I want to say this has been suggested before but I did a quick scan of topic names and it didn't show up, and... it'd go pretty awesome with the suggestions I made in this topic:

Application Reorganization Topic:
http://www.fantasymarchingarts.com/forums/viewtopic/182

I thought about this as I declined about 90 people from one of the NE combine groups comps. -.-" And its going to be like that for a while since there are only 12/15 spots to be filled for it, annnnd people are just going to keep applying.

So, maybe a way to close your competition before it fills? (This is only really necessary for combine-made groups, since they are only made to offer competitions to select groups)

You don't have to decline people, once they figure out that they aren't going to be accepted they can cancel their application and apply for a different competition. I had the same issue with my competition, but I just looked for the people I wanted to add.

Well, the comps aren't full, but its not going to be accepting anyone else. I suggested it so then when a whole mass of people sign up for it, I can just decline them all. But, its not really needed too badly.

Instead of doing this, if you are really going to host shows that are for a select handful of people, why not have the option to host a non-public show, that costs more money to host(?) but gives you the option to enter in the names of the people/group that is pre-qualified to join.

This way you aren't wasting everyone elses time by thinking you are providing a show that they are welcome to.

That's why we had the label [NEC]...

With the combine things Alex has suggested doing, this won't be much of a problem. And cost isn't going to matter since the groups I'm talking about's sole purpose to run the Combine Pre-Season regional, finals, and both the northern and southern regional for the NE combine.

or maybe a password to join the combine comps?

This issue seems almost identical to running a clan server for halo. I never liked having to boot people that joined without realizing that it was a private server, so we finally put a password on it so that nobody but clan members could join in the first place.

So maybe if you guys could have a password for your combine events you theoretically wouldn't have to decline anybody because only members could sign up.