My contact at the public library wants to set up another free youth tournament. She has offered me three weekends. Two are flat-out impossible for me. The third is May 28.
I have a bad feeling about this. As I said to her, my hunch is that turnout will be disastrously low, because kids will be beholden to their families’ plans for the three-day weekend. However, without firsthand knowledge, I can’t be sure. (I’ve heard a few people say holiday weekends are big among adult chess players who are trying to get away from their families for a while, but kids obviously don’t have this option.)
What has been other organizers’ experience with attempting to hold tournaments on holiday weekends?
The Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends appear to be popular times for quite a few state championships. In Massachusetts, the state championship (the Massachusetts Open) is usually held Memorial Day weekend. The New England Open is usually held Labor Day weekend.
Those two are probably the most “universal” three-day weekends. Others, such as Columbus Day and Presidents Day, seem to be work days for more and more people every year.
Memorial Day weekend is a huge day for soccer tournaments for kids in travel soccer. I’m not sure whether youth baseball takes the holiday weekend off or not. For this reason, I would never schedule a scholastic chess tournament on Memorial Day weekend in our suburban Chicago area, where soccer participation is big. The situation may be different in your area.
In fact, we used to look at the scholastic chess season as running from November through March, on the theory that outdoor sports become a priority for most families September-November and April-June. Sure, the committed youth players will play all year round, but scholastic tournament numbers always fell off during fall and spring.
These days, sports are year-round endeavors, with kids playing their chosen sport year round. IMO, this accounts for lower rated scholastic tournament attendance in my area.
It’s different for adult players, who need three full days (at least) to play a tournament at classical time controls. Even so, I don’t know how amateur adult players with school-age children can give up more than one full holiday weekend a year.
Rather to my surprise, when I asked the players on my middle school team about it today, not one of them thought there would be any problem at all with a tournament on Memorial Day weekend. Yet another reminder of how utterly dissimilar where I’m living is from where I grew up. (For one thing, I have never once seen anyone out here, young or old, play soccer.)
One thing I’d strongly recommend you look into is whether there are any major tournaments scheduled for that weekend that might compete with yours for kids. The bad news is that you can’t know for sure what your competition would be until the beginning of May, since some ads won’t go in before that. The good news is that the really major tournaments are advertised months in advance, so you can probably already find them on this site.
This free kids tournament will attract players of what rating range? I guess mostly under 1200 or under 1400? Unless you live close enough to Chicago or the two California tournaments, you’ll see negligible effect from competing chess events. Club sports and family plans, however, may be different.
Unless there’s additional information to present, I don’t see the concern by the previous posters. For the most part, scholastic tournaments do not conflict with adult events. (except national or state championships)
Google calendar really works well for tournament calendars. Tom Langland has done a great job upgrading from my amateurish calendar (mid 2000’s) to a more professional looking one. Data entry still takes time, but at least Google handles the sorting and formatting nicely.
Probable disaster; in terms of attendance; Surveying kids this far out useless as they are largely unaware of family plans for Memorial Day. Besides come late May, family camping trip to the lake may sound much better than another chess tournament.
What would qualify as “disaster” in this case? Do you have any out of pocket expenses in running it? Do you fear losing momentum for future events? Would the library decide they won’t have any more events / would they go in the red on it?
(Not trying to say you don’t have cause for concern. I’d think long and hard about doing something on Memorial Day weekend, too…)
