I thought it would be a good idea to start a new thread for this question rather than bog down the Nationals thread.

The questions was:

I thought these are qualifiers for Macau Club crew champs. Why are there crews combining for this event? Isn't that contrary to IDBF club crew definitions? Or are these crews going to be a year club and then break off again?

The Answer is:

Welcome to the new DBC.

The current Club Crew Guidelines encourage large paddle centers to combine into one club with multiple crews, Men's, Womens's Seniors etc. As someone else stated, we are not far from an eastern club around the Beasts, a 22 Dragons club from Quebec, and FCRCC from the West. Maybe Calgary and Edmonton get something going as well.

In Toronto there is already the Balmy group (Scotia Rouge Piranhas), the ADBC (Alliance), OHDBC and the Pickering group. Whether these Toronto groups further combine is anyone's guess.

Within this framework, any paddler can paddle for any team (Say a MOFO or Mayfair Warrior or Hammerhead within OHDBC) at any of the qualifying events and then the best of them all could enter a race off under any of the individual team names. For example a paddler could qualify for the OHDBC Club by racing a qualifier with the MOFOS and another with the Warriors and then do the race off with the Hammerheads).

While existing team structures and loyalties have so far limited this scenario "somewhat", the reality is that there are fewer and fewer individual team Club Crews every year. It could very quickly get to the point that many teams bypass the race offs due to the futility of racing against a paddle center all-star club crew filled race off.

The worry is that by doing this DBC and the club crew sports idea basically eats itself alive to the point where there isn't even enough "club crews" participating to even support holding the event in the first place.

If you look at the Nationals next week, while there are about 20 teams participating in the Premier Mixed class more than half are local teams from the Montreal area.

If the goal is to raise the level of competition, then it is very possible that this results in some very strong almost National Team level Club Crews. Just look at FCRCC, OHDBC Mayfair and the Beasts, but it could come at the expense of being able to support the Club Crew structure at all.

At the GWN Sport regatta they had to allow non sport crews into the event to help support the cost of running it. While this caused some flack about PFD's the really scary part was that it eventually lead to DBC distancing itself from the event even though they honored it as a qualifying event due to the late date. I'm sure this ended up being a big headache for GWN so I wonder if they would bother trying to run this format again.

This was predicted a few years ago and is slowly coming to fruition. It makes sense from the perspective of trying to promote and enable the formation of more Open, Woman's and perhaps Seniors teams perhaps, but it's probably going to continue wreaking havoc on the Mixed crews which are Canada's bread and butter.

Thoughts?

yes

A very good post (the original).

The essence of the issue is that DBC has to decide what the objectives of the Canadian club structure are...to increase numbers and general participation across the country or to build crews that can compete against top "club crews" from other countries at CCWC? The "problem" is that other countries send quasi-national teams to the CCWC, so to compete are we to do the same? This point was constantly offered with the opposition to the 2pp rule a few years back. Decide what is important and build your structure to serve that mandate.

If the objective is to encourage depth in numbers it in incumbent on all clubs/programs to find validation in events that are in Canada, ie: a true national championship. It may be that there will be tiering of the clubs (perhaps by size) and you will have A, AA, AAA champions and so on. Just one idea.

The situation exists in sprint as well, only a handfull of clubs have the numbers to win the national club championship. This is not a new problem.

Interesting points. Perhaps every club should be limited to sending 1 crew in each racing class. Thus, all the mixed premier teams enlisted under OHDBC, for example, would have to register as separate clubs.

This still allows clubs the flexibility to send in as many crews as they want, so long as they are in different racing classes. Obviously, paddle centres can still form under this framework, but all premier mixed crews from OHDBC that have their own World Club Crew ambitions would have to register as different 'clubs'.

Also, a paddler should be able to register in more than one club, so long as the crews that they are registered under are in different racing classes. That way, a Hammerheads woman can race under the Hammerheads 'club' for premier mixed and for the OHDBC 'club' for premier womens. Just throwing it out there.

That is very close to the way it used to work and I think a better balance.

As a slight variation on the same idea, I liked the idea whereby you could have up to 3 (I think it was three) clubs combining to form Men's and Women's Crews while keeping the Premier Mixed crews independent.

