[Squaredancing] Banner Stealing?

[Ken Robinson]

At 10:00 PM 6/1/2011, Mike Gormley wrote:
>How do clubs in your area handle banner stealing with a Mainstream 
>ONLY club who dances in an area where Plus is the norm?   By that I 
>mean when the MS club comes to retrieve their banner, do you dance 
>Mainstream ONLY for that night, even though it is a Plus club?

Mike,

That's one of the reasons why, in the Northern NJ area, we don't 
steal banners during a raid. The clubs put a pin on the banner of the 
club being raided to indicate that the raid took place. This way, the 
club that is raided doesn't have an obligation to return the raid. 
Also, the Mainstream club may have enough members that also dance 
Plus, so those members could return the raid.

For the clubs that belong to the  NNJSDA (Northern NJ Square Dancers 
Association), we have a "Raid Program" which is based on the mileage 
between clubs. We have a grid that  shows how many points a club gets 
for raiding another club (the points are based on the mileage). Once 
the total number of points gets to 200 or more, the club gets a 50 
cent/member reduction in their NNJSDA dues. See document at 
http://nnjsda.org/nnjsda_documents/?dl=46 for the grid. The NNJSDA 
has 5 Mainstream Clubs, 6 Alternating Mainstream/Plus clubs, 3 Plus 
clubs, 3 clubs that dance A2 & C1/C2, and one club that hold 
Mainstream dances on one night and Plus dance on a different night.

What's the harm in dancing Mainstream for one dance? All Plus dancers 
have to be able to dance Mainstream to dance Plus. You could always 
make it an interesting Mainstream!

Ken Robinson
Hillsborough, NJ