And another Columbia is in the record books.
There wasn’t a lot of hoo-ha with the tabbing. The only issue over the weekend was that PF didn’t pair up as well as usual. There were a lot of pullups, perhaps because of the imbalance of the topic (hint: Go con). For whatever reason, we would get maybe 10 pullups, and the thing was, way too many of them were double pullups that didn’t have to happen. Catholic Charlie and I were able to make them all go away, or more to the point, make them all single pullups (we did have no-flip side restraints). Why tabroom let them happen in the first place is a puzzlement.
The most interesting moment was when someone came to us to plead the case for a team that had gotten a forfeit. The round was across the street from the building in which they were hanging out. I had sent a message to all coaches earlier in the week with a link to campus maps. This team was notified of the round location a half hour before start time. They arrived twenty minutes after start time. In other words, it took them fifty minutes to walk across the street. I was accused of not being lenient. I have to admit being somewhat flummoxed that this conversation was even taking place. How many hours would have to pass between notification and their arrival before they merited a forfeit? God only knows.
I did gently suggest to one judge—a highly preffed experienced ex-debater—who was avoiding starting on time and ending on time that I would eat his spleen with fava beans and chianti if he didn’t perhaps speed things up a bit on his end. Throw in a couple of 0-4 flights, and apparently he managed to find religion for the rest of the tournament. And those 0-4s got a 1 in a late round. Everybody won, sort of.
I also gently suggested to a couple of young guys who came into tab while Charlie and I were plugging away on those weird pairings that, since they refused to go away after I told them that we were busy now and we’d address their issue as soon as possible, and they refused to stop talking, and persisted and persisted—well, I just got up and pointed to my chair and told the talkative one, Please, you finish tabbing, and I’ll go take care of your insignificant problem instead of running the tournament, as the needs of the one far outweighed the needs of the many. He finally slunk away. At the first opportunity, I called the judge in question and asked about the round. “Oh, no,” the judge said. “I entered the decision correctly. The girls won hands down.” As it had said clearly on the ballot. I texted my interlopers and gave them the good news; I mean, well, good to me. At least they accepted it graciously.
Then there’s the flip-phone judge who back in December had moved into tab at Princeton for a couple of hours to write a single ballot. At Columbia, we had to lift this person out of the tab room with a backhoe. The underlying problem, aside from the tech, was that the Barnard guest wifi was dicey at best. Usually people just go to their phones if that's the case. But when your phone was handmade by Alexander Graham Bell, that’s not so easy.
Speaking of tech, Catholic Charlie and Jeremy the Congress Capo both had PCs the size of Cleveland. I got a hernia just looking at them.
Otherwise, not much to report. CC and I got a lot of work done on the Penn rooms, which was really good. I managed to get a little more space, and that tournament is as good as it’s going to get. Although I will admit that I have subsequently been in communication with one person who wants me to readjust the schedule completely because that person finds it inconvenient. Needless to say, I intend to comply one thousand percent.
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