The risk with the alternative of enforcing a one class per club would be that the large paddle center clubs still form and are then forced to only have one Premier Mixed entry ensuring a lack of participation.

If you were to look at the Nationals lineup, the one crew per class would eliminate 6 crews from the Premier Mixed class since there are 3 from H2O, 4 from 22 Dragons and 2 3R crews.

Maybe the answer is to limit the membership on any given Club to say 40-50 members for any racing class in a given year.

You would think that it would be in DBC's best interest to try and foster an environment that would maximize membership in order to increase funding and allow for the support of more activities etc.

If the idea is just to send the best team possible to the club crew world championships then just send the national team like many others do and the next 4 best club crew teams. Stop playing silly bugger and just do it openly if that is the plan.

The reality is that the IDBF needs to get it's act together around enforcing some sort of Club Crew structure that prevents National Teams from competing and not the other way around where countries like Canada are forced to send quasi-National Teams just to be competitive.

This unfortunately is problematic for the IDBF in that trying to promote the sport in many countries that do not yet have viable Club Crew programs, they are forced to encourage "any" participation. This has the double benefit of improving the overall participation numbers and the events image as well as helping to promote the sport in those countries until such a time as they do have the club crew structure in place.

I personally think it is a mistake to kill what could be a very healthy club crew and sport racing system in Canada to compensate for a failing at the world Club Crew level by the IDBF. At some point in time, the IDBF will get it's act together in this regard when there are enough viable Club Crew structures in enough countries and then it will be us who have organized ourselves differently and/or do not have the numbers in place to support the programs in the first place.

I my mind I always thought that the Club Crew sport racing idea was intended to promote a premium level of competitive dragon boar racing encouraging growth and more and more strong crews nationally which would then in turn provide more and more premium paddlers for the national teams to draw from. Having it result in 5-7 All-Star Club Crews and the rest festival racing crews takes us back 5 years in sport racing development. Good luck in 2-4 years when the race off has 7 entries and you just end up doing it by drawing because you can't afford to have the race off. And yes, that is obviously a worse case scenario, but we are surprisingly close to it already today.

Personally I'd rather see stronger "club crews" of merged all-star paddlers going to the worlds than having a greater number of club crews showing up at race-offs. It's a bit of a joke in my mind that someone like myself could potentially go to the "worlds", albeit for club crew, and only train about 10 hours a week (if not at the premier then certainly for other catagories where there just aren't many crews). In most other sporting disciplines that would not put you anywhere close to being able to compete at a "national level".

I don't really see the good of having more sport-crews going to the nationals. Train hard, race in festivals, have fun, and leave world competition to Canada's top paddlers who are willing to put in the hours and represent Canada at its best.

Dont confuse the world "club crew" championships to the world championships... Just because a club is racing internationally does not make them "national level".

I think the problem is that there won't be an Nationals for Club Crews if there are so few it can't support itself.

We're not so much talking about the level of competition and the viability of putting on Club Crew Sport races at all if there are not enough players.

In any event, that is why it is club crew world championships and not the World Championships. It's the same in any other sport that has both. The relative amount of training required depends on the sport.

In fact the more competitive club crews there are and competitive paddlers, the more you would have to work out to make one of them. I assure you that training year round for 5-10 hours a week for a sport is probably a lot higher than some sports would train (like say softball, Rugby or whatever). I played provincial rugby and only trained 3 hrs a week.

"Dont confuse the world "club crew" championships to the world championships... Just because a club is racing internationally does not make them "national level"."

Ok. If the purpose of the club crew world championships is not to put the best "club crews" forward, than what is it? You could just deem one international event a super dragon boat party and have a bunch of teams from around the world show up and party.

Merged all-star crews are not club crews. Which obviously defeats the purpose of club crew championships dont you think? If the best legit club crews each country puts forward contains non-national level paddlers then so be it.

I thought club crew just meant trained upder the same roof and competed in festivals as a crew prior to the worlds. All-star just meant that teams have pooled together their best to put forward a superior club crew.

It just seems wrong to have a world anything and intentionally try not to have the top crews that meet the club crew criteria.

So the breakdown is: (examples) Country>Club>Team, ie Canada>OHDBC>Mayfair Warriors, or whatever.

