Memorial Day weekend in Northeast Ohio consists of cookouts, rib burn offs, picnics and, if you're a feis family, the Akron and Cleveland feiseanna. I have to go the Cleveland feis like it or not because our school, Murphy Irish Arts Center, has been actively involved in the running of this feis for quiet some time. However the Akron feis is optional and quite frankly after our experience today I am going to option to stay far away from this feis next year.
For those of you following along Marina is 8 soon to be 9 and is now ending her 4th year of Irish dance so when I write I'm writing from the "grades" perspective although when I know something about Championships I do try to include this info. We first attended the Akron feis three years ago when my daughter was in her second year of feising and had a great experience. That year the feis was well run, results posted in a timely fashion and we were done by noon. However, last year the feis was slow and disorganized with stages being abruptly changed. We didn't leave until late afternoon/early evening and as I've already stated had a full day of feising the next day to look forward to.
This year we went primarily because Marina needs to get a first place in her Novice Slip Jig to be in all Prizewinner and compared to what she's facing in Cleveland the numbers in the Akron Slip Jig were relatively lower. Let's face it the feis is 40 minutes from my house so what's not to like? The stage assignments for one thing! I have been to a feis or two where we've had to change stages once or twice but this year's Akron feis was downright ridiculous! My daughter had to dance on not two but 5 different stages and she was not the exception - this was the norm and the stages weren't even next to each other! I spent most of my day running between stages to check the progress in case I needed to ask to have the stage held and I wasn't alone. One of my friends had to switch from soft shoe to hard shoe and back again three times! The stages were not organized by age, type of dance or level of competition. They appeared to be arranged in random order creating a very stressful environment. Let's face it, feising is stressful enough without having the worry of missing a competition. I over heard a volunteer explain that they asked the stages to be arranged by age so that the dancers would only have to compete on one stage throughout the day and when the committee received the assignments it was too late to change them. Having served on a feis committee I find this hard to believe. If you are paying a service such as efeis or Feisworx then you have the right to go back to them and ask them to get it right. A friend of mine's daughter even missed one of her competitions and I'm sure she wasn't the only one!
Adding to today's frustration was the length of time it took to process the results. My daughter danced her last dance and after waiting 2 hours without receiving any results for her competitions we left! It seemed the reason for the delay was that a computer had crashed and they did not have the man power to add up the judges scores and manually post the results. Okay - I can accept that excuse for Championship scoring but grades!?! Come on! Take the judges sheet look at the scores, write them down on a piece of paper and tape them up on the results boards. I heard so many time today that parents don't care about the competitors names or the school they're from - just put down the number and be done with it! What the Feis? (Yes - I blatantly ripped that phrase off from a friend - and you all should visit his website www.whatthefeis.com.) So I handed Marina's dance card to a friend of mine and asked him if he could please check the results for us and packed up and left! That's something I thought I'd never do but my husband was with us and he had to get to Cleveland to help build the stages for tomorrow's feis or else I might have stayed.
It wasn't enough that the Akron feis' website is terrible, that they promised updates coming in the next few days and it took 9 days to post something new, that the competitor list was posted and taken back and now I can't access that or the judges list then to fail miserably on feis day is ... is... I don't know what it is. The only positive thing I can say about this feis is that the food is very reasonably priced - $2 for a hot dog, $3.50 for a burger and they have additional food vendors outside. That's not entirely fair - the volunteers kept their cool and were extremely helpful often apologizing for the situations - especially at the results area.
Which brings me to another issue - this year they put the vendors outside under a tent near the main entrance. If I were a vendor I wouldn't be happy with this arrangement because it did not look like they were getting any business. (The last 2 years the vendors were strategically placed across from the results and got a lot of traffic).
So ends my rant on the Akron feis. I can accept that the place is dusty - it's held at a fairgrounds and that comes with the territory but what happened today is inexcusable and the feis committee needs to take a long hard look at what they can do to improve this feis NEXT year. Otherwise they may join the rank of the many feiseanna that have failed and it won't be due to lack of attendance because this feis reached its cap of 1100 weeks ago.
Now I get to cool off, have a beer (or two) and get to bed because I have to get up and do it all over again tomorrow! Until tomorrow - Slainte!
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