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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) of Interest to Members
You have to join the USFA to belong to the Gulf Coast Texas Division of the USFA. You have to join the USFA if you want to compete in USFA-sanctioned tournaments of the Gulf Coast Texas Division. There are occasional non-USFA tournaments held within the Division, which do not require USFA membership. And, clubs generally do not require every member to belong to the USFA. Can I be a current member of the USFA and not realize it? Yes. Have you ever submitted a USFA membership application? If you know you used to be a member, you may still be. Although most people get one-year memberships, there are three-year memberships and life memberships. Even if you know you were a one-year member during the last membership year (August - July), you might still be a member. Anybody initially joining the USFA during April, May, June, or July is automatically credited with membership for the entire following membership year. If you recently submitted a membership application, the question is whether you are yet a member, not if you are still a member. See the question, "Am I currently a member of the USFA?". Am I currently a member of the USFA? Do you have a USFA membership card? If so, take a look at the dates on it (and remember that the membership year runs from August through July). If the card says you are still a member, you are a member. If the card says you are no longer a member, you might have renewed but the new card has not arrived. If you do not have a current card (yet), you could still be a current member if you joined recently. Sometimes the card takes a while to arrive in the mail. There are other ways to check on your membership. If you lost your card, you have no choice but to try the other ways. From time to time, the Division gets a list of its members, which might just have arrived, faster than your membership card. Take a look at the Web page. Pay attention to the date. If it is old and you are missing, you may be a recent member. And, if it is dated before August 1st and it is now after August 1st, you may no longer be a member even if you are listed. From time to time the Southwest Section gets a list of its members. (All members of the Gulf Coast Texas Division are members of the Southwest Section.) Take a look at the Section's membership Web page (links to actual membership lists are there). Pay attention to the date on the page. If it is old and you are missing, you may be a recent member. And, if it is dated before August 1st and it is now after August 1st, you may no longer be a member even if you are listed. Note that the Section lists do have fencers with expired memberships too, who are listed with an "X" missing from the line. As a last resort. go straight to the horse's mouth. Ask the USFA by telephone, fax, or e-mail if you are a member. Fill out a USFA membership form and deliver it to the USFA. You can mail it, and you can fax it if payment is by credit card. Most USFA-sanctioned tournaments of the Gulf Coast Texas Division accept membership forms at the tournament. Sometimes, these tournaments will also accept USFA membership payment in cash (the USFA does not take cash) and convert it to credit card or check when the form is submitted to the USFA. Please do not try to pay for tournament entry fees and USFA membership with one check (USFA membership checks have to be written to the USFA). I don't go by my actual first name. What name should I use on the USFA membership form? Let's say you are named John Zachary Doe. The form asks for your first name and middle initial ("John Z."). But, filling out the form as "John Z." will cause problems. If you are known among fencers by a nickname like Jack, Instead, use "John (Jack) Z." or "Jack (John) Z.". If you go by your middle name Zachary, write "John Zachary" or even "J. Zachary". In all cases, try to fill out the form in following years the same way. Otherwise, there's a chance that the USFA won't realize you are a renewing member. Note also that many tournaments use askFRED to know what the names of their fencers are. It confuses things when you go by one name with the USFA and a different name in FRED. It's not so bad if the USFA has John Zachary and FRED has Zachary, or if the USFA has John (Jack) Z. and FRED has Jack. But, it's a real problem when the USFA has John and FRED has Zachary or Jack! Should I check the "School" box because my club is at my school? No! Not for any clubs in this division! If your primary club is associated with a school, check the "club" box (not the "school" box) anyway. If you check "school", your club's name will be hidden on certain USFA reports and you will appear to be an unattached fencer. ("School" is designed for use by people who represent an NCAA school for NCAA fencing and some regular club for USFA fencing.) Do I have to sign the "Member's Signature" blank at the bottom right? Yes! (Well, if you're not 18, your signature is legally meaningless, so that's the one exception.) The USFA states on the form itself, "YOU MUST SIGN WAIVER OF LIABILITY OR YOUR MEMBERSHIP WILL BE NULL AND VOID." If your form arrives in Colorado Springs without the signature, the USFA might take your money, but you won't get USFA membership until the USFA gets your signature on the waiver appearing on a membership form. And, if your form is being forwarded to Colorado Springs by a tournament administrator, if the signature is found to be missing, the form may never be delivered to Colorado Springs. What about the "Parent's or Legal Guardian's Signature" blank at the bottom right? If you're 18, you can ignore it. But, if you're not, then the USFA is serious about it. It must be signed by a parent or legal guardian. A coach will not suffice. Unless, that is, the coach happens to be your parent or your legal guardian. What are other common errors filling out USFA membership forms? 1) Make sure to include your birth date (not today's date, and not your last birthday). If you leave this blank, you will not be able to vote and you may have difficulty getting accepted into a tournament even when you are the correct age for it. 2) The name of our division is "Gulf Coast TX". 