USAWA

By Dan Wagman

(This is a continuation of the series of suggestions by Dan Wagman that may be discussed at the national meeting after passing the Executive Board)

6. AMENDMENTS TO OR REPEAL OF THE 5-LIFT RECORD DAY LIMIT

Recent discussions on the Forum included one member stating, “I liked record days and then we went to this 5 record limit. I don’t understand why and [sic] organization that has so many lifts and so many open slots (no records have been set) would do that. I used to host record days, but when that rule was put in I saw no reason to go to the trouble.”

An additional consideration is that USAWA extolls the athletic accomplishments of lifters with 100+ records via the Century Club. At a time when Record Days had no lift limit, it made sense to highlight lifters with hundreds of records. Once the 5-lift limit on Record Days was implemented, having a Century Club is nonsensical as a lifter can’t live long enough to garner hundreds of records.

Also to consider is that a 5-lift limit for a Record Day is superfluous as the Rulebook has always allowed the meet director to select the number of lifts. Moreover, USAWA continues to hold meets—just not Record Days—with lifts exceeding the 5-lift limit, rendering that limit arbitrary. It is therefore proposed to amend or repeal the 5-lift Record Day limit. The following concepts are presented for consideration:

 

1. Keep the 5-lift Record Day limit but…
2. eliminate the Century Club list or retire it and start over;
3. if USAWA keeps the current Record Day limit for the main argument stated on the Forum, i.e., helping out the Records Director, then the number of lifts per ordinary meet would also need to be limited to 5 otherwise that argument is rendered nonsensical;

• eliminate the 5-year jump for Masters and increase it to 10-year jumps as that would significantly reduce the Records Director’s efforts (the current records list would be retired, not eliminated, and USAWA would start the list over).

1. Establish a compromise
2. See what some of the largest numbers of Record Day records were in the past and limit Record Days to half of that.
3. Limit the number of Record Days per year instead of the number of record lifts.
4. Repeal the 5-lift Record Day limit and help out the Records Director
5. Split the records list in to different categories that different people would be responsible for or;
6. Split up the number of lifters any one record recorder would be responsible for from a given meet. In implementing the above concept the Records Director would oversee USAWA’s “Records Division” with “Records Recorders” compiling the list.