How Old Am I and When?

Imagine my surprise, reading the April USAPA newsletter, and finding the following article.  It is your support that gives our club a voice, I am happy that this is the second item this year, that I raised and had a positive resolution!

 No Dumb Questions: How Old Am I and When?

Question
Rosemary Reese of Casa Grande, Ariz., writes, “The membership would love to hear from the board regarding age standardization for sanctioned tournaments. From what I hear they don't care which way it is done, either age the day of your birthday or age as of 12/31 of the year of the tournament.” Rosemary just asks that it be the same for all sanctioned tournaments.

Answer
USAPA president Bill Booth provides a detailed explanation. The practice of using the player’s age as of the end of the year has been in the tournament points document for several years. This is so players can accumulate tournament points in their age group for the entire year. If age was determined as of the date of the tournament, a player’s point totals could be split into two different age groups on an unequal basis. In that case tournament points based on age groups would be meaningless.

The date for age determination should have also been in the sanctioning requirements, but was not. That oversight has been corrected. The following statement has been added to the sanctioning requirements document: “A player's age in a sanctioned tournament will be determined by the player's age on December 31. An exception will be made if a state senior games organization mandates a different date in their tournament.” Our policy is in agreement with the rules of the Huntsman World Senior Games and the rules of the national games of the National Senior Games Association (NSGA). Even though the NSGA policy is to determine age as of December 31, individual states that sponsor senior games or senior Olympics under the umbrella of NSGA have inconsistent policies. We have no control over the policies of the state games because there are many sports involved. We make an exception for those states because we believe that it is important to sanction those tournaments. If you are participating in the state games of any state that is an exception, please urge them to standardize on the policy of the parent NSGA organization