3) Make sure to give your e-mail address, and make sure it can be read correctly. If you don't, the USFA will not e-mail you the USFA newsletters, which contain information you may need. 4) Do not check membership type "associate" or some other non-competitive membership type, or you will not be allowed to fence in any USFA-sanctioned competitions at any level. (Years ago, there was a discounted membership type which allowed fencing in local tournaments only, but it's gone.) 5) Include payment, and if you are using a credit card, that includes signing the payment information. What time of year should I join the USFA? Ideally, you should join a few weeks before the August 1st start of the new membership year. It is required to join at a USFA-sanctioned tournament or have already joined. And, in any case, if you don't join before February 1st, you will not be able to cast certain votes even if you join before the vote occurs. Note that anybody initially joining the USFA during April, May, June, or July, is automatically credited with membership for the entire following year (the 12 months starting with the coming August). So, if it is already April, there is no way to save money by waiting for the following fencing year to begin. Do all tournaments accept USFA membership forms at the door? No. Almost all do, but some don't. And, once in a while, a tournament which does may run out of forms. Should I send or fax my form to the USFA, or bring it to a tournament? It depends. (If payment is by credit card, fax can be used. This answer only mentions "send", but read that to include faxing if applicable.) If the tournament is a few weeks away, send the membership form. You will have a membership card soon enough. If you don't get the card soon enough, see the question about how to fence in a tournament if you have not received your card. If the tournament is very soon and you send the membership form to the USFA, you might not be able to prove it when the tournament happens. Take the completed membership form to the tournament instead. (You may want a receipt, which you can try using at any tournament before the membership card arrives. See also the exception below.) But, if you will fence in another tournament or two immediately following the upcoming tournament, you can have a problem at the second tournament if you haven't received your membership card. Consider sending the form to the USFA immediately. You might not get the card soon enough for the first tournament, so see the question about how to fence in a tournament if you have not received your card. Exception: In our Division, you might submit your membership form at a tournament where it ends up in the hands of the Division Secretary for delivery to the USFA. (Many tournaments are like this, but many are not.) If the form does pass through the hands of the Secretary, the details are recorded. This can be useful if you fence in a following tournament where you pre-register on askFRED. The Secretary offers information to the people running all tournaments in the Division about USFA membership of their pre-registrants listed in askFRED. The Secretary also mentions anybody whose membership form has passed through his hands even if the available USFA records are too old to show the membership yet. Assuming the people running the tournament use this information, this is as good as carrying a receipt signed by the Division Secretary! If the tournament is someplace outside the Division, the Division Secretary can still try to provide information to the people running the tournament, information which functions like a signed receipt. I haven't received my card yet. How do I fence in a tournament? There are several different ways to fence in a tournament if you have already submitted a USFA membership form but you have not received your membership card. These are listed from easiest to hardest. You might already be a USFA member but you just don't have any proof in your hands. (The Division has a list of members which is updated from time to time. Also, the entire Southwest Section, which contains the Division, has a list of Section members which is updated from time to time.) If the people running the tournament use current USFA membership data available from the Division or Section, they may already know you are a USFA member. In this case, do pre-register, as the tournament may not check if you are a USFA member if they don't expect you. You might already be a USFA member but you just don't have any proof in your hands, and the tournament is looking for membership cards because it doesn't have or isn't using current USFA membership information. In this case, you need to bring something instead of a membership card. You can try printing the Division's list of members or the Section's list of members, but you have no assurance the tournament will accept that as proof. Particularly for the Section, if you print the actual list there will be nothing in what prints saying what the age of the information is. If you submit the membership form at a tournament, you could ask for a receipt. If you have such a receipt, you can offer the receipt instead of a membership card. If you submitted the membership form at a tournament in our Division where the form went through the hands of the Secretary, you can ask the Secretary to provide a receipt after the fact, or provide assurance to the people running the tournament which acts like a receipt. The chance of the people running the tournament accepting the word of the Secretary is better inside the Division than at tournaments in other divisions. If you faxed your own form to the USFA, you could have included a sheet to be faxed back to you acknowledging receipt of the membership form. If you mailed your own form to the USFA, you could have included a self-addressed stamped postcard acknowledging receipt of the membership form. If you have either of these, you can try offering it at a tournament instead of a card. You can contact the USFA by telephone or fax to request that you be e-mailed or faxed a statement by the USFA that your membership exists. If none of the ways above works, then there's one last resort. Offer to fill out a brand new membership form. Do not use cash to pay for it, and ask that the form be held for ransom while a decent amount of time has passed during which any membership already in the pipeline will not merely get processed but will also come to the attention of whoever is holding the new membership form for ransom. If you have any concerns that things won't go perfectly, you may want to get a receipt. If you cannot talk someone into holding the new membership form for at least a couple of weeks, then instead they'll send it promptly to the USFA. At best, the USFA will realizes you've already paid and will not take your money the second time. At worst, the USFA will take your second payment too, without realizing what they are doing. But, if they do take money from you twice, they will respond to a request to rectify the situation by returning money to you.
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