Rick Brown of Cal Club,
I empathize with you about getting overwhelmed with entrants (with your
280 drivers). I think we're seeing this all over the country. However,
we've got to do something to cope with it as Steve Johnson is going to
take the old "Secret Car Club of America" out of SCCA. I know that the
internet has fueled our visibility, also.
Either we will have to start expanding schedules, renting adjoining lots
or raising our entry fees to cope with this.
We just bumped our entry fees from $20 for members to $25 and saw about a
15% reduction in entries. Do the math, we increased fees 25% and only
reduced entries by 15%. So now we are taking in more money but having a
little smaller event (177 versus 210). It's supply and demand. (Lots of
our experienced drivers have fled to surrounding small regions for their
events, they don't like the extra $5 expense and the large events).
Let's not choke off the supply, if possible. Let's figure out ways to
accomodate the hordes. If we start bumping up to 250+ we are considering
renting an additional lot and having 2 courses for the weekend with 2
timing & scoring trailers to accomodate the competitors. Then each of our
events would be weekend affairs like at Topeka (run one course on
Saturday and the other on Sunday).
These are the growth pains when the best kept motorsports secret gets out
in the open. Unfortunately, they don't pay us enough to solve these
problems but we get to do it anyway<grin>. Probably what we need is an
elist just for Autocross organizers so we can swap ideas and get a handle
on this. Anybody interested? If so, I'll get one started.
Ben Thatcher
Apex Benefit Services & Motorsports
Stockbridge, GA
|