ACF Regionals at WUSTL (2/26/2011)

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

I think you missed my point entirely, which is that coaches reading for their team is 1) a complete non-issue unless the coach is known to cheat or be ultra-biased, which is about the exact opposite of coach Lorinskas, and if that is known about a coach then you need to avoid using them as a staffer at all costs in any circumstance, and 2) it is in-fact courteous to allow a coach who is being drafted at the last minute the opportunity to watch their team play at least once during a tournament, since usually they would be watching their team the whole day to see how they are playing and figure out how to help them as a coach. I have run many tournaments where coaches are drafted to read, and because I trust all those coaches, I routinely will give them at least one game where they get to see their team play. It is not an oversight, it is in fact intentional that I do it that way, so you complaining about it is very much not getting the point.

[Charbroil]

I freely admit that our tournament ran later than it should have and had some staffing quality problems, but all of these issues were largely resolved by Round 4 and in no way warrant this response.

I just want people to know that this was honestly the worst tournament I've ever been to...[the] tournament...did not end until after 7:30

As I mentioned to you at the tournament, the only tournaments you've attended were either timed or ended an hour or less earlier than our did. Describing our tournament as some sort of massive outlier in terms of lateness is ridiculous.

Also, I finished the last round in my room at 7, and at least half of the teams were already gone by then--I think the advantaged final wrapped up around 7:15.

1. The bracketing made absolutely no sense. In both brackets there was a haphazard mix of DI, DII, and UG teams. It appeared to me that the names were drawn out of a hat. As a result of this, our C team had to play Michigan A (final score: 540-0). This is a complete injustice against the spirit of quiz bowl. I’m not bashing Chicago, Michigan, or Ohio State – it’s just that they had absolutely no business playing most of the teams present. At the very least, these teams should have been in their own separate bracket. To me, this represents a clear lack of foresight by the TDs.

Rob mentioned this, but this is ridiculous--no tournament does what you're proposing, for the obvious reason that there's no reason to baby teams like this.

2. The TDs tried to deny us discounts that we definitely earned. For instance, we were originally told that we did not qualify for a driving discount since we had not gone 200 miles. One can easily confirm via Google Maps that the distance between Truman and WashU is 210 miles by the 63-I70 route, which is the most commonly taken route. Charles also tried to tell us that we would not receive a discount for sending three staffers to WUHSAC earlier in the year, when he had promised me before that we would receive these discounts. When I mentioned this email that he had sent, he quickly withdrew his statement and gave us the $30 discount.

This is blatantly untrue--we overlooked the travel and WUHSAC discount, and immediately added them once we were informed otherwise. In no way did I or anyone else imply that we had any objection to offering said discounts. The closest I came to "[telling you] that [you] would not receive a discount for sending three staffers" was when I paused for five seconds to recall that email--if you consider that us trying to renege on our agreement, that's absolutely ridiculous.

Also, it's worth noting that this is the first year WashU has ever offered discounts for staffing WUHSAC, and that in previous years, people have always been willing to do so for free. Despite that, I find it interesting that Truman State seems to be the only team which apparently feels the need to demand said discounts and be affronted when the tournament director takes a moment to recall an email he sent a month earlier.

Also, it's worth noting that all of the buzzers we brought to your tournament actually worked, which is more than could be said about your team yesterday.

3. The tournament suffered early on from a lack of moderators. I understand that not all of this was the directors’ fault; some staffers failed to show up or showed up late. However, WashU seems to have consistently had a problem with this in the past. On at least three separate occasions this year (ACF Novice, GIT...) the WashU directors practically begged us to bring staffers. This should not be happening.

ACF Novice: We received a promise of two staffers without really asking for them, so I don't think you can say we "begged" for staffers. At most, we did initially mention the possibility of a staffing shortage, but we ended up having a superabundance of staffers (so that we sent one person home), including two Truman players who I thought weren't in the target audience for ACF Novice anyway; we could easily have let them play if we'd realized that they were eligible (as, in retrospect, they might have been).

