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Oh, its going to be a big one.
The changes have all been for the negative. I have proposed, in the National Committee meeting, on several occasions that the late fees and forced early registration be abolished. Not only was I voted down but I was treated like I was an idiot. Face it, there are too many people who are "in charge" that will not listen to the message. They will cover their ears and hum, hold their breath until they turn blue but they will cling to their inflexible ideas. Face it, a late fee is a penalty you pay to reward the meet organizers for their own incompetence.
I have been under constant, bordering on the irrational, attack from a small clique of meet directors who hate the message I give; Track and Field meets must always make last minute decisions--last minute registration does not affect a well planned meet because you can always fit the last minute entrants in. Instead I constantly see meets that paralyze their efficient operations by printing the race seedings days in advance--then they are unable to adjust when people don't show up (places that could be filled by allowing other people to show up). As a Masters meet director, I would much rather have the extra entrants. Its friendlier, it makes each race better when you have someone in the lane next to you and more entrants brings in more money.
The caveat I will allow is the rare occasion when a last minute walk-up causes an extra heat to be run--I think I have seen it happen twice in a decade. Most of the time for Masters Nationals, we already have the time for trials scheduled in the events that normally have them, some people get their nose bent when they actually have to RUN a trial.
While I continue to operate meets, most of them the Southern California USATF Championship meets, with same day registration, I continue to be told it is impossible at that level. When I had the opportunity to do the 2000 USATF West Region meet, 335 competitors showed up to register for a one day meet--all same say registration. Quality of the meet? Well I had six people qualify for the Olympic Trials and another six qualify for their National Olympic teams from that meet--I'd think we ran things up to standard for those elite athletes. While I did run late compared to the printed schedule that day, for which I have no end from one critic, that was due to the fact that this was actually the first meet I directed alone--I ambitiously designed the schedule to be too efficient. Since then I have made a more relaxed schedule (most Masters seem to prefer a relaxed schedule) and things have been to schedule except for the year the timing system shut down. Nationals have never had to deal with technical problems, have they (Charlotte)?
How do I do it? I forget about the computer and use very simple, tried and true paper systems. I also do my work at the meet, when (if they show up) I have helpers, officials and experts (of which most Masters athletes could qualify to be called about their events). I go a step further and request that nobody register in advance. I do not want to be inundated by all that stuff, coming from various sources (e-mail, FAX, phone calls, on-line registration systems and snail mail) that I have to find (snail mail frequently arrives after the meet), coordinate and deal with all alone. When I get to the meet, I have to run a duplicate system just to figure out who actually showed up. Each one of these are problems that hold back most meets. I prefer to get my entries in one place at one time, I prepare the seeding once, and do the work just for the people who actually chose to show up. From that, I still get people dropping out (mostly the 200 for some reason) and occasionally somebody wants to run a race that has already happened. No system is perfect for those situations.
To my credit, I think my meets are among the best seeded meets around. Its is rewarding to see that "V" forming down the center of the track. Some of that is because I can go beyond the N.T. many people list for their entry time. I have gotten to know who is good, who wants a competitive race and who would have a better running time with the older folks. I also communicate "Hey Joe, you are on the bubble, do you want to run lane 8 with the kids or lane 5 with the older group?" Of course in smaller meets, we combine age groups most of the time.
I have put a great deal of thought into this--trying to find solutions to quell the arguments. Initially the problem is FEAR. These people are not used to or comfortable making last minute decisions. They want everything in a nice neat little package. I work as a Television Director, last minute decisions are a normal part of my life. People can write scripts and draw up story boards, but there is always a tree, phone pole or city official in the way that make you have to ad lib to get results. I guess I am just more comfortable trusting in my ability to think (on my feet). FEAR, get over it.
The technical problems are compound. Let me try to break them down.
Meet Directors spend thousands of dollars to license HyTek software to organize their meets, so they feel compelled to use it. But they don't know all the nuances of the software and Masters will not work under the rudimentary HyTek set up most people use. I have spoken with with HyTek as I try to dissect the problems I have been involved with at meets and their software does contain solutions. Very few operators do Masters meets enough to know how to use them.
The key weak point is getting DATA into the computer--too many keystrokes. This is repetitive data. Locally, how many people compete in our events? Out of 17 million people, the whole local USATF membership is only a few thousand. We only have a small number of complete newbies show up--those are the only people we should have to enter the full fresh data into the computer. We already have the existing member's information in a USATF database--that I have tried for years to get made available to meet directors who are paying to sanction their events through USATF. The National Office, so far, can't find a secure way to let us release that information. That mailing list is valuable. Oh and if it gets into the wrong hands somebody else might violate their privacy. The point is, most people's data doesn't change--all that typing could be avoided.
