In which I am reminded that I occasionally set reminders for myself

I set a reminder for myself, long ago, to update the registration procedures in the Toolkit. It popped up this morning, just in time for me to delay it for a week and to realize that, yes indeed, registration procedures will be, oh, 100% different this season. Just like everything else. I’ll get on it shortly. Today, instead, it’s golf, which is practically the only thing I do these days out in the world. Helps keep me sane, as much as golf can keep anyone sane.

 

Absent a vaccine/cure, I realize that it’s going to be a particularly long haul of social distancing for me during the season, as it makes no sense for me to rub elbows with anyone who has been in a classroom. Needless to say, I have fears for those who might have no choice but to be in a classroom, namely all my teacher friends. Of course, some may be lucky enough to work in acceptably sterile situations, but certainly not all of them, because that paradigm does not and will not exist. Throw the dice, see what happens? That, I’m afraid, does not sound like a plan. But there isn’t much point in me bloviating about it. That’s a job for other people, many of them in decision-making positions. The only decision I have to make is to tab everything from home no matter what happens. I’ve always felt I could do that anyhow, given how at some tournaments we are so far flung from the action that we might as well be in Neverland. If it wasn’t for the social side of tab rooms, there would be no point whatsoever in being there, at least for me, being teamless. 

 

So it goes.

 

I have noticed a few things. The UKy tournament, for instance, has more people signed up than Goya has beans, and they haven’t even enlisted Ivanka as their spokesperson. 500 VPF entries alone, most of them TBAs, of course. I didn’t bother to count how many were waitlisted, but it seems to be only those over a specific team cap. I gather they simply opened enrollment and let the multitudes flow in. We’ve been recommending event caps that advance all 4-2s (or 5-2s, in some cases) in the most competitive (read TOC-bid) events, and management of entries around 80-20 good regular customers and new worthies (especially those who might have previously been unable to afford the cost of travel to a national event). In other words, some tournaments we’re involved in will not have an open-door policy. Then again, some will. In the early days of discussion, everybody felt that virtual tournaments offered opportunities that eliminated geography. But those opportunities have not eliminated common sense. (Not that I’m accusing UKy of lacking same; I wouldn’t know them if I found them huddled in my basement going through the box of orphaned power cords. Still…) For that matter, the Logan tournament in January—JANUARY—is open and has 81 VPFers rarin’ to go, some of them noted even by name. Schools know today who they will send to a tournament on MLK weekend? I mean, not just a team with one lone wolf for a full battalion? Formidable, as they say on the French barricades. 

 

So, yeah, it’s going to be a crazy season. It already is.