Wednesday, November 09, 2011
USDAA Nationals a boon for DOCNA Champs?
At first when USDAA announced they were moving their Nationals to 3 days after DOCNA Champs I thought, 'Poor little DOCNA Champs just can't catch a break, kicked to the curb then stomped into the gutter.' But it turns out there are people out there who actually want to go to a trial before Nat's. Now I thought I'd go to DOCNA Champs because it's fun and 40 minutes away and I may as well if I'm not going to Xterra Nat's. and if I only enter a few classes it'll be a nice little warm-up. But then a local club proposed moving their USDAA trial that would normally be the week after Nat's. to the same weekend as DOCNA Champs. as a warm-up for USDAA Nat's. And people were all over it. Apparently a club in Phoenix did this one year and they were so overwhelmed they didn't do it again. Personally I think a 3 day trial with Team just 3 days before Nat's. is all kinds of crazy and I've got a high drive dog but I guess lots of people like the idea. In the end the club decided against it because they didn't want to deal with the potentially large crowd so I wonder if DOCNA Champs will get some folks coming into town early and looking for a chance to warm up for USDAA Nat's. or even some locals who dabble in DOCNA and normally wouldn't have gone to Champs? Could make for an interesting DOCNA Champs and possibly more than make up for the split with the AZ crowd. Will be interesting to see what happens and if DOCNA will try to market to the USDAA folks. If I was in charge I'd waive the qualifying requirement for people who had qualified for USDAA Nat's. since lots of areas in the country don't have DOCNA. People from other areas would have the opportunity to check out the venue and maybe somebody would like it enough to go back home and put on a trial or two. And it would be great to see some new competition at Champs. The agility plot thickens.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
That sounds exciting. I cant wait to see what happens.
ReplyDeleteWhen there are local trials the weekend before regionals, lots of the same people show up at that trial, and when nationals were in san deigo--7 hours from here--not long after our labor day trial, same people showed up from out of state for that, too. Crazy. But you may be on to something here.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thought. Maybe if DOCNA does some promoting, it could help them out. They would have to accept probably a Grand Prix Q as an equivalent qualification to an NAC - since Grand Prix needs to be 100% clean, that should be fair. They would probably also have to accept USDAA height measurements as it would probably be overwhelming to get a ton of dogs measured at DOCNA Champs.
ReplyDeleteOn DOCNA's website, they only have scheduled events in Arizona and Colorado for 2012 - what happened to the east coast? I know they had them in PA and NY before.
That being the case, maybe most people in the rest of the US have never even heard of DOCNA before, so they would definitely need to do some PR work and get USDAA to put out some sort of news announcement about it in case anyone might be interested.
I was thinking they could accept anyone who was qualified for USDAA Nat's. in any of the 3 events since that would easily be a higher criteria than an NAC Q. I don't think they should let in locals who have only a Grand Prix Q and aren't going to Nat's. They do still have a Champs on the East Coast but it's smaller than the West. I'm sure there are trials, maybe they just aren't listed yet on the DOCNA site.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought about the measurement thing. I thought DOCNA did accept USDAA measurements but I know they recently changed some rule regarding measuring but I don't know what it was. USDAA has stricter height cut-offs so accepting their height cards shouldn't be an issue.
Yeah, if it was me I'd find a way to use USDAA Nat's. to get some fresh blood into the venue. But it's not my boat to sail so I guess we'll see what the real captains do. I know they don't want their Champs to be huge like USDAA but they could sure use more areas of the country having trials.