These college tournaments do go on…
The Tigger kicks off with registration at 2 on Friday, with
the first round scheduled for 5. Sheryl and I parked ourselves at a table where
we got to, A) greet old friends and acquaintances as they arrived, and B) tell
people who didn’t have a clue what they were doing to either go ask someone
else or listen to Sheryl Kazsplain to them how tournaments were invented during
the Zachary Taylor administration, etc. Etc. Etc. I’m tempted to buy her a Scowling Menick mask to wear at future events like this. The one I wear works
like a charm.
The big problem with college tournaments is, of course,
their attractiveness to folks beyond the normal range of attendees. The people
showing up at Ridge High School this coming weekend will, with the exception of
maybe one or two PF parents who got suckered in, know what they are doing. Kaz
tries to help laypersons in her way, and I admit trying to help them in mine. What I
do is send out wonderfully brilliant literature explaining everything they need
to know so that they will be prepared in advance. There are two problems with
that. The people who are most in need of this information either don’t read the
emails, or don’t understand the information when they do read it. My authorial
skills apparently don’t bridge the ESL gap, which doesn’t bode well for the
poor schmegeggies these undocumented aliens are going to be judging over the course
of the weekend. I’m no supporter of Trump, but if he were to suggest barring
non-English speaking folks from forensics tournaments, I might at least raise
an eyebrow. We could even get Mexico to pay for it. Yeah, I know. I only speak English, and my ignorance of other
languages is shameful. But then again, I’m not trying to judge debate rounds
conducted entirely in any of those languages. We’re not just talking accents
here. I long ago came up with the reply about my own Hen Hud team, when someone would
complain about this one excellent judge I had, “Uh, fella, she’s been speaking
English longer than you have.” But this isn’t that.
Hence another reason why I’m wary of independent travelers.
Anyhow, the biggest mistake we made during the tournament was
not hiding the tab room in the nearest locked fallout shelter. Because we were right in the line of sight, we fielded question
after question about PF, to which the answer was, We’re not the PF tab. Where was said PF tab? I don't know. I couldn't find them either. Meanwhile, we had
one person move in to write ballots because she couldn’t figure out how to use
the wifi and could only connect to Kaz’s tethered smartphone. That person’s own
phone? A flipping flip phone! And you thought flip phones were a thing of the
past. Silly you.
The tournament was the usual. The LD pool wasn’t as strong
as we would have liked, partly because the Tiggers don’t have many ex-LDers at
the school at the moment. But we did our best, and didn’t screw up anything. In
fact, somehow—and I know this doesn’t make sense—we had to run a double-flighted
run-off because we couldn’t scrape together good enough panels otherwise, but
then immediately thereafter were able to do quite good panels for a
single-flighted doubles round that was even larger. Go figure.
Anyhow, another one has bit the dust. Onward.
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