Why was the state track meet location changed?
TAIAO put a deposit down on the Lockhart location for both April 20th and April 27th in early March. This was done through an online system. We were then asked to provide insurance documents two weeks later which we submitted the same day as the request was made.
Over the course of the next 10 days TAIAO kept submitting documents along with riders and exceptions to the automated system. Given the automated replies and the nature of the denials it was obvious that a human was not reading the documents. We finally requested and were granted a phone conversation with a human.
Following several days of human phone conversations our documents were approved. The moment they were approved, we were informed that the facility was not available for the 27th. At no time in the nearly three week process did the company ever indicated we would not have the facility for which they had a payment,
It took another 5 days to find a facility at a significant price increase. We are sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused and moving forward we plan to have our facilities booked and confirmed over six months in advance of the events.
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Why do we have divisions in TAIAO?
All TAIAO sports have divisions. The purpose of divisions is to create varsity championships that are more competitive when we have enough teams to fill out a division. All sports start with one division (e.g. softball has 8 teams which is not enough for second division) and some sports have the maximum number of three divisions.
Teams are separated into divisions based upon the number of their total varsity athletes participating in the sport. In some sports, we take into account teams with select players (e.g. basketball and volleyball).
TAIAO will sometimes carve out a division for sub varsity play. When this occurs there is not a state championship at stake. It is similar to allowing junior high athletes to compete in our tournaments.