In which we catch up with a lot of tournaments

It’s beginning to feel a lot like debate.

Byram Hills opened up, and a few hardy souls have already signed up, which is always a good sign. I suggested to their powers that be that they send out an invite reminder; yes, it’s on your tabroom.com front page, but are people scrupulously checking that page on the first day of August? Maybe they are.

I’ve signed up for tabbing Monticello once again, and Rose JT has created the tabroom file. I’ll look at it some time this week. I do hope that people rouse themselves a little more this year for Monti. Why everyone in the region isn’t there befuddles me. Everyone wants and needs more rounds. Monti offers more rounds. Do the math.

Final tuning is finished on the Bronx tabroom file. They’re opening registration the middle of the month. Mostly it’s the same as last year, from what I can see and the discussions we’ve had. Which is fine. Stability is, in an unstable universe, often its own reward.

Vassar had suggested that they wanted a tournament back in the spring, but then they disappeared off the map until this weekend. Uh, for a November tournament? It’s a little late to get people onboard, given that half of the schools prep their budgets the previous school year. Then again, the Vasses are strongly into Parli and want that to be their cornerstone. Which is fine, but that means looking to Connecticut, where the Parlis are thicker than fleas on a three-legged moosehound. (As the Vast Coachean Army well knows, I don’t trouble my pretty little brain much with metaphors; I shouldn’t have to do all the work around here. If you've got a better one, feel free to sub it in.) Additionally, they don’t seem to know much about LD or PF at all. My suggestion to them is to start with a small Parli tournament and build over time. Better that than a small Parli tournament and a bust of an LD/PF tournament. I’m happy to help them do whatever, although they’ll have Everett R for Parli, and won’t need me if that’s all there is.

Parli. Jeesh. Meanwhile Worlds is rearing its forensical little head. It’s already been taken into the NDCA finals. Kaz (and, for that matter, everyone else) says it’s a great activity, with a lot of spontaneity. My issue with it, at the moment, is that we still have policy, LD and PF kicking around. I don’t run a single tournament with space for yet another debate activity. I think regions need to pick their poison and leave it at that. In the northeast, with policy steadily shrinking, the poisons of choice are PF and LD, in that order. The former is robustness on a stick, while LD mostly continues to hold its own. We just don’t need to offer more, at least at this time. Who knows what the stage will look like a couple of years from now.

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