Asst TD (and the one who primarily developed the proposed course schedule, pool configurations, etc.) here. Far too many points to address, especially ones that are completely out of our control such as the registration process and qualification criteria, but I did want to touch on a few things.
We've been working on this for five years, from when we first started to talk about it, to when we bid in 2012 and 2013 for 2015, to when we bid again last year for 2016. At the time of our original bids for 2015, we were proposing a capacity of 648, but that was when the PDGA allowed you to use some courses three times in a day (such as 8:00, 11:30, and 3:00 tee times). When the 2016 bid guidelines came out, they were only allowing use of a course for two rounds in a day, to make it easier on staff and to allow for some cushion for weather delays, etc. They even included a table that showed expected capacity / field sizes based on number of courses. It shows 576 players for six courses, which we have the equivalent of with two 27s and three 18s. The PDGA knew what they were getting with our bid. We also only got awarded the bid in May of last year, so we had 14 months to get ready post-award, as opposed to the two or three years that is normally afforded. It's a good thing we put a lot of thought into our bids, and are not trying to bite off more than we can chew.
We've also been very clear that we would prefer a great experience for a smaller field rather than a good experience for a slightly larger field, and that we wanted everyone to get the "Madison disc golf experience" by playing each of the major courses in the immediate area. The bid guidelines, at least for 2015 and prior, stated that the courses should be within 20 miles of the event center. All of our courses are within 20 miles and a 30-minute drive of the host hotel. We've got it scheduled so that everyone only has one day where they play two rounds, with those two courses being the one closest to the host hotel (Hiestand) and one that is a 15-minute drive from Hiestand (Cap Springs). The 27-hole courses and Elver (which is furthest from the host hotel) are all played as a person's only round of the day. Everyone plays each course once, except for the Legends and the youngest Juniors (8-y.o. and younger) who only play four 18-hole rounds (they miss Cap Springs). We're not planning for fivesomes, or packing 108 players onto a 27-hole course ... we want to try and avoid five-plus hour rounds at a place like Bird's Ruins in the middle of July. The schedule works out very, very nicely for 576.
There was a comment a few pages back about the women and youth getting hit the hardest. We have room for 112 juniors, which would only be beat by Kalamazoo last year, which had 118. The next closest was 93 from 2014. One of the reasons some of the junior divisional caps still aren't as large as some would like is that this year is the first with the four new junior divisions, M(F)J5/6, which are 8&under and 6&under. We have to at least start off with four per division, so that is 16 new slots ... if any of those don't fill, I suspect the extra slots will be added to other junior divisions. As for women, we have room for 64, which would be the third largest (Kalamazoo had 79 and Charlotte had 72, and they both had total fields over 700). Those are the only two that had at least 40 spots for Advanced Women, which is what we have. Over the previous 10 years, the percentage of women players out of the total in the event ranged from 7.1% to 10.5%. Based on current capacity, ours is 11.1%. The percentage for Juniors in the previous 10 years ranged from 9.2% to 15.7%. Ours is 19.4%. If I did my math correctly, based on PDGA members that competed in at least one sanctioned event in 2015, the percentages of women and juniors out of the total were each approximately 7%.
Finally, if there is consideration to splitting up Am Worlds into two events, I can't imagine asking any one place to host both. Remember, this is an eight-day event, with five days of major competition, plus the players' meeting, field events, flymart, doubles, ancillary events, etc. Knowing how much planning went into this, not knowing how I'll survive the event itself, and realizing the impact on the local disc golfers whose courses will be closed for significant portions of time as is, it seems unfathomable to try and increase the demands on one host that would come from such an arrangement.
