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hmm...Phorest, you're at wvu. I wonder how far away you guys are from Virginia Tech (where i'm at). Anyways, our kendo club kinda faded away 2 years ago because all the older members either lost interest or graduated. Last year was kind of a rebuilding year, we pretty much had to start from scratch, and only had less than 10 paying members (we need money for insurance, school policy). But, we still had fun. We did a lot more advertising beginning of this semester (because of better leadership, including me, hehe) and attended the club fair for our school, and there were generally a good amount of people who are interested in kendo. Right now, we have about 20 people who paid for the club dues and more are showing up every week to watch and participate in the practices.

I don't think getting people to join is the hard part though, it's getting them to stay. You have to make kendo interesting for them. Let them know it's a lot of hard work and that kendo take a really LONG time to learn, but still make the practices interesting. Have activities outside practices too, make friends with the newbies.

We don't have a sensei here, though, so, the officers have to teach the newbies. We're not doing that bad of a job though I dont' think, the newbies are getting quite good. We plan to go to the dojo in Northern Virginia once a month, too, to get regular "certified" instructions.

We're still working on getting officially sponsored by our school and stuff (to get money from them). Our predecessors didn't do a good job starting the club at all. So, make sure you do a good job the first time around...

As for the tournaments, for colleges, the big one is the one in Harvard in April. A lot of school goes there, we did for the first time last year. There is also one in Cornell sometime in November, but I don't know if they are going to have one this year, I haven't heard anything about it.

Keep us updated about your club situation, and good luck!