Many people have expressed the desire to have more online contests in the future.
The main thing to debate is what title will be given? I don't think we want to replace the in person world contest with the online contest.
Should we have two different types of titles: World Spintop Champion and World Spintop Online Champion?
On the one hand the online contest lets players from all over the world participate without the barriers of cost, time and visa.
On the other hand, it's very different to get into a stage in front of a public of hundreds and have one chance at doing a good routine than to be by yourself in front of a camera and have tens (hundreds?) of attempts at the routine.
On the details there are lots of things that can be discussed.
1 abandon the peer judging process
will be replaced by a board of judges, unpar number , with a Head Judge for final decisions
I think it's clear that we'll not try the peer judging again at this level.
2 make it mandatory to post one video per category entered
I don't have a strong opinion on this one.
3 limit the number of entries at 10 players per country
if this option is adopted it means that each country will have to organize qualifying sessions
Personally, I don't agree on the limit per country.
But we need a pre-selection panel to separate those who are competitive from those that just enter to participate. With an extra week between the deadline of submission and the awards, this can be easily done.
4 re-formulate the notion of Traditional freestyle
Yes, we need to think about this. I was behind it's introduction to give a fair chance to styles of play that are slower. That may not be needed anymore, but there is a good reason to attract traditional play to the world contest as it makes it much more interesting and representative of the world top play. Perhaps, as I think Jim suggests, it should be an artistic performance title instead of a sport title.
5 ban any t shirt or outfit with a brand mark
(example addidas t shirt in one video )]5 ban any t shirt or outfit with a brand mark
(example addidas t shirt in one video )
I think that if the brand is sponsoring the player in a certain way or even the association it would be something positive, no?
I would only ban them if we have official contest sponsors and we see a conflict in that respect. It can be beneficial to players to get sponsorships that help them participate (e.g. Gaspar was sponsored by Wilson's Los Juguetes de mi Tierra Sumercé).
In about a month we will have the ITSA Annual General Assembly, and it would be the perfect time to decide some of these things, specially the overall question about having a in-person and an online world championship. Perhaps this year we can add some live zoom meetings. By the way, the board of directors doesn't come up for reelection until next year, but we could still have an expansion of the number of directors.
