Let’s say I’m running a scholastic tournament during the summer, after the school year has ended. I have three sections: K–3, 4–6 and 7–12. Are students placed in sections based on the grade they’ve just completed or the grade they’re going into?
That’s one of the reasons I don’t like holding scholastics in summer. It’s really up to you as organizer to set a policy on this.
If it was before August 1st, I’d probably base it on grades for the 2009-2010 school year, but I wouldn’t expect the turnout to be very high.
That’s fine with me, actually, because after seeing the turnout at a recent tournament in Rockford, I’m worried about exceeding our room capacity.
The event is going to be on June 26, so I’ll go with previous year’s class standings. Thanks.
The summer is the right time for age-based events or rating-based events, not grade-based ones.
Unfortunately, I have to work within the limits of JTP.
We base the sections at our summer tournaments on the grade just completed, and I try to double check it when people arrive. No matter whether you use the past year’s grade or next year’s grade,there are always a few who don’t read the fine print (or in this case, large print). We run individual-only competition in the summer, as opposed to individual-team during the school year.
This was a question I thought of about scholastic tournaments. How do you verify what grade someone is in?
For the most part, school grades are confirmed the same way you would confirm someone’s identity, birthdate, or address. You ask for the information and you assume that they answer honestly.
I have not seen many TDs ask to see a driver’s license from players, especially from players who registered in advance. (It’s probably more likely to happen in big dollar tournaments.)
For a local event, many of the young players (and their coaches) will know each other, so there’s a reasonable chance they would know what grades they’re in as well.
I suppose you could ask to see their report card. 
As Mike said, a lot of the players know each other, and there’s not much incentive to lie about it. For the summer tournaments, I just make sure people understand that we want the past year’s grade, but we don’t ask for proof.
So what happens if some kid, clearly at least 15, signs up for the K-6 section? How could he prove that he’s really just stupid?
When we process registrations for national scholastic events, we use the birthdate as a double-check on the grade level. (For example, someone in first grade may need to be no younger than 5 and no older than 8.)
I can only recall a handful of times where we have had to override the birthdate checks. Most of them were for students who were in higher grade than is normal for their age, and several of those were being home-schooled. I do recall a registration from someone who was several years older than the normal age for the grade he was in, I believe it was for someone who was developmentally challenged.
So it’s set up as an age event, really. But can be overridden with proof of grade level I guess?
In the case of the national scholastics, the sections are all based on school grades, not age.
Birthdates are just used as a ‘reasonableness check’.
But the office makes no effort to document the actual grade a student is in, relying instead on the student’s age.
How would you suggest we do that?
No, that is not what he said.
But at the national elementary just concluded there were some 2100 players. There are not enough hours inthe sday to contact each school and ask what grade a kid is in.
It is pretty clear walking into the playing hall for K-1 if a kid is extraordinarily big for the grade level. It is not at all easy to tell if someone is extraordinarily small for his age and thus over the grade.
There is no national clearinghouse to check what grade someone is in - neither is there any standard form of ID to label one as an elementary student.
I suspect if the USCF attempted to contact most schools, they wouldn’t answer the question, anyway, because of privacy policies.
So to ask the question that I believe Mr. Ammann is trying to ask, what, if anything, will the office do to verify that the players in his JTP section have just completed grades K-3?
Alex Relyea
I wasn’t suggesting USCF verify someone’s grade level. I was only pointing out that it’s kind of silly to have grade level tournament sections when we can’t possibly verify that kids are in the proper section.