling summer nationals, because there's so many crossovers between junior to cadet, to Y14, to Y12, to Y10, and then sprinkle in div 2 and div 3. There's just so much that has to be planned on that.
[0:38:34] BW: I talked to the father of one young woman who's fencing seven events, I think, at summer nationals, and in a couple of different weapons. But that's the type of thing that you're having to account for is that you're going to have crossover. Not that everybody's going to fence seven events, but just that there are so many different combinations of what people want to do.
[0:38:52] DB: Right. It really is challenging to come up with something that everyone will be happy with. We do our best, just because that's really all that we can do, and see what we can put together. Yeah, that's also why we don't try to do this at the beginning of the season. I think the national day schedule comes along. I can't remember when I did it this year. I think it was in April or so, maybe. I don't remember. But usually, it's based on looking at how big the events were during the season and trying to help them is that to project how much growth they'll be at summer nationals.
[0:39:33] BW: Yeah, you've got more data to work with at that point.
[0:39:36] DB: Yeah. The next part of scheduling is the check-in times. We talked a little bit about this. Just to recap, after the regular entry deadline, that's when we do the check-in times, because it's based on the number of actual entries. It also factors in, if we've been able to increase the number of strips, or if rarely, we've had to decrease them. Have in cases when we don't have as much space as we had thought, and I have to plan things on a smaller number of strips, but thankfully, that's very rare.
[0:40:12] BW: Like, there's a column in the way of where we thought we were going to put a strip, or something like that, right?
[0:40:16] DB: Yeah. Well, I think in Salt Lake in April, we lost a room with eight strips, or something on the last day, I think it was.
[0:40:23] BW: Right.
[0:40:23] DB: Luckily, the last day tends to be a little lighter, so we were able to adapt that easily. But yeah, as I had mentioned earlier that scheduling, choosing what times is heavily influenced by the number of pools that we are going to need. We try to avoid double-flighting foil and epee as much as we can. Saber always gets double-flighted, because it goes fast. If we didn't do that, then we'd have to – well, we wouldn't be able to have the events the size that we have. On the last day, this is something which people have wondered about. On the last day, a lot of times, we will double flight all of the events and start them all early. Almost all the events. People think, “That's crazy. Why are you doing that?”
It turns out that the day ends and ends sooner when you do that, because if you follow the traditional pattern of you have some events in the morning that are single-flighted, and then you start another event at 2 p.m., well that 2 p.m. event is not going to wrap up till maybe 7, 8 p.m. Of course, the venues needs to be broken down and the hall needs to be cleared out that evening, or that night if you double-flight them, if you start all the events in the morning and double-flight them, speaking for foil and epee, that takes four hours to do the pools, two flights of two hours each roughly. That takes you from 8 a.m. to noon to finish the pools. Then you do the deez. By about 2, 3.00, most of the events are down to the round of 16. The vast majority of fencers are finished maybe around 2.00, 1.00, and actually can catch a flight home that evening.
While if we, like I said, if we put everything in, or if we had some events that started at 2, then those events are going to wrap up late in the evening and people will have to stay an extra night, and it also makes it harder to break down the venue. Double-flighting doesn't seem intuitive, but it actually gets the day finished quicker for the majority of the fencers. Also, another factor is that just like the fencers start leaving in the afternoon of the last day, the referees also start leaving. If we're trying to start at 220-person event at 2.000, after the pools are done, half of the referees might leave to catch a flight. In addition to fencers wanting to leave, we start losing referees and that slows things down. That's the reasoning behind the double-flighting on the last day, mostly at NACs.
When doing the schedule in addition to using the strips optimally, you also need to balance the referee usage. You try to have an equal distribution of referees across all the weapons, because you have some referees that only do one weapon. If you don't have an event going on say, an epee, then all of your epee refs are being, are basically idle. That's not an efficient use of their time and the expense to bring them out. We try to have events in each weapon going at the same time, just so that all the referees can be working and it's more efficient for everything.
