In which we clear out the riff and the raff

I like small tournaments. If nothing else, they force you to think about what you’re doing. I’m not saying that a big tournament is easy, but small divisions are played close to the vest. Maybe tabroom can’t pair without a lot of pullups. And maybe it’s best to bye the single 4-0 so that the rest of the field gets the fairest shake. Maybe sometimes you have to force a same team round, again for fairness's shake. Or you steal great judges from a different division, where they would otherwise be taking up half the judges’ lounge floor taking a nap. Whatever it is, you have to have your wits about you, and often there's a lot of pressing of buttons on the setups to allow this or disallow that halfway through the process.

Big tournaments take different wits. While pairing an MPJ division with limited judge obligations can keep the juices flowing, big tournaments are more likely to challenge you in the set-up.

First of all, there’s the freebooters. Regardless of how clearly a tournament declares that it is limited to official school entries, there is no dearth of folks determined to storm the barricades. The thing is, they’re always trying new ways to get past the guards, which means we always have to be alert to the latest scams, which historically have gone so far as name-changing of both a student and his school. Note to prospective incognitos: non-existent schools don’t turn up in Google searches. Every school in the country has a website, which lists its activities and its staff. If North South Central Eastern HS doesn’t have a debate team coached by your mother, we will find that out. We have other tools than Google at our disposal as well for sniffing out imposters, but I’ll keep those to myself. Certain flags wave themselves loud and clear. And no, I don’t feel bad keeping these poor unfortunates from being able to debate. On the day all high schools agree that anyone can come in off the streets and compete in their tennis tournaments and track meets, we’ll start letting anyone come in off the streets to compete in our debate tournaments. Your school doesn’t have a debate team? Well then, pursue an activity they do have, or work with the administration to create a team. Being a lone wolf seems to be only acceptable among other lone wolfs, and the college students who charge them money to personally coach them.

Then there’s the legitimate folks who want to bend the rules regarding obligations and caps and the like. The reason we set limitations of one sort or another is to keep a tournament manageable. Yes, you’re a lone lorn creetur of a coach with all sorts of issues; so is everybody else. Unless you’re good enough of a debater to convince me to eliminate the rule or that it shouldn’t apply to you even although it obviously does, we’re going to be wasting a bit of bandwidth for a while.

Of course, most folks are good solid debate citizens at tournament after tournament. And the good news for them is, we know who they are. We also know who the problem people are, since they never allow us to forget it because they’re a problem at every tournament. The problem people are a small percentage, but they’re active enough to keep you busy. It’s part of the business of running a tournament.

So with a small tournament under my belt now for this season, I’ve been working steadily on a big one that will take place next month in the Bronx. We’re still overbooked, especially in PF, but that should come down a bit. I’ll keep you posted as we progress.