Time to tip another sacred cow. :)
This weekend, Detroit Region held it's Season Ender event, which drew (if I got
the right numbers) 208 cars.
A couple of these cars were new STU recruits. There would have been more of
them, but there was a big car show in Toronto that a lot of them had already
committed to. Lesson learned: promote events well in advance!
So I got to be a mentor for a day, which included teaching the newbies how the
process of an event worked - which included a little bit of a suprise on their
part when they discovered that they were required to work a shift chasing cones.
There was no resistance, just a little suprise - especially on the part of
family members who had come along to spectate, had seen their guy run, and who
wanted to go home.
One of my newbies is from Japan, and he observed that Japanese Gymkhana events
provided staff workers to do the cone chasing. He also noted that the entry fees
were MUCH higher - on the order of $60-$70 per event.
Now I've heard from other people (not these guys) the expressed opinion that
"autocross sucks because they make you stand around in the sun for two hours
chasing cones and it eats your whole day to get 2 min of seat time". Those of us
who have been around a little longer (or are perhaps made of stronger stuff)
understand that by working, we keep costs down, and so make the sport affordable
to all. Some time spend shagging cones is a small price to pay if that's what it
takes to keep the sport going.
But yet, although I willingly go out to do my worker shift, that doesn't mean I
necessarily look forward to it.... My life would be none the poorer if I didn't
have to shag cones. And if it helped member retention at all, that's doubly
good.
But yet, it also seems unreasonable to ask for volenteers to work an entire
event while everybody else runs. In the absence of compensation for workers, it
makes more sense to spread the pain as wide as possible - as the current system
does.
So then, in order to have dedicated "pro" cone chasers, it follows that they
have to be compensated somehow. There is precident in other sports - I used to
work, back in my tender years, as a "pro" soccer ref. The local Soccer
Association maintained a pool of trained refs and linesmen (almost to the man
high school students) who were paid to run the games. It wasn't much, but when
you're 15, ANY money is good money. (As an aside, the head ref was an ex British
pro soccer player, and we all lived in abject fear of him. Ever been chewed out
in a thick Scottish brogue? :)
So then, let's assume that we have 5 corner stations, and that each station has
5 people on it. If each person is paid $5/hour, then it's costing the club
$125/hour in labour to keep the course manned. The Season Ender had the first
car on course by about 11:00, and the event finished running cars at about 17:00
- that's 6 hours to get 208 cars through, on a 52-63 second course, 3 runs each.
That would mean a labour bill of $750.
Now I co-chaired an event last year that drew 180 cars, and we made much more
than that in profit. We could have eaten that $750 easily, with no further cost
to the competitors. However, not everyone is as lucky (especially if you have to
pay more than the $500-ish we did to rent the lot) so let's assume that most
events just break even.
That means you'd have to make up the extra $ in an entry fee increase. Well, on
a 200 car event, that's a $3.75 increase. On a 150 car event, that's $5, and on
a 100 car event, that's $7.50. That doesn't strike me as all that much money,
especially when you consider that that's a maximum figure - fewer corner
stations with fewer people would cost correspondingly less.
And there's another benefit - by providing employment to teenagers and such, you
increase the amount of people exposed to the sport, which in turn raises the
profile of the sport, and as well increases the amount of goodwill generated
towards the SCCA. I can see a university (for example) more willing to provide
access to great big honking parking lots if they know that the event is putting
money into their student's pockets. Maybe not a whole lot of money, but when
you're a starving student, any money is good money - someone who worked a full
day would come home with $30, which is better than a sharp stick in the eye. :)
The only problem I see is a little increased overhead on the part of the region
to recruit, train, and organize the labour pool. Somebody needs to be the "head
cone chaser" the same way my soccer association had a head ref. Perhaps the
regional Worker Division could be called upon for aid? I don't know too much
about that facet of the SCCA.
I don't see a loser here - what do y'all think?
DG
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