MINNESOTA STATE OPEN
THE GYM 365 Elk River Minnesota
Presented by USA Powerlifting of Minnesota
1. NIGHT BEFORE EQUIPMENT CHECKS, RACK HEIGHTS, and USAPL CARDS. Dealing with all of these in a 1.5 hour time frame before the start of the flight was an extremely hectic task. If the lifters can come to the gym the night before, all they will have to do the day of the meet will be to weight in! This will make things go much quicker the day of the contest. Of course, not eveyone can or will take advantage of this, but even if half do it will make a tremendous difference.
2. SELECTING AN OFFICIAL MEET HOTEL. This will, of course, be dependent upon the demand that we can generate for rooms. My experience has been that you have to be able to deliver a sizeable room block to get an appreciable discount, but we want to be able to point the lifters and crew to an appropriate source of lodging.
3. THEME SONGS FOR ALL LIFTERS. I am taking a page out of Eric Talmant's book with this one. For those of you who don't know Eric, he has directed the Raw Unity Meet in Tampa the past 3 years, and he even got FOX Sports to film it for production later this spring/summer. Essentially, every lifter will need to indicate on their entry form what theme song they would like to play when they are on the platform. It will have to be a tasteful selection and it really adds a degree of personalization for each lifter.
4. MORE NATIONAL REFEREES. This is a glaring weakness in our state. The need for national referees has grown exponentially the past few years with more master, junior, and raw lifters setting new American records. I believe that we only have 4 national referees in our state--Angela Simons, Joe Warpeha, Bob Sainati, and Steve Johnson. From my observation last weekend, all 4 of them were actively involved judging the various American records. Only Bob came to the meet specifically to judge. Angela was extremely busy with scoring, Joe with drug testing and various state chair tasks, and Steve was there to lift. It is essential that we add at least 3-4 national judges to our state's current roster of judges. I plan on getting certified this year.
5. MORE PRECISE TIMES FOR THE START OF THE AFTERNOON SESSION. The later than anticipated start of the afternoon session is something I take sole responsibility for. I estimated the start time for the afternoon session to be around 2:30PM and in reality it was closer to 4:00PM. If we have the same number of entries next year, I will proactive adjust the starting time accordingly AT LEAST A WEEK IN ADVANCE OF THE MEET. We may have to view this as more of a morning/evening event with a small break mid afternoon as opposed to running everything straight through. For example, I may decide that the heavyweights do not weight in until 2:30PM and will start lifting at 4:30PM. This will be communicated well in advance so that the lifters and their families don't show up unnecessarily early if they don't wish to. Many people I spoke to liked this idea and it may be nice for the crew to get a break in the middle of the afternoon if we finish the morning session early.
6. IF THE EVENT GROWS BEYOND 80 LIFTERS, WE MAY NEED TO SERIOUSLY CONSIDER A 2 PLATFORM MEET. This would obviously require at least 4-5 more judges, spotters, and another set of Kilo plates, which is something I am currently exploring. A 2 platform meet is much preferred to a 2 day state meet for many reasons.
7. POWERLIFTERS ARE POWERLIFTERS AND BENCHERS ARE BENCHERS. You will have to pick one or the other next year, but not both. There was far too much confusion among the bench-only contestants about who they were competing against in the full meet. The other problem is that since the bench only flight was completed in the morning session in 1 flight, the afternoon powerlifters who entered the bench meet knew exactly what they had to lift to place. In my opinion, this was not fair to the bench only competitors who had no chance to try and outlift their afternoon competition. It was also impossible to determine the bench awards until the very end of the day since many of the bench competitors were also part of the full power meet. Next year, all the benchers will compete in the morning session and will get their awards after the morning session.
8. MORE SPONSORS. We have had a group of small, reliable entities that have supported our meets for a very long time. If you need to refresh your memory, just take a look at the back of the meet shirt and you will see who I mean. Now that Brad and I have a full year's notice instead of 3 months, we hope to add to that list and use it to be able to give back to the lifters in some way.
9. WEEKLY UPDATES VIA PODCASTS. This is another idea that I got from Eric when he ran the RUM. Starting about 4-5 weeks out, I will give a brief weekly update on how things are progressing for the meet. I will discuss possible changes, match-ups, awards, sponsorship updates, etc.
10. OFFICIAL POST MEET PARTY AT LOCATION THAT IS YET TO BE DETERMINED. This is always a nice opportunity to discuss the meet, powerlifting, etc. It also a way to relax and have some fun after a long day.