RMCC Hunt - Debate on Regular vs Novice

There's been so much talk about this Masters/Novice issue recently, all because of the RMCC hunt... I still can't believe that it has blown up into such proportions.

Being part of the team in question, I feel that it's unfair for everyone to judge us when they don't even know us. Some have called us 'sharks', others questioning our conscience, and even asking for CoCs to blacklist us. What is the purpose of all these blaming and finger-pointing? It doesn’t seem to be in the good-natured fun of the sport. I don’t think anyone deserves the amount of criticism and displeasure that everyone is expressing towards us.

In the first place, we just want to point out that we did not ask to be put in the ‘Novice’ category. We were following the rules set by the CoC (refer to the entry form for RMCC), which by definition did put us in the ‘Novice’ category. When we were actually called into question on the day of the briefing, we didn't mind joining the Regular category, but eventually it was decided that they will put us in the Novice category instead. Were we wrong not to INSIST on being in the Regular category?? If we had known that the definition of ‘Novice’ in this hunt was supposed to be “first-time hunter”, we would of course not be so thick-skinned to have entered ourselves in the ‘Novice’ category!

I'm not putting the blame on the CoC either; I think there shouldn't be any finger-pointing in the first place. The CoC's job is already hard enough having to set the questions and the route, than having to deal with issues on whether a team is a novice or not. It was just a decision made at that point in time. I suppose if we had not done as well as we did that hunt day, we wouldn't be in this debate in the first place! Everyone has their on-day and off-day. Anyone who has hunted before would know this. Some days, everything just seem to work out right. Clues are easy to crack; observation clues are just right in front of you where you stopped your car; time management was something we learnt the hard-way, so we knew not to linger too long in a sector. We’re definitely not what you label as “Masters”. We have hunted awhile, and have done well in some. But there are also hunts where you don’t even see our names on the winners roll, not even top 20. We go to many hunts to train ourselves to be better, and hopefully one day, we can be on par with the real ‘Masters’.

Why do we have to have this debate on who are Masters / Regulars / Novices anyway? When we started hunting, there weren’t any novice categories. So we just joined in with the usual suspects (whom we know now as “Masters”) and tried our best to pit our wits against them. Of course we didn’t succeed at first, but as you can see, after many many hunts we did manage to do well occasionally and gave them a run for their money, so to speak. But even when we didn’t win, it didn’t stop us from trying... because we love the challenge and we love the game. That’s why we are in it.

Please don’t make this about winning or ego. I hope we can all stop this debate and get on with the sport that we all love. All this can’t be good for the sport… the CoCs, organizers or the hunters. Why must everyone be pegged into a specific category? We get enough of this at work and in our social lives. By labeling someone as Masters or not, is just like whether you deserve a promotion at work!! Do we really want to complicate this part of our lives (which is supposed to be fun!) with incessant labeling and rules??