We’ve got some updates going into effect very soon that we wanted to let everyone know about.
To reiterate one thing so no one freaks out too much, what we call positive updates are NOT constrained to our rule of only being done in January and June. A positive update is something that won’t affect anyone negatively, and only adds something positive to the sport, so there is really no reason to delay them.
Gamblers Q Values:
Starting June 1st, there is going to be an update to the amount of points you can possibly earn in Gamblers. What we’ve been seeing a lot of is that people are viewing gamblers more as a way to get Q’s, and less of what it is meant to be, which is a challenge to see how many points you can get.
To give everyone a little more incentive to actually utilize the class and challenge themselves we are adding the ability to earn more than the standard 10 Q points per run.
For the Elite level you will earn 10 Q Points for a run between 50 and 64 points
For runs between 65-74 you will earn 15 Q points
and for runs above at or above 75 points you will earn a 20 Point Q.
This update will happen eventually in all the software that’s available, but luckily this is something that we can handle here in the office as well. So don’t be upset if you get to a trial after June 1st and it doesn’t reflect the correct number of points, when those results are sent to NADAC we will update them before they go into your records.
Standard Course Times
We have decided to update the way that Standard Course time (SCT) is calculated in order to make it a more equitable system across different jump heights, and to better reflect all dogs currently competing.
Currently the files that get sent to NADAC only contain the runs that were Q’s. This is what we have historically based SCT off of in the past.
Starting June 1st the software programs will be updated to send us ALL run info, including non qualifying runs.
We will then take this increased data set to be used in the future for calculating SCT for all classes.
The SCT going forward based off this new data will be a percentage based system. For instance in Regular you might need to run in the top 50% in order to qualify. That 50% number is completely fictional at the moment, as we need to see the data coming in first, and see how it aligns with our current times to decide on a number that is reasonable. This will take some time, but we wanted to let everyone know about it now as it will be continually discussed over the next year.
Ideally the first SCT adjustment won’t take place until June of 2022, in order to give us enough time to get enough data sent to us, as well as review it.
But, we are also aware that if we start receiving data and it appears that a certain jumping height is being severely disproportionate in regards to SCT in comparison to another height then we could make adjustments sooner. For example if we get 4 months into this data gathering phase and find that only 20% of dogs at the 16 inch jump height are making time, while 70% of dogs at the 12 inch jump height are making time, that would be alarming and cause for a quicker update for those 16 inch jump heights.
Happy trialing!