Dear Kendoka:
The Sixth Annual Annapolis Tournament had to be cancelled due to administrative problems encountered at the Anne Arundel Community College. For the past five years we have offered the seminar/tournament at the college as a learning seminar (which is why the registration forms go to the college).
The purpose of the seminar has always been two fold: 1) To train our growing Mudansha members in proper court reiho, basic kendo,and testing procedures. 2) To train Yudansha in judging for tournaments and testing. Then we had the tournament as a practice of the lessons learned during the seminar. This year we planned to add a session on Kendo Kata and Kihon Kendo Kata since so many kendoka have expressed their lack of training in this aspect of their training (please note Strawn-Sensei's reference to the lack of training in kata from the Atlanta promotion).
Unfortunately, someone in administration took exception to our waiving the out-of-state/out-of-county fees on the registration form and decided to cancel the seminar while I was at the Omaha Iaido seminar (these fees have always been waived in the past due to the distance traveled by kendoka and the specialized population of our group). As soon as I saw this on my email I worked with the seminar coordinater at the college to resolve the problem. On Wednesday, I was informed that we could offer the seminar as a special event but had to go through Event Services at the college. They said that the fees for the event would be $2500 plus certificate of insurance for $2m from AUSKF. I tried to obtain the certificate from AUSKF but the time frame was too short. The college uses an online company for one day event insurance which was estimated between $7 & $800. Cutting the seminar/tournament to one day gave a cost of $950.
The fees for the tournament are designed for us to break even. With the one day event insurance, we would take a loss of $800, therefore I had to cancel the event with great regret. I am told that this kind of thing happens all the time, but I have never had this problem myself.
The point of this message is to inform the kendoka of some of the problems that tournament organizers run into. Strawn-Sensei has talked of the problems in organizing tournaments in the past. Keep them in mind for the future. Backup, backup, backup!!
For those kendoka who wish to comment about the "cancellation" of our tournament, please email the President of the college - Dr. Martha Smith at masmith@aacc.edu and myself at lfs_mekugi@att.net. Please keep in mind that I am asking for a meeting to discuss this mess and the continuation of our ten year program with the college.
Thank you for your encouragement and support.
Larry Scanlon - Annapolis Kendo Iaido Club
So get those emails going if you have comments about this.
