I’m going to be taking over MD duties for Steel Challenge matches for our club next year (with current MD helping). Events are 60-100 participants, with 7-8 stages. Level 1 only.
Currently, once participants are approved, they can squad anywhere. There is a staff squad, for ROs/staff that don’t care what squad they are placed in. The MD looks at the squads and may move staff/ROs, so that squads have enough staff, or may create a new squad.
On signup, we have a checkbox asking if they are willing to RO/staff (comp’ed) and another asking if they are NROI certified RO.
As a new MD, I know some of the ROs, but not all, so I have a few questions:
- Is there a way that I can see the people marked as RO/staff and NROI, when looking at squadding info on the web site?
- Are there other squadding methods that may help me figure out staff squadding distribution?
I see at one club, the MD has all RO/staff squad to a staff squad and he distributes the staff among the squads manually. It seems to allow the MD to ensure staff squadding is balanced, but sounds like a lot of work for the MD.
I see another club has multiple staff squads with 3 entries, each matching the competitor squads (11 for 1, 22 for 2,…), and these staff/ROs are directed to sign up for those squads, and the MD moves them to the competitor squads, where there are 3 reserved slots. That seems to give the staff a choice, and helps the MD with squadding, maybe only requiring some tweaks (combining squads, if not enough staff for a pair of squads.
This latter one seems like it may be better for a new MD like me, whereas the current scheme we use seems good if the MD is more experienced (and maybe after months of working with the existing MD, I can pick it up).
I’d love to hear comments about these methods, and any other suggestions I should consider, from folks that are experienced with (relatively) smallish matches like ours.