Everyone, please take a look at the Championship Bids for 2007. The official bids are come from Ohio State University this year. Anyone is free to ask questions to the bidders. Please keep all questions on this forum as we try and make this as public as possible.

NCTTA EXEC BOARD members are required to place a vote this month on this bid.

Anyone from the general public to NCTTA can and should ask questions.

OSU BID



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First to the OSU Team, thank you for putting in a bid for the 2007 NCTTA College Table Tennis Championships. I have seen your website/bid and it seems you all have put in a great deal of work, so thank you for this.

Second, as we continue with the bid process this is the time for questions to you all. One question that I know some people have asked me before we knew who was bidding and one question that I also wanted to know was:

"How different or similar would you all predict these championships to be from past championships like the ones at TWU".

Also can you explain what your "board of advisors" does within the scope of the championship preparation?

Also on the volunteer side: will you be using or considering any volunteers from the past TWU championships?

Thank you once again for putting in a bid.

Willy

I will answer between the lines, see below.

Hello OSU Team, another question for you all if I may.

I know you all are the only bid, but I hope you understand my need to get questions out in the open at this point that some people including myself may have.

Can you tell us more about the host hotel? I see in the bid it says that there are several eating places within walking distance for which I am extremely excited about. What I am looking for perhaps is a comparison from last year's bidding hotel to this year's bidding hotel.

Will guests receive breakfast from the hotel; what other kind of amenities if any does the hotel offer? Also do you have a website for this hotel?

Also how many rooms are reserved for this event, is there an overflow hotel available nearby?

Thanks

Willy

Willy:

- Thanks for noticing, there is an omission in the website about the hotel.
The University Plaza website is www.universityplazaosu.com
They have pictures and info about the hotel there.

- Also to everyone: make sure to check the hotel support letter, it has some extra info. For example, they have blocked 60 doubles and 20 King rooms. I think if we wanted to, we can request from them to block more rooms. We can do that if we wun the bid. NOte that UP has currently blocked rooms not even knowing whteher we are the host or not.
The standard is what I would call a Holiday Inn. I stayed at the Best Western two years ago in Texas...hard to tell but it would be about the same I think (meaning not worse). The advantage is the neighboring existence of other restaurants, hotels, Kroger Groceryt store, ATM's, pool place, there is basically a little strip mall across the street.

- Breakfast: It has been hard to find the $79 rate. UP did not include the breakfast. I have asked several times about this => finally, they agreed to give us a $4 coupon that could be used towards breakfast at their restaurant. However, their standard breakfast is currently at $7.25, so it doesn't totally solve the issue.
There were only two or three other options near OSU, and none could match the deal offered by UNiversity PLaza. In addition, we can have the banquet there, and they are also the most reliable when it comes to blocking rooms.

- Other options: Right next (walking distance, max 1 block) to the UNiversity Plaza we have htree other options:
1) A newer and slightly nicer Fairfield Inn. UNfortunately, they could not accomodate the banquet, and also could not match the rate. ( I believe they may be able to do $88).
2) A Red Roof INn that is what I would call an upper class 2 star. They would be cheaper, something like $65 (with a cheap breakfast probably). We can see this as one possible overflow location. It is also the cheapest you will get for anything like decent 2 star anywhere near OSU.
3) Baymont Inn just bought up an existing 2 star, litterally next to the UNiversity PLaza. In the past, that hotel would have been a 2-star slightly below the Red Roof Inn, but now that it became Baymont it would play as 2.5 star.
Their standard rates show somewhere in the $80-$90 range; we could probably get a discount there, but we did not feel that the standards were high enough to be the official hotel. Again, it could be a good overflow alternative. My suggestions is taht we approach them and the Red Roof Inn, and whoever gives us the most decent rate we can ask for 20 doubles to block? In the meantime we plan to explain UP that we may not control people booking elsewhere, and that a free breakfast would help secure more rooms at their place.

- Other note: We will be able to use about 20 single rooms on campus from the campus housing services at $40/night. We plan to use this for outside staff/volunteers. These rooms are graduate housing with own bath. Transportation is not a problem, either walking or taking the free campus bus.

