We have a number of Junior Tournament Players (JTPs) in our club, and some have told me that they saw on the USCF website that their memberships had “expired” although they were nowhere near 19 years old. When I looked in the MSA I found that some are indeed listed as “non-members”. We had one or two of these in the past, and I thought they were isolated instances. Is it actually the way the computer handles the JTP expiration date - after one year, their membership “expires” although they may only be 14 years old? I can imagine that the JTPs present some programming challenges, so if this is the way it will be from now on (saying “non-member” even though they are members) I can explain that to them. On the other hand, if it needs to be handled case-by-case as before I will send a list of changes to whomever you recommend. I have been told that the JTP membership is not being obsoleted, and I hope that’s still true in the future. Thanks for your help…
They have a USCF ID for the purpose of playing in certain types of events, but they have not paid USCF dues so they cannot be listed as USCF members nor can they play in events where USCF membership is required.
The types of events that JTP’s can play in without becoming dues-paying USCF members are limited to:
Primary events (no students above 3rd grade), other than national events.
In-school (K-12) events run by a scholastic affiliate where all players are students in that school.
There seems to be some question as to whether matches between two schools can be rated as a JTP event. I cannot find any documentation of that as a membership-exempt ratable JTP event. (If someone can point that out in current USCF literature, please let me know.)
Followup: As far as anyone at the USCF office can tell, matches between schools have never been permitted to be rated under the JTP program. Therefore, it is USCF policy that players in matches between two schools must be current USCF members in order for such a match to be USCF rated.
Thank you very much for clarifying the JTP issue for us. It appears that I did not have a good understanding of the option at all…
A little background on our club - we began as a Scholastic club with members coming from all different schools in our district. It emerged as a natural outgrowth of the community “Learn to Play Chess” program that I ran a few years back. We are now truly a community club, with a Regular affiliation and interest in building up both scholastic and adult participation.
In the past, we issued JTP numbers with the understanding that the players could only play in our club-sponsored events with these numbers, and if they wanted to play in others they would have to convert to paid memberships. However, based on what you have said, we should probably not be issuing JTP numbers at all, since our tournaments are not in-school events and the students in our club are from more than one school. Is this correct? If so, we will stop issuing JTP numbers as of this date and will work toward converting the current JTPs to paid memberships.
Sorry for the long reply and thanks again for your help!
John, I’ve stated what I believe to be USCF policy.
I tend to agree that what you are doing seems to be beyond the intended parameters of the JTP program.
However, I’ve forwarded a transcript of this thread to the USCF office, because there are policy issues that they should probably provide the final answers to.