Rankings ... on the civilian circuit, your ranking is used to pre-seed when creating the pools, and obviously if you have quite a good ranking, it can ensure you don't have too many ninjas in your pool.
For the last year or so, I've been running competitions with a ranking system which was very basic. Points were awarded on a very simple scale: 32 points for 1st place, down to 1 point for 32nd. What this DID mean though was that some competitions which were smaller attracted the same points as say, the Inter Services, unarguably a very good standard of event. Obviously this is unfair!
I therefore looked deeper into how the BFA ranking system worked, and have now adopted that system for use at RAF events. Each event is now given a NIF count, which is calculated by multiplying the number of entrants by 0.75.
The final position each person achieves then has a multiplier associated with it, along the lines of:
1 = 20, 2 = 18, 3 = 16, 5 = 13, 6 = 12.96, 7 = 12.92 etc etc etc
(Anyone wishing to see the whole scale of the multiplier can find it on the British Fencing website.)
So, points awarded to each fencer are calculated by multiplying the NIF with the multiplier, so for a competition with a NIF of 10, 1st place receives 10 x 20 = 200 points, 2nd place receives 10 x 18 = 180 points etc.
Another feature of the BFA system is that for ranking purposes, only the BEST 6 results count towards the points total. Otherwise, people would just do lots and lots of events and end up with massive totals! It also means that people missing events are not unduly punished - as long as they have 6 good results throughout a year they can afford to miss that one event that they normally make a L32 at. Unfortunately, the RAF only really have 3 events throughout the year that all personnel can compete in; Commands, Seniors and Inter Services. I have therefore set the ranking system up to use the BEST 2 results to calculate a fencers total points. So if you look at your current ranking and think "I've done 3 events and the points total doesn't add up", it's because only your best 2 are counted - sorry!!
Sgt Phil McNulty
Captain, RAFFU