GIT: We asked for a rotating staffer because we thought we'd have a shortage, but again, we had enough staffers. Again, we could have let the staffer play, but we didn't think to mention that.

...Truman hosted ACF Fall this year, and while we of course offered discounts if teams brought staffers, we did not personally ask any teams to help staff. In fact, we had an overflow of staffers. WashU’s team is at least as large as ours, so I don’t really see how there was such a problem getting people to show up.

This comparison is idiotic. ACF Regionals also doesn't compare to ACF Fall because not only did our event have nearly twice as many teams, but ACF Fall can draw upon a large number of veteran players who generally don't play, whereas ACF Regionals can't. If Kurtis Droge from Michigan, Sam Bailey from Chiago, or Kirun from Ohio State had been coming to an ACF Fall at WUSTL rather than an ACF Regionals, what capacity do you think they would be coming in?

Also, it's worth noting the blatant hole in your logic--if your team is the same size as ours, and yours has enough people to staff a tournament with outside help, what do you think is going to happen when we don't have as much help and twice as many teams?

...WUHSAC...

Comparing WUHSAC to the 10 team ACF Fall and 8 team high school event you've been involved in hosting is absolutely ridiculous. These events don't compare at all--not only does it require 4 times as many staffers as your tournaments have, but implying that we "begged" for staffers for WUHSAC is blatantly disingenuous--we asked whether Truman people might be able to staff because every other team in Missouri traditionally volunteers to help staff WUHSAC and we had the temerity to assume Truman might also be interested. In any event, we had enough staffers for WUHSAC to put two in nearly every room, so in no way were Truman's staffers critical to our running of WUHSAC.

Finally, in case anyone wants to bring up our stats issue with WUHSAC, I'd like to note that Truman State has never posted any statistics for its high school events save perhaps one, whereas we will have complete statistics available for WUHSAC in two weeks despite the fact that our field is five times as large as yours (and uses bouncebacks).

Also, on the subject of statistics, and in the spirit of pettiness which pervades your criticisms, the placements in the ACF Fall 2010 statistics are still blatantly incorrect.

The desperation of the TDs was especially evident when Charles asked the parents of one of our team members to help staff (which, as we all know from HS, is a terrible idea).

I thought said parents planned on joining us for the entire day, so I asked if they were interested in scorekeeping. When I realized they weren't, I immediately said that they didn't have to staff. Offering to give some bystanders a role at the tournament which would also be helpful to us and begging for staff are two totally different things.

Also, given that you said during the tournament that we were to be criticized for not finding random people on campus to staff, this statement is remarkably hypocritical. Are you saying that said parents wouldn't at least be as good as said random people with no Quiz Bowl experience whatsoever?

4. Of the moderators that were present, most of them were not good at all. I think the only high-quality moderators there were Gordon and Ikshu, and unfortunately I was never in their rooms. We had a pretty decent moderator in our room, but he still read too slowly for my taste. The rest of the moderators were sub-par, blundering through the questions, not speaking clearly, and butchering simple words, including REDACTED. I’m pretty sure one of the girls had never moderated before (probably a last-minute recruit by TDs). But probably the biggest issue was with the coach from Carbondale, which warrants its own section.

We had a couple of poor moderators in the morning, including a person whom I'd seen moderate high school events before, but who was out of her depth at ACF Regionals; that said, no one moderating at our tournament had never read at some sort of event before. Even so, our weaker moderators were replaced at lunch, and we finished all remaining rounds in 30-35 minutes--may I ask what exactly there is to criticize about our actions in that context?

