In which I don't know's on third

Last weekend was the Pennsbury tournament, officially known as the Pennsbury Falcon Invitational. This is a major hoop-de-do in the shadow of the Sesame Place theme park with well over a thousand entrants in every forensic event known to humankind. I was there helping out in the LD/PF tabroom. Pennsylvania Jeff, a graduate of Pennsbury and the coach at Strath Haven, is the chief cowboy at this rodeo, and he does an excellent job. This event is relatively overlooked east of the Hudson, which would be a shame if the PFI wasn’t already bursting at the scenes. 

Our venue, Pennsbury High School, comprises two major buildings, East and West, about a fifteen minute walk apart. This separation does not, apparently, mean that students stay in their building for classes during the school day. It’s minus ten degrees and the sleet is ripping the chrome off the Tin Lizzies? Get out there and walk over to your World Geography surprise quiz. Lexington in Massachusetts similarly sends its students into the rain and heat and gloom of night, but at least at that one it’s a quick pop out and pop back in. Fortunately the PFI debate tab staff was not subjected to any of this, with PF/LD running at East and CX running at West. In fact, the LD/PF tabroom even had a couple of comfy reclining chairs. Those Pennsylvanians know how to live, aside from subjecting their offspring to the rain and dark and gloom of night. 

Of course, as at any tournament, stuff happens. One of the biggest entrants, so big they required two buses, had one of their buses break down first thing Saturday morning. This meant that LD and PF got off to an hour-late start. Various ideas were kicked around for handling this situation, until finally Pennsylvania J figured a way to adjust the flighting of the first elimination round with augmented judging from a different division. It worked. That night we still finished up at the original scheduled time with the originally scheduled round. The best thing about this was that nobody panicked. We just went about our business, explored every imaginable possibility (none of the other cowpokes in tab was exactly at their first rodeo), and made it work. The nice thing about tabroom.com is that it makes it so that almost anyone can run a tournament. The nice thing about an experienced tab staff is that they can handle every contingency that would send any inexperienced tab staff out the window. A number of the tournaments in our region are run by virtually the same staffs that run the major end-of-the-year national tournaments. This group knows what it’s doing, even when the tournament doesn't.

A few things happened that are grist for further, lengthy discussion, and we’ll get to them eventually. Meanwhile, is there any way you can’t enjoy when you have to assign a substitute judge, and the name that pops to the top of the possibilities is named Hu? “Who is going into that round?” “Yes.” “I mean, who is judging?” “Yes.” This didn’t go on for long, but it does show that Abbott and Costello will never go away.