Starting A Club
Questions to ask yourself when setting up a club. Your first port of call should be the Republic of Ireland Scrabble Players Associatioon (RISPA for short, check out www.scrabbleireland.org) although it is not necessary for a club to be under the umbrella of RISPA, it will cost your new club nothing and keep you "in the loop" of happenings in the Scrabble World. Also please do not hesitiate to contact me. If I do not know the answer, or cant find out from the other clubs and members, well then no one knows!
Who?
Insurance?
Formal or Informal?
I believe there is room for both, but that is of course
only my opinion. This is really up to you. Normally both will not
work together as you will have members that will be quite serious, and want to
get on with playing Scrabble. On the other hand you will have members
that will enjoy the social side of the night out, having a laugh and a chat and
playing Scrabble at the same time. Of course you will have people that
love Scrabble so much that they will participate whatever the setting is
like. This is really a question you need to ask all the members and
decide what the majority want.
Aids?
Will the club allow
aids. That is to say will players be able to check words in the
dictionary and lists before placing their word down. There are 2 sides to
this issue:
One side is that if you allow people to use aids they may learn more, see words they can use and impart that knowledge onto others. Of course this may lead to people to fish through the book trying to find that magic 7 letter word with 3 i's, 2 l's etc.
The other side is
that if you do not allow aids, players will have to learn their words as
quickly as possible and it will probably create more competition in the short
run. However, in the long run this may lead to the club member's
vocabulary becoming stale and outdated and when new words are introduced, the
club members will not become aware of the additions and may fall behind in
national play.
The first option is probable more suited to a new club starting out with fairly new members and the second option will probably suit long standing clubs. I believe the best option is to allow the use of aids one week and not the next.
Visitors?
Will visitors be welcome to your club. If they are,
let RISPA have a name, address and contact number so anyone travelling to your
area can check in advance and join in your clubs activities. Remember
visitors - "When in Rome, do as the Romans". By that I mean if
you are visiting a club, please play by their rules. Also, all those
clubs out there, don't forget to let your visitors know of your rules, it will
save embarressments later on. If you are a visitor from another country,
please don't let that deter you as most clubs can accomodate you and we may be
able let you play in our large tournaments. Again check with RISPA in
regards to same.
Cost?
Will you be charging a weekly admission fee, or a yearly
membership fee, both or neither. Don't forget that most people will want
to see some return for their money or at least they will want to understand
where the money is going. Your club should not be really run at a profit,
because that gets very complicated as you may have to register as a business,
pay tax and things could get very complicated!!
