State 2013

Other than that…

Saturday was the running of the NYSDCA State Tournament. It was originally planned for Friday and Saturday, and as we watched the weather during the week there seemed to be little likelihood of any problem. As a matter of fact, even Friday morning all the schools were open, albeit two hours late, and the prediction was for clearing skies.

Which meant, of course, that the skies didn’t clear, the schools didn’t open, the roads were impassable and the tournament was compressed. Oy.

We opened registration at 7:30, hoping to end it by 8:30, but it was more like 9:00, which meant Round 1 hit at about 10:00. (Note to God: Must You always gum up my printer when we’re pressed for time?) Keep in mind that we had something like 10 divisions, including one or two that were implicit (JV buried in V), which means that Kaz, JV and I were pumping these rounds out like crazy. I’ve come to concur with CP’s analysis of MJP in small tournaments, that 6 is better than 5. It works as often as not, and if it doesn’t work, theoretically the discrepancy is smaller. Also, with a very tight pool as we had, it’s a lot better to assign all the judges by hand rather than letting the computer do some and then filling in the rest. I was able to get way more mutuality in about the same amount of time as if I were simply repairing the damage done by the system. Good to know for the future.

We lag paired, which normally is anathema at an event like this, but it was weighed against having one round less, which was not acceptable. We squeezed in 4 prelims and 2 elims (although a couple of finals are postponed to future dates because the custodians were almost literally carrying us out of the building at 9:00). Needless to say, if you read yesterday’s post, I was not happy with a number of people. We were very, very tight on judging to begin with, despite having a nice pool of hireds, just because it was that kind of event. So when people bugged out on us, we were seriously scrambling. Just once I want to collect everyone in the tab room and go out and party instead of finishing a tournament. I mean, we want to do other things too. But we don’t. We stick to our commitments. Which may be why it’s the same handful of shmegeggies week after week: no one else is dumb enough to repeat and also loyal enough to stick.

On another note entirely, it was nice to add Rose Joyce-Turner to the Hall of Fame. She is one of the good people, and I miss her a lot in tab rooms and just generally around. Smart, sane, calm and tough. Some day she has to come back. (If those sons of hers don’t debate, there will be hell to pay!) She was there in person to receive the award, and Greg Varley and others made some nice speeches, and then they all left and I was sitting there thinking, wait a minute, can’t you at least stay an hour or two and judge a couple of rounds of PF? Give me those plaques back, you ungrateful #*(&%@! (There’s a nice picture of Greg and Rose on the NYSDCA website.)

At some point during the day JV and I took a walk down to the main promenade to find some lunch. Unfortunately, the main promenade below HorMan and the rest of Riverdale is not exactly up to HorMan and Riverdale expectations. The classiest joint was a Burger King, which pretty much says it all. At least the weather was warm.

And thus ended the regular season. This weekend we Catholicize, and end the religious season. And then there’s Beans, and I'm outta here.