About 1 - our district doesn't pay for our travel and our coach isn't paid per hour she works, to my knowledge - there's a certain amount of money she gets for being a coach who does things on weekends in addition to after school, but like, she is already that because of invitationals, so the day of the week of the State tournaments doesn't change anything. Idk about other districts funding mechanisms so maybe that is true in some cases idk.Unome wrote:As for #1, The absolute farthest any point in NJ is from MCC is a little over two hours - with impound and the first session starting as late as they do, the trip isn't that bad for most teams - there's no reason anyone should need an overnight trip, and though I haven't yet plotted state qualifiers on a map and checked, considering the population distribution of NJ I doubt there are many teams that would actually need a bus to travel.fanjiatian wrote:Why States isn't on a weekend: one of the NJSO committee members said that it's because 1) a lot of schools apparently can't afford to pay teachers/bus drivers for "working" outside normal academic hours, and 2) MCC campus space is most available on a weekday. I don't know how much validity there is to 1) - maybe ask your coaches and get them to email NJSO.
But really, many of the teams in NJ do attend invitationals, whether far away ones or just PUSO, SOUP, or LISO, so I can't imagine that attending an official tournament on a weekend would be any additional inconvenience to teams which already attend invitational competitions on weekends...?
And in addition to Princeton students not being able to volunteer with the current day of the week, plenty of faculty can't, either - I asked my mum to volunteer this year but it was a day she was teaching. I imagine Rutgers professors might have similar problems, and most other qualified potential ES's. Maybe NJSO could at least send out a message to teams asking for their input on a date change, rather than assuming teams have a problem with it and not considering one...?