Normal dragonboat festivals are team vs team. There should be no crosspollinating to form Super-Conglomerate AllStar Boats. Mayfair vs other competitiive teams vs Joe Shmo Corporates vs BCS teams.

Club Crew Races: All the Teams under one Club can combine to form an AllStar Club boat. They race against other Club boats for national and world club standings.

Worlds (Prague): The Best Club Crew in the country represents said country at worlds? Or does Team Canada get to pick and choose top talent from each club to represent the COuntry, forming an AllStar, All Club, Super-Super team?

Is this sane?

Except that under that grouping there are not enough teams in your middle "Club Crew" bracket for organizers to bother putting on events for you.

I think the divisions should be National Teams > Club Crews > recreation crews. In this instance Club Crews means something more than a recreational crew, but less that a paddle center all-star team.

Think about it. If there were only 5-7 super clubs, then that's only 100-140(ish) competitors in each class even participating in Club Crew Sport racing in Canada. Surely that is not the goal.

Like I said, if we must send a National Team to Club Crews in order to be competitive (and I don't believe that), then just send them and lets have 50 other club crews develop across Canada to race each other regularly and fight for the other spots.

Maybe existing team/crew lines will continue to resist amalgamation and maintain independence, but if you think about recent examples, we actually need MORE club crews competing rather than less to even support the concept and justify having any sport races to race in.

I'm not saying that it is fundamentally wrong to want to develop the best club crews we can, but it's simple math (or dollars and sense) that without enough crews to compete it won't matter.

Maybe they should just do it by region since there won't be enough crews competing to make a race off worthwhile.

Just award the mandate to 5 pre-selected supercenters. The East Coast (lead by Beasts), Quebec (22dragons), Ontario (maybe two clubs to be formed) and the West (under FCRCC). Everyone in those regions who want to race club crews can try out for one of those teams. Of course that would hurt a whole bunch of other crews that they leave from, but who cares.

Myself I prefer a team/club crew based system where people can compete with the teams and friends they grew into the sport with.

I don't think the question here is do we want to send better crews, but rather do we want to even be able to have club crews at all. Unless DBC has the means to fund these races at a loss, which I doubt they will with the membership numbers they will end up with.

"...You could just deem one international event a super dragon boat party and have a bunch of teams from around the world show up and party. "

Sounds friggin' awesome!

Sign me up!

"Maybe existing team/crew lines will continue to resist amalgamation and maintain independence, but if you think about recent examples, we actually need MORE club crews competing rather than less to even support the concept and justify having any sport races to race in."

The number of people interested in competative dragon boat racing and thus sport racing will be the same regardless of the club crew structure. You just might not get all club crews going to the nationals - although I don't know why, even if you don't win a spot you get to race against the best. The above statement is not true.

I would say that given the issues with the GWN Sports Regatta and that many class's at the Nationals will go uncontested that the above statement is in fact true and we could use more club crews.

Even if it remained the same, we for sure do not want less competition.

Your statement about all of a sudden their being less competitive paddlers is correct (of course their won't be), but there well may be less competitive teams for them to get involved with at a club crew sports racing level.

While Pickering pretty much already does this, what would the Hammerheads, Warriors, Hydros, MOFOS, and the rest do if OHDBC decided to put together a main team for each class? The individual teams would almost assuredly not compete against their clubs super team that already has their best members on it.

They would all just go back to festival racing which isn't to say that wouldn't be competitive, but I don't think that is DBC's vision either.

Sure they do. Mayfair is the top OHDBC team. Everyone else, including Chaos, still race against them.

"Your statement about all of a sudden their being less competitive paddlers is correct (of course their won't be), but there well may be less competitive teams for them to get involved with at a club crew sports racing level. "

No, with the same number of competative paddlers, you get the same number of competative teams, just some will be better than others.

What will happen is that the teams will get more homogenious, with paddlers generally being at the same level of ability. So you'll have your top crew of people who really spend a ton of time paddling, your second crew, with people not quite willing to commit as much,...etc., down to a team that is competative but not at the same level as the rest.

I'd say this is a good thing. It sucks being on a boat where half the people are willing to put in a bunch of hours each week and a bunch of people just coast.

OK, maybe a bad example since Chaos bowed out of Nationals and it probably had little to do with what we are talking about.