One thing which has over the years become a bigger and bigger issue is lining the events up to arrive at the replay pods and the final strip. This didn't used to be a problem, because back when I started, there was no replay. There really wasn't much that had to be worried about, except, I think, we did have a final strip. But that was, you just needed the final, the gold medal match up there, rather than needed to account for eight replace pods, or eight replay strips and half a dozen events wanting to use them at the same time. Try to schedule things so that there's not a crazy rush for the replay, because when that happens things get backed up, while one event's on the strips and another one's waiting to get on the replay strips. It just slows things down.
That's especially a problem when you've got Vet events, because the vet events, you have four age categories each day and you usually have men’s set of events and women's set of events. That's eight events, plus, or nine if you count Vet 80, actually. 10, I mean. Then of course, there's the other events going on, which could be div 1, or could be junior. When you've got the events the NACs with the Vet events, you have a huge demand on the replay strips. You really have to balance things, or try to schedule things, so they don't get backed up. Once again, there's the issue of personal preference here. Some people prefer morning events, some people prefer afternoon events.
Speaking as someone that doesn't like to wake up early. I hate morning events. But sometimes I don't have a choice and even my events start 8 a.m., just because that's how the schedule has to work. Being on the West Coast, I know it sucks to be fencing at what is 5 a.m. my time, but t
here's no way to start everything at 11 a.m. and make everyone happy, because again, we would be there till 2 in the morning if we did that. Of course, also, there's the people that prefer the morning, because then they can be finished and get out and catch their flight, or start driving home earlier. Again, this is one of those, you can't make everyone happy, because it's just, everyone's got a different preference.
Once I've finished doing the time schedules, I send it out to the same review group that did the review of the day schedules, and they'll point out any concerns they might have. The most common concern that they'll point out is if I have a case where let's say div 1 is in the morning, but junior was in the same weapon was in the afternoon the day before. Juniors that might also be fencing div 1, they'll have been fencing till 8 p.m., and then they have to show up for div 1 the next day at 8 a.m. That's not ideal in terms of giving them some rest.
Again, I try to schedule things to not do that. Sometimes it's not possible to avoid. The review group might point out things like that that might be problematic, and sometimes I can shift things by an hour here and there to give people a little more rest. Then, of course, once it's been reviewed and everyone's signed off on it, then it goes to the national office to be published. That's the end of my presentation.
There was one other thing which I was going to mention. This was a Vet specific comment, which was that the Vet events that are scheduled at 8 a.m. tend to be saber. The reason for that is that the saber events are fast. When they're Vet events, they're fairly small. The use of the replay strips is actually quite efficient. What happens is that if the saber events start at 8 a.m., they'll be ready to go to the replay strips by maybe 11 a.m. At 11 a.m., nobody else needs the replay pods, because they're still fencing their pools, or they're just starting their deez. One of the reasons why the saber events start early, to give them access to the replay pods early and if they were scheduled later, they would probably be waiting a bit before the replay pods to become available.
[0:48:44] BW: All right. Dan Berke, thank you so much for your time today and going through not just the tournament scheduling process, but also a little bit of Fencing Time and how it was formed. Really fascinating, and gave us a nice behind the scenes of your work and the work of so many people to make these tournaments happen. Thank you, Dan.
[0:49:03] DB: Thank you. Glad to share the info and hopefully, give people a better understanding of why things are scheduled the way they are. It might answer people's questions at least as to why, which at least people know that it's not being done randomly. There's a reason behind everything.
[0:49:23] BW: Yeah, there's a method to all the madness that happens behind the scenes at a tournament. For those of you who were just listening and want to see the video version of this, be sure to check out our YouTube channel. Fencing Time Live is your source for all things fencing tournament related. I assume everybody listening, or watching is very familiar with that site. The FIE, if you're listening, let's just make every tournament be run on Fencing Time. That's my parting thoughts. No shade to the other providers out there, but like I said earlier, when I see international tournaments using Fencing Time, I breathe a sigh of relief, I got to say. Well, Dan, thank you so much and hope to see you soon.
[0:49:59] DB: Okay. See you at nationals.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:50:01] BW: Thanks for listening to First of 15, the official podcast of USA Fencing. We'll be back with our next conversation in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, you can stay up to date on all the latest fencing news by following us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. If you like this podcast, please help us grow and reach more people by leaving us a rating, or review. Until next time, I'm Bryan Wendell, and I hope to see you real soon out on the strip. Bye.
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