We've received quite a few phone calls -- and want to touch base on a couple of things for the upcoming 2005 registration.
First -- we cannot take any entries until January 4th, 2005. That's for early bird or single entries. Do not send them early, we will just send them back to you.
Second -- There has been a fair amount of concern that the early bird registration will completely fill the Central division tournaments on January 4th. I doubt that. But... if you are worried about your early bird registration then fax it in on the 4th or plan an overnite delivery for the 4th. The rules state we begin "accepting" registrations at 8am on the 4th. That means you could Fed Ex or something like that to arrive on that day after 8 am.
If I'm wrong and we would have a huge increase in early bird teams that could possibly create more entries on the 4th than 220, then all entries received on that day would be placed in a lottery and randomly drawn for the openings. The random drawing would take place on January 5th if that happened. (I really doubt this will happen, but a lot of you have been calling asking about this -- so, wanted you to know the plan.)
Thirdly -- Single tournament entries may be sent anytime beginning 8 am on the 4th of January. However, all "early" entries will simply be placed in the same batch. There will be no advantage to sending your entry on the 4th over the 5th for example. All non-early bird entries will go into the February 1 "box." If there are more entries than openings available, a random drawing/lottery for the openings will occur on February 2nd. If there are enough openings, all entries rec'd in the Feb 1 batch will be accepted.
Hope this info helps in your planning.
If you have a question -- please post it here so we can answer it here. We'd rather answer one post and tell hundreds of anglers the answer than take 200 phone calls. A lot easier this way. :-)
Thanks. Just a typ-o. I've notified the web team, so they'll get it fixed. Not sure how quickly, but the bulletin board was fixed right away. The home page may take longer.
