At their coronation on April 6, their Majesties Tindal and Emerson made changes to Eastern Law regarding kingdom youth championships, which took effect following their publication in the Pikestaff last week.
The precise wording is available online, but I wanted to summarize it here for easy reference by the kingdom’s youth combat marshals.
The strict calendar rules for once-per-reign championship events have been eliminated; over the last two years those had led to half of our youth championships being canceled due to scheduling difficulties.
Instead, the new rules provide that any youth combat tournament held at an event when the Monarchs are present will be considered a kingdom championship, with the winners in each age division being called into court and named champions for the duration of that event.
This system is different from the way adult championships work, and from how youth championships worked for the last five years, but we’re going to give it a try this season and see how it works out — if you’re involved in one of these tournaments over the coming months, please report back on how it goes, and as those reports come in we’ll review and brainstorm whether we want to recommend any further changes to these rules.
If you’re running youth combat for a kingdom event or RP this year, please make sure your event steward notifies the royals that youth combat is expected so that they know to have the appropriate regalia on hand.
You are not obligated to organize a formal tournament as part of the youth combat activities; if you end up running a practice session, or stick to casual bear pits or melees, that’s fine. And if youth turnout is low, you might not have enough fighters to hold a meaningful tournament, or might only have combatants in one or two age divisions.
But if you do have sufficient staffing and youth participation, we encourage you to organize a tournament, both to provide the young fighters with an opportunity for recognition, and to improve the visibility of the youth combat program — seeing our champions celebrated in court may encourage other kids to participate at a future event, and reminds other adults that our martial discipline is worthy of support.
Either way, when youth combat activities wrap up for the day, please make a point of contacting the royals’ heraldic staff to let them know how many winners you had, or that you ended up not running a tournament, so that they can incorporate this into their plans for court.
And please report any championship results to the youth marshalate, so that we can evaluate how this new system is working out, and so the names of the champions can be added to our list.
Thank you,
— Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin
— East Kingdom Youth Earl Marshal
