In which we debrief on the Tiggers

For those miserable human beings who complained about the schedule at the Tiggers, including the ones who had six hours of scheduled breaks on Saturday, I would like to point out that I arrived on campus about an hour before you did, and left about an hour after you did, so please explain to me a little more clearly why I shouldn’t assign you another round.

Needless to say, today I am zonked. So, probably, are a bunch of other people. Nevertheless, mostly, I think, it was one of the best Tiggers ever. If nothing else, the weather was amazing. Compared to the usual rain, sleet, snow, hail and dark of night, it was positively balmy all three days. What else do you need?

I arrived around noon on Friday. It took roughly the same amount of time to drive from Hudville as it did to find a parking space. According to Fr. M, that is deliberate on the town’s part. Princeton does not want you there. There is no way to get there, and if you do somehow manage to find yourself there, there’s no way to stay there. The university’s theoretical visitors’ parking lot was so full that Google was there taking pictures of it as the first image hit for “filled up.” The Paginator had suggested I park somewhere where I was unlikely to get a ticket, but we all know that he is very cavalier about the law in general, much less financial issues, so I ultimately ended up in the parking garage, the one that is usually as filled as that visitors’ lot and which charges you twenty bucks just to pass by without dropping in. I would suggest that next year the university find a different city in which to hold the event, a city that is unafraid to utter those magic words “ample parking.”

We got off to a good start. As I’ve said, tabroom doesn’t require a lot of elaborate business on the day of the event (although it is murder to set up before that), so you can go quickly from last sign-in to ballot printing. We arrived right on time with a pile of ballots and did judge call, which is something we only do at Princeton. But it works there. All the judges showed up, with a few exceptions, and ballots were out in ten minutes, tops. The exceptions learned very quickly that there were fines, and they were paying them or else. And we were unscrupulous about assessing those fines. You didn’t show up, you were out 25 or 50 bucks, and the contact/coach got an email immediately demanding payment. By the end of the tournament, people were showing up in droves. There were rounds where literally no ballots were pushed. Hallelujah!

Of course, there were some who just couldn’t get the message. A couple of schools’ ineptitude at knowing who was judging for them entered immediately into legend. One school had to negotiate a settlement because they were carrying fines for, literally, every round. I would like to give them some quarter as a rudderless ship, since they are between coaches, except once upon a time I was a parent volunteer coach thrust into the lion’s jaws, and if I knew nothing else, I knew who I was sending to tournaments. It was about the only thing I did know. Come to think of it, I continued to know that throughout my coaching career,  from when I took over for real until I retired. Even when my team was quite large, I had a list of them in my pocket for handy reference. In other words, being a parent is not quite an acceptable excuse for being an idiot. Sorry about that. I have been both a parent and, at times, an idiot, but there was no cause and effect there. And I was able ab ovo to do that simplest thing that you are incapable of, so I have no sympathy whatsoever.

Surprisingly (?) I was mostly nice for the event, even in the earliest moments of registration way back when, but I was sorely tested once and finally lost my temper. This was the Mysterious Affair of Schrödinger's Judge. She arrived in the tab room complaining that she should not be fined for not picking up her ballot. Why not? Because she was in the room for ballot call. But why didn’t you pick up your ballot when we called your name? Because she was not in the room. Then you weren’t there. No, I was in the room, except when I wasn’t in the room. Et cetera. I won’t go any further with the conversation because it kept repeating along those lines until I finally get het up and she complained that she didn’t like being yelled at and I told her to Just. Go. Away. Then again, since she was Schrödinger's Judge, she may not have been there in the first place. I have, to my recollection, never treated anyone so nastily. At least, not this season, anyhow.

More tomorrow.