Combined age groups

I've received some inquiries about combined age groups. Some of you have noticed that especially in the novice and prizewinner ages 10-13, we have combined age groups (as allowed under NAFC and IDTANA rules and syllabi). This is a fairly standard practice, but in the past, we have planned on having plenty of dancers in certain age groups to offer single year age groups. Assuming the combined groups mentioned above are anywhere near as large as they were last year, we will be splitting them back out into single age groups once we get closer to the feis. It is hard to know each year if those same age groups will remain big, or if there is a bubble group of dancers who are moving through the age groups. We also can't predict if dancers have been feising enough this year in this economy to move up levels, etc. I just felt that this year was a little less predictable than prior years, so tried to give us some flexibility. I cannot say at this moment at what number we will split (it will be 30 or below, for sure).

NAFC and IDTANA have rules governing how much we can combine and when, so I wanted to make sure we did everything within our power to make sure that we have the minimum of 5 dancers required for dancers to be eligible to use their placement for moving up.

Please feel free to email me any questions you may have about the age groups, etc.