Final pre-tournament rant, then once more unto the breach, dear VCA

You don’t want to know.

I can’t remember so many schools changing so much registration so late in the game. Last night I finally threw up my hands in ire and put an automatic response on the email telling them to [insert metaphor here for something really drastic that makes people disappear from your life in an oh so poetic way]. Something tells me they’re not making the same sort of changes for their Glenbrook entries. Next year I’m not only fixing fees on the prior Sunday, but fixing names. No name changes accepted; the only modification allowed will be drops (which you will pay for at par). I never even got to entering the strikes last night because of all this nonsense. Not to mention teams changing judges they’ve never entered, or telling me all of a sudden how so-and-so won’t be around for this-or-that round while somehow expecting me to cover for them since their debaters do intend to be around for this-or-that round. “If you can’t judge the round, don’t come to town,” as Johnny Cochran might say. All of the registrations are from educators; must they all be so disorganized?

Menick's Rule #28 for Coachean Success: Here’s what you do. You go to your team and tell them to sign up for a tournament by some sensible internal date. When that date arrives, you send those names to the tournament you want to go to. Then, on tournament day, you bring those people. If someone gets sick, too bad, suck it up and pay the extra fee while they lie in bed watching “Saved by the Bell” reruns. If someone drops out for an unacceptable reason, on the other hand, suspend them from the team until they reimburse the team for their fees. Other than that, end of story. The fact that every tournament every year takes place at the exact same time in the exact same location makes doing this a piece of cake for even the least sentient coach. But I am not alone in paying the price of doing extra work to make up for someone else’s lack of control/organization/cojones/gray matter. Almost every tournament director I know goes through this, and much of the dialectic of direction seems geared toward solving for this situation, until finally you’re TOCs and people pay you just to have you think about letting them come.

Sigh. At least yesterday Rummy [insert another metaphor here for something really drastic that makes people disappear from your life in an oh so poetic way], so it wasn't all bad news.

So tonight I’ll enter the strikes, and tomorrow I’ll go to the school and know that I’ve done what I can. Morituri te salutamus, as they say in the Beltway.