In which we bask in the glow of the run-up having almost now completely run up

One of the points I made in my presentation on how to run a tournament is that there is no such thing as too many judges. You can’t run a tournament without more judges than you know what to do with. My recommendation is that you have about a 10% overage in each pool. This covers all contingencies, most especially the dreaded judge drift during the late rounds. Everybody wants to go home. If you hire a lot of judges, and don’t pay them until you’re willing to let them go home, you will be ahead of the game. Too often this year judges have been released too early, and those of us running tab have not been consulted, and the next thing you know, whatever warm body can be found is in there in the back of the room. This is not the way to do things. Needless to say, I’ll be pointing this out to the Penn folk. No one leaves unless I say they can leave! Tie that to the payment, and we should be fine.

In the end, Penn did a very good job of acquiring hireds. And the teams who were short judges and it was oh-so-impossible for them to get any also did a good job. The debate community can’t really get by without everyone doing their best to contribute. It is a community, and that’s how communities work. Yes, there still are a couple of places short judges, but no, that heinously high fine won’t go away.

I’m especially taken when a school with tuition greater than Harvard for their kindergarten asks for a break on the fines for their late changes and drops. Seriously now? Schools that scrape together nickels and dimes to pay the fees? Let me see what I can do. Schools where everyone is used to having the hired help do it? Maybe not. I realize that this is discriminatory on my part, but I would suggest that it’s justified discrimination. Schools that aren’t doing their bit tend to register early and then attempt to buy all their judging for 30 entries, and wonder why their promptness isn’t rewarded. Well, it’s about need, not when you punched the clock. You need a judge, I’ll find you one. You think you’re entitled to a judge, I’ll recommend that you pull those parents off the couch and pack them in the luggage compartment of the bus and put them to work. As I used to say to my own team, if your parents didn’t want to judge, they should have kept their hands off each other that night 16 years ago… Acting like a parent comes with the job, people. I mean, in PF? Seriously? Feh.

Anyhow, changes and whatnot have been flowing in steadily, and given that there will be snow tomorrow and no school for anyone, there might actually be a break. That would be nice. Kaz is planning on coming down early to beat the blizzard of ’17, so we’ll all be able to drive down nice and early on Friday, singing along with my iPod’s greatest hits.

IPod? What’s an iPod? Well, sonny, it’s this thing we old-timers used to listen to music on. It replaced the gramophone.

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