There are teams that as a general rule pretty much only go to regattas that have as high a level of competition as they can find.

These folks will still be going. And no matter what anyone does there will still be crews within these structures that will not split up their roster to do club crews and will go it alone accepting the help of a paddler or two if they need it.

Just really try and picture the scenario for a second.

5-7 paddle centers all put forth the best teams they can. Or maybe you just see one team entered for any given paddle center and you have no idea who is actually paddling on that team for that event.

Absolutely there will still be some other teams that go. Maybe not every team is part of a paddle center and maybe as I said above not all the teams in a given paddle center want to play that way.

But you start with 5-7 teams and then add how many more that will participate? Another 5 or 10? We know that that isn't enough to have the event already.

At the GWN sports regatta, with a chance to race the Beast, Mayfair and high caliber combo team from MTL we couldn't even get 20 DBC registered sport racing crews to show up. I would prefer a structure that works to improve that and I don't see that happening the way things seem to be going.

"But you start with 5-7 teams and then add how many more that will participate? Another 5 or 10? We know that that isn't enough to have the event already."

If you believe there are only 10-17 sport teams in Ontario and Quebec that are willing to show up at a sport regatta. If you start with 5-7 teams and 5 to 10 show up it is exactly the same as starting with 10 teams and having only 5 show up. The structure has nothing to do with the number of sport teams, just the quality of the top sport teams.

Our team has never shied away from a festival because Mayfair is going and we know we won't win so long as we get to race other sport crews at our level.

...it seams like your fear is winning less medals because there will be some really good crews out there. But we all know that the medals in the D division are just as nice as those in A.

While qualifying for and racing at the Club Crew level is no where near the same as for the Worlds, the level of commitment required is typically more what the average crew is capable of. This is why few teams, or "true club crew teams" as some of you seem to want to define them as, ever make it beyond commiting to qualify. There are exceptions, of course (Mayfair/SCC/put your name here if you feel slighted that i didn't mention your team), but this is the reality of why most teams that we know of (that race together year after year), never make it beyond their own pond.

And so, enter the modern day club crew combo team. These teams come together for the single purpose of qualifying, racing, travelling and having fun together. These teams put in the time, commitment, and MONEY in order to represent their club/team at the club crews in the same way as every other team that might have been together longer.

And so, while such teams may be short lived, I can only suggest that you talk to these people who you feel competed as a team, but were not a true club crew team if they felt the bond of being a part of a team. I'm sure they would have something interesting to tell you.

DM

Right on.

IDBF has club crew rules. DBC CC rules have always been more restictive ; 2pp rule , definition of club crew , racing as a crew requirements etc.
The recent changes are simply DBC bring their club crew definition more in line with IDBF rules , although DBC rules are still more restrictive than IDBF rules.

Every time this topic comes up it's only a matter of time before someone suggests that people worried about the direction things seem to be going are just afraid to compete.

If you actually read what people are saying, you would see that it is a worry about having less competition than having more.

I would rather have 20-30 really good club crews out there to race against at every event rather than there just be 1-2 super club crews in my area to race. Many crews at many races, or a couple really good crews at a couple races. If you take that to mean that I'm afraid to compete then so be it.

Right now I think there are a lot of teams that train that extra amount with Club Crews and Sports regattas in mind. If that motivation were removed (or lessened) at the individual crew level then I think that the overall competitiveness would go down, which is what I do not want.

"I would rather have 20-30 really good club crews out there to race against at every event rather than there just be 1-2 super club crews in my area to race."

Ok, so say we have 25 good club crews, or 625 competative paddlers. Do you really think with the new rules that only 2 super club crews wil be formed and the other 575 competative paddlers will quit the sport never to race again? No, there will be 2 super club crews and 23 good club crews who will still race against each other.

There is not reason that competative teams will just give up and disappear if a few top teams emerge. If so Mayfair would have already caused Dragon Boating in Toronto to colapse, or FCRCC in B.C., or the Beasts in Halifax.

The Montreal festival women's division had 45 crews this year. The Montreal women's team has won the event something like 10 years in a row. The women's division has only grown.

"Ok, so say we have 25 good club crews, or 625 competitive paddlers. Do you really think with the new rules that only 2 super club crews wil be formed and the other 575 competitive paddlers will quit the sport never to race again? No, there will be 2 super club crews and 23 good club crews who will still race against each other.