5. Ben from Carbondale HS attended the tournament as a one-man team, and his coach Mrs. L also attended to help staff. While she was a decent moderator (despite her frequent side-comments between questions), a mistake made by her cost us a game against Illinois which we should have easily won. Specifically, Mrs. L gave the answer to the question before our teammate (who had buzzed in) gave her answer (which she knew – this was a very easy question about REDACTED). The question was given to us at that point, but it was grounds for protest at the end of the game when Illinois came within 40 points. The question was then thrown out (along with our 20 points). Mrs. L then read another question in a completely different category, which Illinois answered, and they answered enough bonus parts to win the game. I’m not bashing Illinois here at all, that’s not the point of this article, but I’m saying that an amateur mistake by this moderator cost us the game. Furthermore, I heard from our C team that when Ben was in Mrs. L’s room, TDs did not rotate her out, and when she read answers she directed them specifically to him. This could be misconstrued as bias and is unacceptable. Furthermore, the TDs knew beforehand that Mrs. L was staffing (her name was typed in on the schedule) but they nevertheless placed Ben in her room. This is unacceptable and ought to have been avoided.

You're criticizing us because one of our staffers made a single mistake which ended up costing you a game because you missed a replacement question? I apologize that my abilities as tournament director don't extend to making people perfect or compelling Rob Carson to put 8 replacement questions (one in each subject) in each packet.

Also, people have mentioned this before, but implying Coach Lorinskas was working on Ben's behalf is absolutely ridiculous. Furthermore, it's not as if you kept Gordon from staffing for us at ACF Fall or Brad Fischer from staffing for NIU at ACF Fall, so I don't see where your implication that we should micromanage staff to keep them from ever interacting with their teams (again something no tournament ever does) comes from.

6. Several teams, not just us, were extremely frustrated with the running of this tournament. But apparently Charles didn’t think too much was wrong, since we observed him taking a nap during a round of the tournament (when he should have been helping to staff). In my opinion this is unacceptable behavior; I would never think of taking a nap during a tournament that I was directing even if things were going well (which they definitely were not here).

This criticism is totally laughable, but I suppose I might as well address it--I had to use the restroom at the beginning of a round, so I arranged to have one of the bye round staffers read in my room. By the time I got back, all of the rooms had started, so I checked with Tournament Central to see if everything was going smoothly with statistics. Then, because I didn't want to barge into one of the rooms during a game, I took a nap until the next round, which I went to go read for. If anyone would like to mention something else I could have done during that time, then by all means, that's fine, since I couldn't think of a better use of my time, but otherwise describing this as some sort of massive dereliction of duty is ridiculous.

My room, incidentally, ended within 30-35 minutes of starting.

7. Our first match started reasonably on time (around 9:15) and finished fairly quickly (by 9:40). After that, however, we had to wait over 30 minutes for the next game to start. Apparently some of the other rooms were “waiting for packets” which doesn’t make sense, as our room started on time. From that point on, none of the rooms ran together, much less on time, and this was further worsened by the lack of staffers/good staffers as I talked about earlier. We had only finished four rounds when we took a lunch break at 12:15. Ideally, things should have been reset after lunch, since the major bugs should have been worked out and everyone started at the same time, but for reasons unknown there were still long wait times and lags between rooms. We waited at least 10-15 minutes to start each successive round. The end result was a tournament which ended at seven thirty. Actually, the tournament wasn’t even over yet, this was just when we left: there were still teams playing games.

Simple math blows holes through this story. We finished lunch at 1:30 PM. We ended the tournament by 7:15 (when the advantaged final ended), and the first rooms got done at 6:45. That adds up to 40 minutes per round in most rooms, or 30-35 minutes of game time and ~5 minutes of waiting. Suboptimal? Sure. But waiting at least 10-15 minutes to start each round? Definitely not.

As for the "waiting for packets" issue, we had a couple of last minute staffing changes, and those staffer didn't realize we'd emailed them the packets, which slowed down round 1.

Thus, while I do apologize that our tournament was certainly imperfect, I think Ben Chametzky describes it nicely when he says that your criticism are petty.

[Charbroil]

Kevin, you are right about a lot of things in your post. Charles Hang has demonstrated himself to be a completely incompetent staffer, much less director, in more ways than I could ever begin to count...

