Required Practice Time
This discussion has an associated proposal. View Proposal Details here.Comments about this discussion:
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The first "should" in the second paragraph should be a "must". Otherwise the rule has no real effect. Also, in the third sentence of the second paragraph, "can" is used, which is also very weak language. Is this the desired effect here?
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Thank you for those catches. I do not want it to be weak language that comes off merely as a suggestion, that would defeat the purpose of having a rule. I will update the proposal.
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It looks pretty good. There's always the concern that the gym might not be available for the amount of time needed for all this rehearsal (or would be at additional expense), but we should do our best to provide this. Not that it says "in the Freestyle competition venue", which is maybe a little less specific than you want. If the building contains multiple gyms you could end up in a different room. All else being equal, this could be fine, but not if they have different floors. Also the larger groups will want to work out their spacing based on the size of the available space.
Also the proposal says "before each Jr. Expert and Expert competition" but does not specify by how much. I think we'd agree that we want that practice time to be immediately before; as in the gap between those events and whatever came before them. Not a 6 am that morning. I think the best way to adjust the wording would be by adding "immediately", as in "must be reserved immediately before each Jr. Expert...". This still allows for some flexibility, like an awards presentation in between, for example, while fitting the intent of the rule.
You could run into problems with gyms that are either fully booked, or perhaps aren't set up in the way they will be for the Groups competition. Such as if equipment, bleachers/seating or other stuff is arranged in there in a way that's incompatible with the Groups competition.
I like the idea of this rule, but there may be situations where it's either impossible, or prohibitively expensive, to carry it out. What to do? I think go ahead with it, and if those situations arise, adapt in ways that keep the spirit of this rule, by giving people equal amounts of time with whatever space is actually available.
Also notice that Freestyle should be capitalized.
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John, thanks for your comments. I will fix the typo and add 'immediately'. Those are important changes.
I do think that there are sometimes when the gym isn't available for a ton of time. That's why I made the minimum only 15 minutes. Even in the USA, where Freestyle isn't very popular, we manage to squeak in practice times for the clubs. I think a 15 minute minimum is doable. At a Unicon, this needs to be possible and even at most smaller competitions it is. I also used the words "competition floor" to specify the location. This would mean that the groups would get to practice on the exact floor that they are using for the competition.