August 22, 2003

Dear Midwest NAR member,

We are working a little harder to promote MWRC this year, in order to revive interest in NAR competition while many Midwest NAR members have memories of NARAM 45 fresh in their minds. NARAMs in the Midwest do not occur that frequently. Last year’s NARAM was in Texas. Next year’s NARAM will be in Virginia (and who knows the year after that). For those of us in the Midwest, this year’s NARAM may be the last one we get to for a while. That doesn’t mean we have to miss out on multi-section NAR competition however. There are always a number of NAR sanctioned contests in the Midwest each year. But, a recent informal survey of a number of sections in the Midwest indicates a difficulty in getting a good turnout of competitors. WOOSH has been discussing this issue amongst its members for the last few weeks. A couple of ideas have come out of those discussions. One is to initiate a Midwest competition series similar to the Texas state championship or the northeast MADROC series. The idea would be to crown Midwest champions based on point totals from three regional meets. While many liked this idea, others felt it might be too ambitious at this time (hard to get people to travel to 2 or 3 “away” meets). The other idea was to make MWRC a “traveling” meet with a different Midwest section hosting it each year. To make this work, as many competitors, would be competitors, and just plain fly for fun participants as possible would need to attend each year. The hope is to make it the biggest contest launch (at least in the Midwest, if not in the country) short of NARAM with a weekend filled with the kind of friendly competition camaraderie and fun many of us experienced at NARAM 45.

To kick this off, we are making a special effort to invite everyone to this year’s MWRC. We would like participants from all interested sections to attend so that we can plan and discuss this idea further. WOOSH does have a concern that you might be somewhat wary of us promoting this idea at this time. Will some be put off by this invitation because they think we just want to have newbie competitors from other clubs show up so we can “beat up on them”? Believe me, nothing could be further from the truth. In recent years, WOOSH members have attended a number of contests in Michigan, Missouri, and Indiana. Often, we are the only “out of towners” there, and in some cases, have had more contestants than the host club. We have also had very few visitors to our own regionals in recent years. We think part of the issue is that even regional contests aren’t a big deal like NARAM. People just aren’t that excited to go to them. The idea behind MWRC back when NIRA started it and when WOOSH revived it was to make it the Midwest’s BIG regional. The fun and excitement that goes with that and the increased interest in competition is what we are after. If you have ever been to an ECRM, WUBBA, or RAMTEC meet out east, you know the kind of excitement and fun a big regional meet can be. Hopefully a big event like this will keep participants coming back year after year.

Another idea that we are considering is to score the Midwest section championship using an Internats scoring style. That is, for each event, each section would designate three of their clubs entries to be flown for the Midwest championship. The points for that event in the Midwest championship scoring for each section would be based on the cumulative score for those three entries. Thus, a section would only need to field three contestants for a shot at the championship with those three flying all of the events for the section championship points. Sections with more than three contestants entered could designate different sets of three contestants for the different events. Note that this would be just for scoring the points for the Midwest section championship. The contest would run as a normal regional with all contestants flying all events and the NAR points awarded per the Pink Book for the contestants and the sections. The Midwest section championship scoring would be done separately. It is just an idea to prevent the section with the most contestants flying from running away with the championship. This scoring method was done in New York state back in the mid nineties when they ran the NYSPACE series of competitions (also a traveling regional).

Finally, we have also discussed asking all interested sections to pay a one time fee (of say $20) to purchase a nice “rotating trophy”. No, not a trophy that spins, a nice sized trophy that would go from year to year to the winning section. One idea is a trophy with a large “victory cup” with a rocket on top. Inside the cup the winning section each year could add an item of their choice. In order to see what is in the cup as the years go by, a section would have to win it. This is, of course, an idea stolen from the NAR section newsletter trophy. The trophy would also need to have a place for a large nameplate and each year the winning section and the year would be engraved on it. Each year the host section would be expected to provide a section champion trophy that the winning section could keep plus trophies for the individual and team champions.

These are just some of the ideas that WOOSH has been discussing with regards to NAR competition in the Midwest. This year, for MWRC, we decided not to have a craftsmanship event so that Saturday night (usually the time when the judging takes place) will be free for everyone to discuss these ideas and hopefully come to a consensus as to what to do to promote NAR competition in the Midwest. We hope you and/or other members of your section will plan to join us on September 27^th and 28^th at MWRC 2003.

Sincerely,

Daniel W. Wolf

MWRC 2003 Contest Director