And so we begin. This weekend was Byram Hills, and I have to
admit, it was fun moving all the pieces again. It’s been a while.
The tournament began with a little round robin. And here’s
the thing about rounds robin that a lot of people don’t seem to understand. If
every person brings a judge, it’s not enough judges. You’ve got to have a spare
or two (or more) on hand to make things work. Originally, all they had were one
for one, and no matter what I did I couldn’t make that happen. Fortunately,
Zach F who was running things had an extra on the line that he was able to reel
in quickly, and everything worked out. I remember this happening last year when
Benko was forced to jump in and judge rounds. I’ve never seen a tournament of
any sort with too many judges, and doubt that I ever will.
I have to admit that tabbing from home is sort of cool. Not
that there was that much to do in the RR once things were set up originally,
aside from putting together the final round. But still, my little phone would
buzz whenever rounds started or finished, as I puttered around the house doing
the things I do when I’m in puttering mode. It wasn’t till after lunch that I
moseyed across the county to Armonk, where BH is. I have no idea why they don’t
call it Armonk Hills, since Bryam is nowhere near there. Nor, for that matter,
are there any hills. What can I say? You could look it up; I’m not that
interested.
With the exception of one year, I’ve been at BH from the
start, back when they were running in the depths of winter. I was a little
hesitant about the move to early birding in September, but it’s worked out
fine. But only for varsity. We tried to fill Academy divisions, but we just
didn’t get any takers. I think the thing might be that the tournament, while
having a few heavy hitters at the top thanks to the RR, is already perceived as
being accessible for younger students. Which it is. Academy has proven
redundant. As compared to Monticello next month, where the Academy divisions
fill and the varsity divisions go wanting. Anyhow, we weren’t exactly bursting
at the seams, but the numbers were quite good enough that we weren’t killing
ourselves with pullups, which is the bane of the smallish tournament. People
were debating the people they should have been debating in their brackets,
which is why there is bracketing in the first place.
The tournament was not without its issues. There was a
health emergency, which reinforced everything we say about chaperones and
competent adults on hand. We were lucky that we had more competent adults than
we knew what to do with. For the first time in anyone’s memory, there were
plenty of administrators on hand for a tournament. Usually the administration
is out the door on the Friday of a tournament before the buses even leave,
unless there’s some poor schmegeggie principal or assistant principal who feels
compelled to welcome the teaming hordes, which never have any interest in being
welcomed. The movement away from opening, closing or middling assemblies has
been steady over the years. When I first started, they were inescapable.
Nowadays, they're rare as can be. I have mixed feelings about that, but that’s a
subject for another post.
In tab there were me and Kaz and the Paginator, although the
latter was brevetted there by us only because we needed someone to have someone around to complain all
weekend. Actually, all he ever complains about is me, and his complaint is that
I am always complaining about things, but that is beside the point. Tabbers are
hard to find, and one doesn’t let one leave one’s grasp, especially if you can
throw him into the odd round when you want to pull off a single flight on a
Friday night. Or if he starts complaining too much.
There’s a couple of technical things I’ll talk about next
time. There’s always a new wrinkle or two at every tournament, maybe something new about tabroom or
just process in general, and I want to start capturing those things more
effectively than just complaining
about discussing them here.
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