The March Madness Cluster Brings Great Entries & More!

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214 – June, 2023

By Amy Fernandez

The Edison, New Jersey shows have been a local favorite for years. The all-breed centerpiece of the weekend–New Brunswick on Friday and Saturday, March 24-25, and Bronx on Sunday the 26th–drew reasonably good entries of 1395 on Friday, 1696 on Saturday and 1557 on Sunday. Although entries aren’t what they used to be, it’s safe to say that things could be much worse.

Just like many other predictable aspects of life, Covid scrambled the formula. A blitz of canceled and rescheduled shows rippled through the sport nearly driving many clubs into financial ruin. Westminster is the prime example of this catastrophic ongoing impact. Over the course of many decades, Westminster’s Monday-Tuesday show evolved into two non-stop weeks of events. An entire infrastructure of annual specialties and so many other events were built around Westminster. All of that collapsed overnight and at this point who knows if or when any part of it will return. For example, the Winter Garden specialties had coalesced around that mainstay of English, Irish and Gordon Setter specialties. But these were far from the only breed clubs that were basically cut adrift when Westminster abruptly changed course, relocating their show to Tarrytown and now to Flushing Meadow Park. With dwindling options for affordable indoor sites, Edison has become the go-to solution for many of those clubs.

The New Jersey Convention Center in Raritan is a wonderful location, right off the highway with adequate parking and a decent amount of space for setup and grooming. Marjorie Martorella has been New Brunswick’s show chair since 1976–in addition to her noted career as a judge and breeder. She’s seen this sport from every angle. “Before the club went to this site in Edison, we held our shows in Jamesburg right before Labor Day weekend. After that the show relocated to the Dunn Sports Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey. And the last year we were there David Kirkland was in charge and everything went wrong. They made the club put that slick plastic on the gym floor and someone slipped and broke their arm. Another exhibitor’s dog was stolen out of their car.” I might add that problems with this location had escalated for several years. She continues by saying, “David called me after that show and said, “We are never going back there, and he found the New Jersey Convention Center. It was relatively new and for the first year we only rented half of it. When construction was complete, we started renting the entire facility.” It’s very nice and also costs the clubs $26,000 per day.

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214 – June, 2023

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Posted by AnthonyA on Jun 19 2023. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.