I would like to thank the members of the Academy...

One thing that seems to have gone by the wayside at tournaments these days is the award ceremony. Except, of course, at Big Bronx, where next year I understand it will be three days of nothing but award ceremonies, plus the display of a video of a round from last year at the very end just to keep up appearances.

Seriously, I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I strongly believe that in a competitive event like ours, it is good to have a celebration of effort and performance. It’s more than just taking tin: it’s the recognition by your peers. The announcement of the name and the applause—even the zippy one clap—is meaningful. Walking up to the stage and shaking a hand and getting something tangible is meaningful. Walking back and getting a pat on the back from your teammates is meaningful. I don’t want these things to go away, and I have a special cold spot in my heart for teams that disappear from a tournament as soon as they can, slinking off into the night, so to speak, especially when their trip home is eleven minutes. Okay, you didn’t win anything, but is that a reason for you not to acknowledge those who did?

On the other hand, it is the responsibility of tournaments to manage their award ceremonies intelligently. Despite everything I’ve said above, I do not like sitting around in an auditorium wasting an hour that could otherwise be spent either debating or going home. O’C gets around much of this by having his service awards at the opening ceremony, when we’re still preparing the tournament, thus not taking away time from anything else. That’s smart. Then there’s specific acknowledgments for each division at a reasonable time for that division, mostly just the speaker awards at a point when everyone’s still around but no one is itching to be elsewhere. That’s also smart, and that’s the key. The awards need to be when everyone is both around and not wishing they weren’t.

I propose the following guidelines:
All tournaments should have ceremonies at which awards are given out.
At a high school invitational, these awards should be at around the quarterfinal point, which would keep people hanging around, and then, if they left, the tournament would not fall apart without them. This is very civilized.
Tournaments have to accept that people might leave before an award ceremony. It’s not prison, after all.
By the same token, people who leave have to accept that they’re not going to get their ballots. These people who are leaving are not following protocol, and with so much going on during a tournament, they can’t expect to get special treatment. It’s their problem, not the tournament’s. Bring stamps and a big envelope. Tournament directors: note this in your invite.
Ceremonies need not be for every event at once. In other words, never keep people sitting around waiting for awards, not theirs and especially not someone else’s. You can do PF now and LD later, and vice versa.
It’s okay to run finals during the awards ceremony, in aid of not keeping people sitting around waiting.
Full names should be announced at all times, and not initials. I am not Hendrick Hudson JM, I am Jim Menick from Hendrick Hudson.
I don’t need to know the ballot count from each and every round. Especially if it’s a rout, do we need to broadcast it throughout the auditorium that so and so lost on a 5-0?
One clap is enough. Move people along. Just because we are being traditional doesn’t mean we have to be pokey.
Don’t thank everyone in the home state of the tournament for making it happen. Thank the parents as a group, the students as a group, the tab room as a group, and move on. This takes one minute. The more people you thank, the less the audience will give a crap. Use the standard of CatNats and NatNats as an example. They thank everyone under the sun for at least an hour, boring everyone so much that by the time the actual awards start, almost everyone in the audience is engaged in texting ribald comments in real time on every person who has just been thanked, or else playing Angry Birds, You Don’t Know Jack or Minesweeper (this being the only instance in anyone’s life so dull that even Minesweeper is preferable). If you really want to thank somebody, do it in person. Give them a bottle of wine or an Amazon book certificate, whichever is more appropriate. But do it privately.
Don’t give us a big song and dance about something that only matters to you. We don’t care. If it’s funny (e.g., the history of the Bump traveling [fruit] cup), it’s worth three minutes, otherwise write it up in your invitation. An award ceremony is about giving awards. If you have a special award named after someone, that is fine, but simply announce it as the Special Award Named After Someone, explain why in a sentence, and then announce the winner.
A participant’s walk to the podium to accept an award should not last longer than an AC. Move your butt. Meanwhile, the award announcer should not wait for this slow-butted person to come to the stage, but should keep moving. One clap. Get that rhythm going. If necessary, film JV at one of his ceremonies and do what he does.
If your name is hard to pronounce, try not to win an award. It just slows things down. (Okay, maybe this one isn’t such a good idea.)
Shoot for twenty minutes tops. Send people out happy. Leave ‘em wanting more. In other words, the fundamental rules of entertainment apply. The less fun it is, the less likely people will stay around for the next one.