Rant

So here you are, putting on a tournament. You want it to be a good tournament, so you hire a bunch of extra, experienced judges. You also want to be a mensch, so you offer a few judges for sale at your tournament. It is understandable, especially when there are hotel rooms to consider, that you might want to help out some teams with hired judges, but at the same time, you keep a stash for yourself. A good tournament needs a lot of good judges. A bad tournament has too few good judges. Every tournament is probably somewhere in between. If you manage things correctly, you can make yours as good as possible, keeping your stash and servicing your requests both.

But here’s the problem. Some schools look at hiring judges as a right, not a privilege. They put in hiring requests, and expect them to be fulfilled. Almost inevitably, there are more requests than there are judges in your available pile. So the first problem you have is, do you weaken your stash? Your stash of good judges is what makes a tournament good; add to this the judges brought by the attendees, and you’ve got a good event. But if the attendees don’t bring their judges, and you squander yours as hireds, then there’s no room for tab to play around. Every judge judges every round, often indiscriminately, even if English is their 8th language and they’ve never even heard of the activity they’re judging. I mean, your attendees will usually bring a mix of judges ranging from A to C, while you’re hiring what you think are As. It should work out. But if you sell all your As, you don’t get their As. That is a problem.

So, step one, you limit the number of judges you sell to, as I say, maintain your stash. The tournament is better for it.

But there are trolls out there. There are people who, when their hiring requests are not fulfilled, show up at the tournament without judge coverage. They dangle the threat of non-attendance (and not paying registration) as their weapon. Now what do you do?

Well, you could send them packing, but that harms the kids, not the coaches responsible. I’ve don’t it once or twice at MHLs, but because I’ve had no choice, not because I was being strict. In the 1 to 4 ratio of an MHL, more often than not we have just enough judges. We literally have no one to sell. But at an invitational, given the arithmetic (1 to 3 ratio whereas in reality you need 1 to 4, plus there’s your stash), you probably could cover. So what do you do? You sell them a judge at the table, and maybe you fine them $25 or something.

DON’T DO IT. YOU’RE ENCOURAGING THEM. THEY’LL DO IT AGAIN THE NEXT TIME, AND THE NEXT TIME, AND THE NEXT TIME.

Here’s my recommendation going forward, to all tournament directors. Sell judges as you normally do, maintaining your stash to keep your events solid. When you shut down registration, leave a couple of days for those people who didn’t get hired judges enough time to scramble to find their own or shave their entry. Then at the table, here’s the deal. You don’t have judge coverage? Okay, first, you have to pay the judge hiring fee, then you have to pay $100 for each uncovered student. $100 a head. Right here, right now. You publicize this up the wazoo before the tournament so that there’s no surprises. And you don’t admit their entries unless they pay up.

If this weren’t a problem rife in the activity, I wouldn’t care so much. But week after week, teams that want to hire their way out, which is understandable, act as if their requests are orders that must be obeyed, which is not understandable. This action makes the tournaments they attend lesser events by sucking up the resources that have been set aside to make it good. It forces planning in the tabroom after the table shuts down that should have occurred a week ago, slowing down the tournament. It perpetuates bad behavior that we should be banning. But we’re all too nice, and we put up with it, week after week. I am as guilty of this as anyone.

No more. Tournaments I help out with, we’re going to start putting this in the invitation. It will be in big old boldface letters on the Bump invite. You might want to do it do: when hired judges are sold out, they are sold out, and if attendees turn a deaf ear to this, they will pay the price. We are going to stop this practice. There are parasites out there. They destroy the host. We should not let this happen.

Enough is enough.

(Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the show?)