This is going to be a info post regarding the new combined hoopers and barrelers class, hereby known as Grounders.
For more info on what led to this change you can read this news article: https://www.nadac.com/barrelers-and-hoopers-voting-results/
The new class will debut on January 1st of 2022.
Some info that will be important to know in regards to how this affect titling and awards moving forward
- Any points currently earned at the Intro, Novice and Open level for Barrelers and Hoopers will be combined. For example if you have 50 Novice Hoopers points and 30 Novice Barrelers points, you will have a combined value of 80 points in the novice level of the new class.
- Elite is a bit different since most of the awards are based off the Elite level Q’s. For this reason we will be taking a more creative approach to the combining of points. We will be combining any points earned since your LAST NATCH designation. For example if you have 150 Elite Hoopers, and 150 Elite Barrelers, we would be leaving the first 130 points in each class in order to keep your first All around intact, and the extra 20 points from each class would be what is combined for the new class, in this example it would be a combined value of 40 points. Another example would be if you haven’t earned your 130 points yet, then all of those points would be transferred. There is a table below showing some of the many possibilities. The reason we’re doing it this way is because we do not want to take away any All Around NATCH’s that have been earned, we don’t want anyone having to ‘start fresh’, and we also don’t want to do a straight combination as that would be a large number of All Around NATCH’s being given out, without the work being put in for them.
- If you’ve only earned your NATCH designation in one class, say 130 points in Hoopers, but only 50 points in Barrelers, then both classes would be combined for a total of 180 points. Since you hadn’t earned your All Around yet.
- In regards to the All Around NATCH and what classes will be required. There will be another vote happening in August, this vote will determine whether an All Around NATCH can be earned via just Grounders and just Gamblers, or whether it will need to be both Grounders AND Gamblers combined. It’s the general feeling of everyone in the office that it should be a combination of both classes combined, but as usual this will be left up to the exhibitors via a vote.
- We’ve attached a simple breakdown below of some of the possible point combinations that could happen when the classes get merged, we definitely can’t cover every possible scenario, so if you have any questions please let us know.
Course Design
- Course design is going to consist of Hoopers, Barrels and a very light use of Tunnels. We would like to see a minimal amount of tunnels in the class, but they are a great obstacle to use for keeping the course design interesting, so you should expect to see them on course.
- There will continue to be the option of a 15 point run if the run is completed from behind the extra point line, same as the current Hoopers class.
- The hoop circle will continue to be a staple in the class, but it will be modified quite a bit, as other obstacles will be able to substitute for the hoops. Such as a barrel or tunnel.
- Standard Course time will start out fairly lenient, until we have a years worth of dogs runs to base the SCT off of real world data, and then it will get updated to reflect the dogs currently competing.
- All normal NADAC rules will apply.
- Some course design examples are posted below
