Late Entry Policy v.2024-07-21

The main costs involved in running a rogaine are food, toilets and maps. All of these are dependant on the number of entrants and these have to be ordered/finalised by the Friday one week before an event. This is the reason why entries close on the Wednesday, as we use the Thursday to review the entries and finalise numbers prior to placing the orders on the Friday.

In 2009 WARA introduced a policy of No Late Entries, so that we could be sure that our order quantities were correct- prior to that we ran out of food on several events due to a large number of late entries. This policy has been in place since then, though there have probably been a couple of exceptions, at the discretion of the event organisers, when late entries have been permitted – sometimes we have teams that do not show up on the day so we do have a bit of flexibility.

Since 2020 we have been lenient on the No Late Entries policy as Covid has made it difficult for some teams to know if they will be able to compete. Recently, however, the number of late entries has skyrocketed and it is time to restart enforcing the No Late Entries policy. We have been able to cope this year as the events to date have only been sausage sizzles and food is ordered later than normal. But any entries after the Sunday before an event create significant additional work for the admin team in preparing the wrist tags, entries, etc., and a lot of work has to be re-done to accommodate even a single additional team.

WARA’s new event entry system has the ability to handle late entries so the Late Entry Policy is now being enforced, based on

• Normal event entries close at midnight on the Wednesday prior to an event (food and map orders are paced based on these numbers)
• Late entries are permitted, with a cost penalty, via the event entry system only, until midnight on the Sunday prior to the event (final numbers ready for admin to start work). For food-order events such as 12hr and 24hr rogaines we will make this $20 per person. For non-food order events it will be $5 per person.
• No late entries will be permitted after midnight on the Sunday prior to the event.