A group of us were having a conversation at training last night, and we realised that there were probably some things wrong with the way in which we've been counting points for the Club's own internal Hasler shield.
Firstly there was the issue of what we do with Lightnings. It's always been our wish to include Lightnings in the running for the main trophy, especially given that in most years we seem to have members crossing-over between Lightnings and the senior race. Because there isn't any divisional structure within Lightnings we felt that we had to use the standard Hasler split of Lighning races counting 10 points and down compared to the senior race being 20 points and down.
What we have realised however is that this means that people who *just* race Lightnings aren't getting adequate recognition, and so we've decided that as well as Lightning points being counted within the main club table, we'll maintain a separate "champions" list for the Lighning paddlers to ensure that their efforts don't get overlooked.
Secondly, it was pointed out that the Hasler Race Management system includes a number of relatively complex rules about discounting the points of people racing "out of region" as well as the rather ridiculous rule about your points only counting if you're within 110% of the time of the winning Team which cost us, as a club, so many points at Gailey.
The national Hasler rules do provide a useful starting point, but we don't feel that we need to be bound by them, so what we are proposing for the internal club trophy are scoring rules as follows.
1. You can earn points for the club Trophy by competing in any qualifying regional race - for Midlands this is Ironbridge, Fladbury, Lincoln, Gailey, Anker Valley, Worcester, Leamington, Nottingham, Buron, Hereford, Shropshire and Soar Valley.
2. Of course we would encourage people to compete outside of region (and we sometimes do) but this helps us to focus on the fact that we need regional qualifying points to take us to the Hasler finals.
3. You will earn points based on your position *on the day* irrespective of whether the people you are competing with are paddling in our out of their own region. We're all doing the same race after all.
4. Points will be awarded for seniors starting as 20 for a 1st, 19 for a second and so forth down to 1 point for everyone who completes the race. We will ignore the "your points don't count if there's a very fast team in your race" rule which the BCU uses.
5. Lightings will have a similar system starting at 10 points, *but* we will actively recognise the efforts and results of our Lightning paddlers by maintaining a separate award just for Lightnings. Lightning points will also count towards the main trophy for members who are moving between Lightnings and the Senior race.
I'm going to go back and correct the table based on these changes to the rules as it was felt that the Gailey results unfairly penalised a number of our K2 teams. An event where there are a large number of out-of-region paddlers (such as you get at an assessment race or as happened at Worcester) would also skew the numbers from what we are trying to do with this award - "To encourage consistent successful paddling which contributes to the standing of the club nationally and recognises personal achievement".
We appreciate that this may cause some changes in the middle of the table (I don't think it will make any difference at the top) and that effectively we're changing the rules halfway through the game, but it seemed to us these were imnportant changes. If anyone has strong objections to these changes or they think that we've missed somethingthen please give Deb or I a call.
I'm confident that the race team will be guided by wanting to make the rules fair for everyone rather than requesting changes which improve their own particular standing in the table - remember we're only half way through the season so there is everything still to play for.
