work points?

[Anonymous]

Hello,
I'm a member of the Sage Riders M/C in Utah.  I'm curious as to how you handle work points in your area.
1.  Do you offer work points?
2.  If so, how do you calculate them?
3.  If so, how many years have you been using a wp system?
Any information that you can give would be much appreciated.
Sincerely,
Alan J. Peterson
Sage Riders M/C
AMA Charter Life Member 617520

[Richie Wohlers]

District 37 has been using our current work point system for 6 or 7 years I think.

We give second place points (based on the skill level the worker is at the time of the event) to any racer who works a race and is a member of the hosting club.  D37 requires that a worker be an official member of the club to earn work points.

[Anonymous]

Thank you VERY MUCH for the quick reply.
I'm defending the concept of work points and needed to know how you people handled it in District 37.
My response to those opposed to work points is simply,
If it isn't the responsibility of racers to put on races, then who's responsibility is it?  
Alan J. Peterson
JOIN - PARTICIPATE -- DONATE !!

[Richie Wohlers]

We've had other discussions about ways to encourage club membership, such as requiring riders to be in a club to earn points at all, or requiring them to be in a club (or work an event) to get a top 10 number, etc.  I've heard that some organizations back east have rules like that.  

At any given D37 race, about 40% of the racers do not belong to a club.

[Richie Wohlers]

A little history:

Our previous work point policy was that a rider would earn work points equal to his highest finish of the year.  So, if a rider would normally do no better than 3rd or 4th in class, he would only get 3rd place work points.  That seemed fair to make sure a worker didn't earn more points than he could by racing.  The problem was that it made it difficult for individual racers to track points throughout the year.  You wouldn't know officially how many work points somebody earned until the end of the year when their highest race finish was determined.

So, D37 decided to create a "hard" work point rule, and that's where 2nd place came from.  The theory was that it didn't seem fair to earn first place points, especially for guys who never win their class, so 2nd place was the compromise.