I managed to catch weesmalexitis last weekend. I think this is a direct result of a conversation I was having with someone recently about not getting many colds in my dotage. This one is a doozy. My brain fell out Sunday night. Literally. (Okay, metaphorically.) I’m beginning to come around now, just in time for turkey.
Wee Sma was a breeze, mostly. The big divisions moved along with dispatch, allowing 5 rounds and a final in PF. (Does LD feel the hot breath on its neck yet?) We had hoped for e-balloting, but we had more people opting out than opting in. I will admit that using a phone is problematic, because you can’t use it to flow, but flowing on paper and then using the phone? Apparently this is beyond most people. Not a big deal, really, but coaches need to tell their judges, especially their parent judges, to bring a device that will work in 2014. Tabroom is in the modern age only to the degree that the users enable it to be there.
The smaller divisions required a little bit of card shuffling. Kaz had originally attempted some North Lex and South Lex stuff, but given that they’re all Lex as far as the system is concerned, that really didn’t get off the ground. Cards it was. Tabroom itself, aside from telling us early in the morning that it couldn’t pair the rounds it had just paired, was fine. Meanwhile Dario, who’s never used tabroom, is shaking in his boots over having to do it for PF at Pton. He’s playing with a dummy tournament to get the hang of it. I promised him that it’s easy as pie and has no problems ever and that the nightmare that was the Lost Round at the Pups was an anomaly. I hope that’s true.
In my deathly state, in any case, I’ve been doing the last busywork of Pton. The rooms are in, the schedule is correct, all the right buttons look to be pressed (which I’ll be checking and checking again and again as we get closer). Last year, thanks to the meningitis scare, we cut out all the ribbon clerks early and had enough room on campus to do some things that unfortunately we can’t do this time. We’ll be back to the two hours up, two hours off arrangement in LD. PF will go one after the other, as usual. In any case, this allowed me to scare up a few extra rooms, so now everyone who’s going to be in seems to be in. I’m not expecting much droppage, if the earlier tournaments this year are any indication. Even Kaz noticed it at Wee Sma. People who sign up are staying signed up. And I’m pleased with the way we handled the waitlists. Unlike the Pups, where it was first come, first served, we waited a while and then let everyone who was signed up in on an equal basis. No favorites, and certainly no favorites because you happened to be there first, the most suspect warrant for getting in I can imagine.
And there you are. Have a nice turkey.
1 comment:
While waitlists have egalitarian benefits, they also make logistical planning difficult for large programs that need to work hard to find slots to be egalitarian for all their student members. When the invitation has lines like the following, which appears in the Princeton invitation, coaches might safely assume they're going to ultimately get a minimum of six entries.
"Each school will be able to register six debaters in each LD division. If a school registers more than six in either division, debaters beyond the first six will be placed on the wait list. We will release names from the waitlist in as timely a manner as possible."
When the minimum number of entries you're going to get in each event becomes a guessing game, it really makes planning difficult.
I urge tournaments that choose to go waitlist only to consider this as they divvy up slots.
An attempt to be egalitarian is appreciated, but if all tournaments become the Senate, where it becomes impossible for teams with larger numbers to ever get more entries -- or even get an advertised minimum -- then debaters at smaller programs are always advantaged.
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