In which we look ahead

The Regis KK AKA CC has some scarily large divisions. 62 NPF? From a tabbing perspective, of course, the more there are the easier it is, provided they’re not all from the same school, but from a logistical perspective, it’s something else. Regis, like all Catholic institutions, has some mysterious underground spaces only hinted at by Dante that are used to give people a foretaste of what will happen if they do not stick to the straight and narrow, and we’ll be using all of those spaces on Saturday. I once went into one of them (I think it was labeled Sub-Cafeteria Basement Annex 8th Circle), and students were lined up at tables one next to the other, debating at the top of their little lungs, while judges’ heads moved back and forth as if at a tennis match, trying to figure out if their student were talking, or if it was the students at one of the tables to the left or to the right. Flows presumably were amalgams of all the rounds within the adjudicator’s range of hearing. The good news was that that range of hearing would be permanently lessened by the event, so that the next time they judged, they’d be lucky if they could hear the kids standing right in front of them, much less the ones standing a foot away. That’s one way of handling things.

Meanwhile, the NDCA is contemplating a Spring conference for coaches on important issues like legality and the like, acceptable material in debates, mandated reporting, etc., etc., all that stuff that little retired coaches like me don’t have to give much thought to. I’ve offered to cover the one thing I can cover, which is how to run tournaments, since I probably do more of it that most anyone else other than my immediate cohorts. Simply put, for years I did it every weekend, or helped someone else do it. Now it’s only most every weekend. Tabroom.com is only a part of it. I have some materials I’ve written up over the years. If this proves of interest, I’ll update them all to have a practical handbook. I’ll probably do that anyhow, but it would be nice to know that it was of interest to someone and not just a way to keep me off the streets.

While said cohorts are mostly in Byzantium for the holidays, I’ll be in places like New Hampshire and New York City, variously doing non-Byzantine things. My biggest hope is to light a fire under myself to get cracking with N3, the COC edition. Lately my get up and go has, as they say, gotten up and gone. But having a break should stir up my inertia (which doesn’t sound right, but then again, I’m not the physicist in the group). Great headway has been made, but more is required. Until there’s at least 10 episodes on deck, proving to me that I have momentum, nothing will happen. And, of course, there’s still N2 to publish. Soon. I promise.