Reality sets in

I would like to be sanguine and hopeful and all that good stuff, but there’s just so much steam in the old engine…

I’ve alluded to discussions about the NY State organization, which seemed promising at the time (going back to the beginning of summer). A face-to-face meeting was followed by the creation of a listserver to discuss in-depth the issues that had arisen, to propose possible solutions. I kept my mouth shut here in hopes that good news would arise from there. I even threw together a potential facelift for their old website (in aid of providing a communications base for teams throughout the state).

It seems to have all been for nothing. The minutes of the directors meeting were distributed by our director, and nothing substantive has changed, and for that matter, little un-substantive. The venue is new, temporarily, but that was the least of our issues (aside for a call for hospitality that has historically been sadly lacking). I mean, most of us travel all over the map: traveling to Albany was never an issue as compared to traveling somewhere else. I couldn’t care less where the tournament is held, provided the venue is able to adequately hold the tournament. The issues that did matter, like qualification and the judge pool and the nature of the rounds themselves (that phantom 5th round, most notably) have, at best, been tabled.

I’m not going to go into a whole song and dance here about why I think that is. I thought that they were listening to us, and interested in what the constituency that was hanging on by a thread might want that would pull them back in. This seems not to have been the case. Plenty of time was given to address the concerns, which, honestly, go back many years, and are no surprise to anyone given the attendance at the tournament and the complaints that ensued especially after last year. (For that matter, I have kept my correspondence from the Dark Ages when I originally voiced my objections to the organization, to no avail.)

It would seem that the organization is what it is, and will remain what it is. At the heart of it, this is disappointing. That a state organization not serve a particular constituency, for whatever reason, is unfortunate. Then again, given the nature of that constituency, we really won’t miss it. We wanted to make it better. We wanted to make it a desirable event for our students, and for ourselves, a tournament that served everyone in the state as best it could. It would prefer, apparently, to continue to serve a narrow group that has, apparently, happily been served in the past and which has no interest in changing things for anyone else in the future.

So be it. We tried. Others may continue to try. Unless I’m missing something, and I misinterpreted the events so far, I probably won’t be among them.