There is not reason that competitive teams will just give up and disappear if a few top teams emerge. If so Mayfair would have already caused Dragon Boating in Toronto to colapse, or FCRCC in B.C., or the Beasts in Halifax."


Your kinda missing the point. I agree that Mayfair going to a festival draws teams in many cases. A couple Mayfairs going to a Club Crew race off or Nationals isn't going to deter to many people in fact it will still draw many.

7 Mayfairs going to a club crew race off may be a different story. Especially if the folks that make up those 7 Mayfairs all come from the pool of other teams that would otherwise be competing as well.

I doubt anything will happen to deter teams from the average regatta (including the likes of Alcan, Ottawa, The Island, GWN 911, Montreal unless it's a practice event for their super crew), but for myself I would like to see a tier of competitive racing available between those festivals and the National Team.

Maybe there will/would never have been the numbers to make it work even without the direction things seem to be going, but it just seem more likely to happen one way versus the other. Part of what's different now is at the top there is some Eb-and-flow with teams coming up and others slipping a bit. Not sure how a dynamic where you knew now that next year and the year after and the year after the same paddle centre club crews would be almost impossible to beat would effect the landscape.

Maybe it wouldn't at all, but I'm not so sure.

Bang on!

While qualifying for and racing at the Club Crew level is no where near the same as for the Worlds, the level of commitment required is typically more what the average crew is capable of. This is why few teams, or "true club crew teams" as some of you seem to want to define them as, ever make it beyond commiting to qualify. There are exceptions, of course (Mayfair/SCC/put your name here if you feel slighted that i didn't mention your team), but this is the reality of why most teams that we know of (that race together year after year), never make it beyond their own pond.

And so, enter the modern day club crew combo team. These teams come together for the single purpose of qualifying, racing, travelling and having fun together. These teams put in the time, commitment, and MONEY in order to represent their club/team at the club crews in the same way as every other team that might have been together longer.

And so, while such teams may be short lived, I can only suggest that you talk to these people who you feel competed as a team, but were not a true club crew team if they felt the bond of being a part of a team. I'm sure they would have something interesting to tell you.

"I doubt anything will happen to deter teams from the average regatta (including the likes of Alcan, Ottawa, The Island, GWN 911, Montreal unless it's a practice event for their super crew), but for myself I would like to see a tier of competitive racing available between those festivals and the National Team."

Wouldn't this tier just race at the nationals, and not win? Why do we need special rules to try to have a world championship for this group? Why not also have a worlds for the tier below, and the tier below?

Well I guess you can talk to the IDBF about scrapping the Club Crew idea, but as long as they have it then I don't understand what point it is exactly that you are trying to make.

That said, they do or did have another layer below Club Crews and it was/is called Corporate Games or whatever. Not even sure if it is still being run.

Any comments after the nationals?

How did each club fair in terms of Macau berths?

Here were the National Points:

Club and Divisional Points
Club Premier U23 Sr GD Total
1 22Dragons 251 0 18 16 285
2 Alliance 72 16 63 26 177
3 3R Dragon 133 0 0 0 133
4 H2O Playground 117 0 9 0 126
5 PDBC 0 20 16 66 102
6 OHDBC 64 0 16 0 80
7 Scotia Rouge Piranhas 68 0 0 0 68
8 SCC 66 0 0 0 66
9 EDBRC 41 0 0 0 41
10 New College 0 42 0 0 42
11 Big Fish 35 0 0 0 35
12 MDBRC 33 0 0 0 33
13 Sudden Impact 22 0 0 0 22
14 Galley Girls 15 0 0 0 15
15 Stratford 11 0 0 0 11
16 Cascades 7 0 0 0 7
17 Hydro Quebec 0 0 7 0 7
18 CBD Ville de Quebec 6 0 0 0 6
19 Cobourg 0 0 0 4 4

Not impressed. The points are awarded to anyone who shows. Clubs with the largest numbers will always win. Flood the event with teams = win the burgie.

right

national champs = reward the crew
club champs = reward the club

Nothing wrong with both. something to promote the elite, and participation.

and DBC didn't want this to evolve into massive clubs....
wait until 3R, H2O and 22 Dragons merge into one.