- Last: the UP gives the rate regardless of the number of occupants, up to 4 for the doubles and up to 2 for the King. That is another alternatove for folks who want to keep it really cheaper ($79/4 gives $20 per person, and if they want to save more they go get sth. from kroger; price-wise that's hard to beat).

What I could try to do is 'GUARANTEE' a number of rooms ahead of time...and in return ask for free breakfast.
Could anyone tell me how many paid rooms were used at the Best Western this past years by athletes? It would give us a fair idea.

Frank

ALL:
I noticed that a few URl Links contained errors --> this should now be fixed.
(Please do not hesitate to let us know if you have trouble finding anything on our bid site, or cannot access a link)

Francois

HI Francois and OSU team,

Can you all explain the meal plan for the participants and for the volunteers?

Or at least direct me towards the link that explains it, I remember reading it somewhere, I just can't find it right now.

Willy

There is some info under question 14 on the 'bid info' page of tyhe website.
There are also some estimated cost for providing food at the bottom of the budget sheet under the expense column.

To add some to this:
- We could do something similar to what Texas Wesleyan was doing. I.e. players would get coupons that can be used at different places on campus. This option is slightly more expensive (close to $7 for meal including a drink)
- We also have a less expensive option where there would be boxed lunches on site including drink at $5)

Which option we pick will probably depend on how much money we manage to raise by then. Of course, we'd rather pick the first option if it is feasible.

For staff/volunteers, it would work the same way; there will be access to a break room for staff and volunteers.

Frank

I have a question for NCTTA:

- Is it required to have someone from the school (say Rec Sports) sign the sample contract? Or can it be our club?

- We are still in talks with them, but it seems to be against university policy...
Who signed the contract when it was in Fremont?

- Which specific parts of contracts does NCTTA wants to see signed by the school?

Note that we are working this out as we speak.

Frank

Hello Everyone,

This year we will have a Championship banquet committee. I cater events for a living, and I will be working with all of you in going after sponsors just to cater our events as a sponsorship. We will also be working hand and hand with the staff of the hall that handles everything to make sure that each banquet is given just that little extra professional touch. My company and myself prides our selves in making every event the best ever, so this is one thing we will be working on together that wasn't done in the past.

We will be going more in detail with all this in the committee, so who ever is interested in knowing what goes on in planning and wants to become more involved in this aspect of the event keep your eyes open for when we ask for volunteers for the championship banquet committee.

This will be a great way for anyone that may be a little creative to put there imagination to work, and one will learn some of the business side at the same time too.

What is Rec Sports stating about the contract specifically? We do not want to have just the Table Tennis club supporting the National Championships but the "body" that governs the club sport structure at the least at a respective school.

I would say our National championships took a more professional approach starting with TWU in 2005. IN 2004, Stanford was the host, but I can't tell you what they offered other then the name and Dennis Davis the contact person who got us a deal for free with the Citybeach facility. The Stanford administration had no idea that stanford hosted the national championships, no liability, no interest, no media outcome, no positive relationships or anything.

I believe that there is an understanding and will to compromise on many things, but we surely also don't want to go backwards from positive progress either.

Show us University policy please.

Just an update:
- We're working on adjusting the contract. We can send it in a couple of day after our club and Rec Sports both revise it. It will probably be undersigned by Rec Sports AND us.
- Financials will be handled by us though, not the university or Rec Sports. Note that is probably a good thing rather than a bad thing: it also means we (and we can arrange that between us and NCTTA) get to decide what happens with the money. There will not be anything like "and 10% goes to Ohio State University overhead or Rec Sports", so that is probably good.
From the contacts I have with Rec Sports, this is NOT negotiable, so I would like to stress this in advance (no-one on campus will sign to be financial liable for an event like this).

I do have some questions regarding the insurance paragraph in the sample contract. We do not have an insurance for such event. What we can do can is ask players to sign a waiver, or what we can also do is pay the $50 this Summer to become a USATT club.

- One more update: if the event is successful, OSU would be bidding again next year.

Frank - OSU

Thanks Francois, for the clarification.

Also as our bylaws indicate on the championship voting it needs to be done by the NCTTA Exec board. We will go through the official procedure to legitimize everything. I am commenting on this because you all are the only bid.

Sunday June 25th is the end of the NCTTA election and after that we will begin the voting.

Willy