04/27/2017
**REPOST**
Addressing a couple of comments made earlier on our Facebook a page:
We'll look into presenting the youth awards earlier, but it would take some resources we simply do not have... The workers who register are basically the same ones who add up the scores - they can't do the tallying while registering. Also, during the competition, we often begin to fall behind, especially if there are more entries than we anticipate - and we can't justify stopping competition when we're already behind schedule...
Volunteers are hard to come by. They don't get paid and they are there, in most cases, from start to finish!
We try to strike a balance between having a good & fair competition for competitors AND a good show for the audience. And we believe we do both pretty well.
As far as adding a Youth Band category - we had only one this year that would have even qualified... If we add that category for both bluegrass AND old-time, we would have to drastically cut back on the amount of money we could give out to the winners --- then we couldn't get the quality of bands we've been having. (Short of finding a major corporate sponsor with deep pockets, we would have to double the admission price.)
On a personal note, I began attending and competing in fiddlers' conventions (many of them!) well over 40 years ago. I would always want to take in the whole event from start to finish, meeting new pickers & trading licks, and basically spending as much time as possible playing music.
The committee that oversees the convention always meets with a few weeks after the event to look into ways to make it better. We will definitely bring these concerns into the conversation.
**Any additional suggestions & comments are welcome and will be addressed in upcoming committee meeting... Feel free to send PM with any concerns.
