DeliaRides
Well-Known Member
So I happily volunteered to fence judge at a BE recently, multiple classes running across Saturday and Sunday, from BE80 up to intermediate. The actual judging bit was ace as ever - I enjoy it and am happy to volunteer and be part of it and hope to sometimes learn something along the way too, plus seeing so many fab horses and riders. However, a couple of things bothered me and I would like to feed back to the venue without them thinking 'some people are never happy' or 'another know it all'. My perspective is:
- Organisation felt like generally a shambles. I have only fence judged at unaffiliated and RC before, and this seemed chaotic by comparison. No real information until Friday morning, asked to come to an 8.15 briefing and to stay until 5.30 (fine, completely as expected, venue is an hour away so early start for us but very happy to do it and have before), then Friday evening another update saying oh we don't actually need you until 12.15 for an afternoon briefing. We were then told after the intermediate at about 4pm that we weren't needed for the BE80 after all. I sort of didn't mind, but having volunteered the whole day (and they were still asking for volunteers 2 days before), I felt a bit yanked around in the end, that I was only needed for 4 hours.
- When we did arrive for the 12.15 briefing, there really was no briefing at all, just handed a pack (no course map or info about which classes were running when and which track/disks were which) and asked to go straight to fence. We did this and it was fine, we have judged before, but there was quite a bit of radio traffic throughout the day that was a bit unhelpful (e.g. people not leaving the channel clear after a fall report, for the relevant people to do what was needed, and people when there was an incident not reporting the important things that I had always been told to report, e.g. is it rider & horse, just rider, is a paramedic needed, and is the course clear or blocked for oncoming riders). When I have done it before radio protocol has always been a key part of the briefing, but of course...no briefing. I run XC at our RC and I know I would be in hot water if I didn't do a judge briefing and then something happened that wasn't correctly handled on the day.
The first point isn't a big issue, but as a willing volunteer, I felt a bit messed about really (and disappointed TBH that I hadn't been able to do more), but the second part felt like it could easily be a safety issue had something gone more wrong than it did. I was a bit disappointed I guess as I had been looking forward to the day and thought as it was BE I might even learn something, but came away with a bit of a poor impression really.
My question is....is it worth feeding these things back? Will anybody really care, when the event overall was successful and riders happy etc? I'm not even saying it would affect me volunteering again because I do enjoy it, I just sort of want them to consider that they left overall a rather poor impression and it's a shame because it isn't stuff that is hard to do a bit better.
Thoughts? (including 'wind your neck in you have no idea how complicated it is running a large event what did you expect you precious snowflake!')
- Organisation felt like generally a shambles. I have only fence judged at unaffiliated and RC before, and this seemed chaotic by comparison. No real information until Friday morning, asked to come to an 8.15 briefing and to stay until 5.30 (fine, completely as expected, venue is an hour away so early start for us but very happy to do it and have before), then Friday evening another update saying oh we don't actually need you until 12.15 for an afternoon briefing. We were then told after the intermediate at about 4pm that we weren't needed for the BE80 after all. I sort of didn't mind, but having volunteered the whole day (and they were still asking for volunteers 2 days before), I felt a bit yanked around in the end, that I was only needed for 4 hours.
- When we did arrive for the 12.15 briefing, there really was no briefing at all, just handed a pack (no course map or info about which classes were running when and which track/disks were which) and asked to go straight to fence. We did this and it was fine, we have judged before, but there was quite a bit of radio traffic throughout the day that was a bit unhelpful (e.g. people not leaving the channel clear after a fall report, for the relevant people to do what was needed, and people when there was an incident not reporting the important things that I had always been told to report, e.g. is it rider & horse, just rider, is a paramedic needed, and is the course clear or blocked for oncoming riders). When I have done it before radio protocol has always been a key part of the briefing, but of course...no briefing. I run XC at our RC and I know I would be in hot water if I didn't do a judge briefing and then something happened that wasn't correctly handled on the day.
The first point isn't a big issue, but as a willing volunteer, I felt a bit messed about really (and disappointed TBH that I hadn't been able to do more), but the second part felt like it could easily be a safety issue had something gone more wrong than it did. I was a bit disappointed I guess as I had been looking forward to the day and thought as it was BE I might even learn something, but came away with a bit of a poor impression really.
My question is....is it worth feeding these things back? Will anybody really care, when the event overall was successful and riders happy etc? I'm not even saying it would affect me volunteering again because I do enjoy it, I just sort of want them to consider that they left overall a rather poor impression and it's a shame because it isn't stuff that is hard to do a bit better.
Thoughts? (including 'wind your neck in you have no idea how complicated it is running a large event what did you expect you precious snowflake!')
I feel like I have to apologise!!
.
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