Here's a great business idea I haven't followed up with: Many Colleges and now some High Schools have paid database systems in place to handle their meet registrations and backwardsly tabulate cumulatively seasonal results. Nobody is doing that for Masters on a large scale basis.
And then there is the money . . .
By getting your paid registration early, meet directors already have the cash in hand. They don't need to care if you bother to show up. They say they need to know how many people are going to show up, but lets invert that question. If they have a low turnout, will they cancel the meet? Will they book the track for fewer days (in the case of the multi-day National meet)? Will they downsize any of the services--fewer officials, a cheaper timing system? Doubtful. Well there are a few items that they might adjust. They might order less merchandise--fewer medals, T-shirts and goodie bags. But most of that stuff has to be ordered well before the money comes in unless you move the registration deadline to some ridiculous date like a month in advance of the meet. Ooops.
The fact is, the costs of putting on a meet are relatively fixed. We Masters are not going to get anything subsidized for us, so forget about us getting $3 All Comer meet rates. By the way, our All Comer meets in Southern California are FREE!, but the local school board subsidizes them at a cost of around $60K a year so underprivilidged members of the community won't be turned away because they can't pay. The cost of the facility is not always cheap but you don't need to take the most expensive bid in town either. Locally, UCLA as great facilities, but its not worth three times the cost of any other track in town. Negotiate or move on, some places might actually WANT us to visit. On the facility side of things, somebody has to pay the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars it takes to build and maintain a good facility. We are the rare outside renter of such facilities and to the administrators of a facility, it looks like a good deep pocket to dig into. And who are the other likely tenants? Youth meets. With their thousands of entrants, they are much more willing to pay the high fees. The impact that many people (including parents) make on a facility makes such administrators demand more in compensation. Old people don't make such an impact, but they don't understand this concept. Frankly, in my years of trying to organize track meets, its hard just to get an administrator to answer a phone call, much less return a message. In short, youth events make it harder for us to find a reasonably priced facility to rent.
Timing systems need to be rented, but their fees, top to bottom, don't vary that much. The best are usually worth it compared to the problems you might get when you take the lowest bidder. Officials have to be paid. They should be paid, they are the life blood of meet operations. Unfortunately they are not normally paid enough for the miles they drive much less the hard work they put in.
You book for the size of the meet. We know Nationals are going to take 4 long days, you will need shifts of people. A small meet doesn't need that much support and won't be able to afford it from the revenue generated. It takes me around 130 participants to make the nut, the amount of money it takes to put on the meet without any outside support. I would love to have the kind of money generated by the National meet because (about 1000 entrants, even averaged out over 4 days) it gives the financial resources to do more. Of course, more amenities are expected of the organizers of the National Meet. But with the stronger revenue, I don't need to sweat paying for and feeding an extra official to make things go better. Oh yes, food. That's an expense and how much food do you order a month in advance? I'd prefer to get mine fresh, thank you.
The major weak spot in my paper system is results. Doing things by hand on paper doesn't get you neatly printed results on the internet in seconds. Of course, people are impatient. If you watched Ken's blog during the Olympic Trials, he had the results quickly typed and on his blog anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour before USATF, connected to the results computer, did. I was watching. I can't hope to match Ken's speed as a typist, but with a real budget like the National Championships, I could afford to hire a professional typist to lay the nice neat results out in minutes. Or we could just find the rare right person to make HyTek work the way it needs to, which still includes on-site check-in and day of the meet seeding.
For any event, you need to predict the size of your event. We now have a 40 year history to draw upon. A track meet is not suddenly going to turn into Woodstock. We choose to take on a meet with the expectations that it will draw something comparable to previous meets. We don't exactly jump into a meet we expect to fail.
One additional factor that makes the fees at Nationals more expensive: All entrants pay an extra fee that goes to support the National Committee. The $80,000 we get from USATF does not support all our efforts. Those various programs require the supplement from the National Championships. There is a smaller similar fee that comes from and goes to supporting the efforts of each region.
The bottom line is, we Masters have to pay our own way to play.
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I do agree that the entry fee for NCs is expensive (and when you factor in lodging and travel it really adds up), but it does take a tremendous amount of resources to run a Championship caliber meet. My NC experiences have been wonderful - great meets, run as well as could be expected. I have put on enough large meets (none as large as NC) to know what it takes to run a meet. Had the good professor done his homework he might have figured out that you are a distance runner and things such as FAT and all the bells and whistles of a NC meet probably aren't top priorities. Don't travel the whole way to Mass. to get timed - you can stop by in PA and I will time you myself and buy you a beer afterwards!! 