Do you have trouble counting over four or something? Let's see what I've done which you'd construe as "completely incompetent."

1/ The incident with Rock Bridge's registration with WUHSAC--that was certainly very unfortunate, and I apologized for it at the time, but seriously, it was resolved within four hours of you mentioning it to me and immediately after I realized you were right. I don't think it's unreasonable for people to overlook forum posts from months beforehand, even in the threads about their events.

2/ WUHSAC statistics--look, this is going to be taken care of in the next couple of weeks. While again I apologize that this has taken longer than I find acceptable, I find your criticism of this mildly hypocritical given that it took you over two months to make some relatively minor fixes in your Tiger Bowl statistics, whereas you seem to think I'm a chronic incompetent for being not having the time to decipher 90 poorly formatted bounceback scoresheets and thus choosing to ask someone else to do so.

I'm not defending our issue with stats--it's definitely a major blot on WUHSAC. However, implying that our having similar issues to at least a few other tournaments makes me some sort of chronic incompetent seems to be a bit much.

3,4/ To be honest, I can't think of any other hosting scandals I've been involved in, but I'll let you fill in the blanks here since I imagine I'm forgetting some other issue of equal validity as the above two.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

You not entering any statistics at WUHSAC during the day when there are individual awards to hand out was pretty mind-blowing. The Rock Bridge thing wasn't resolved after you realized I was right, it was resolved after you sent me emails insisting nothing could be done and I then had to convince your club president to overrule you. Your poor staffing held up Villa Duchesne's tournament last year by about an hour. For this regionals you foisted TDing on Joel at the last minute, reportedly without telling anyone in the leadership of your team. You incompetently randomized WUHSAC's questions. You left a tournament you directed at St. Charles early, conscripting Jason Loy to finish running it for you during the course of the tournament. I would say that is a fairly staggering list, and that doesn't even get into your whole thing about not telling anybody on your team last year that you decided you'd rather go trophy whoring at the community college level, which was pretty scandalous at the time.

[chemist685]

In retrospect I did make some comments in my earlier post which were not appropriate, and I'd like to clear the air just a bit. I want to apologize for attacking Coach Lorinskas; moderators do make mistakes and the issue was resolved in the best way possible. Maybe I did harbor some bitterness about that match, but this was not the place to post about it. Illinois won a legitimate and well-fought victory and that's that. As Jared said, our main complaint is that Coach Lorinskas was moderating in the same room as Ben. While it is important for a coach to monitor her player's performance, there are many more opportunities for that throughout the year that don't involve being a moderator during that player's match.

Admittedly I was naive about the prelim bracket setup. From the posts I've seen from more experienced players than I, there was nothing fishy about the brackets. There's just something about having a team lose 540-0 that fosters bitterness, but again this was not the place for that.

It was also unfair of me to call out WashU for recruiting so heavily for WUHSAC -- this is a huge tournament requiring a huge staff and a lot of help from outside schools. Charles is right that Truman has never even come close to hosting a tournament of that caliber and likely never will.

When I wrote the first post I intended to be as objective as possible, but in the above points that was not the case, and I apologize. What I meant to get across was that every player from Truman went home dissatisfied with the actual logistics and running of this tournament. Of course this incident was an exception to the rule as WashU has hosted good tournaments and probably will in the future.

[Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat]

Charlie beat me to it, but I don't see what the problem is with a coach reading in a room for her own player unless there is some sort of bias that factors into the match. Do you have a problem with, say, a player on an A team letting a moderator take a break and reading during their bye round for the room where their B team plays? That happens all the time, since it is much more fun than reading for or watching most other games.

This tournament ran a bit slower than necessary, but that was the only real problem I had with how it was run. Some moderators weren't outstanding, but they generally could be understood. I didn't get the sense that any one moderator was holding things up, so I'm not sure exactly what caused it to run so slowly. I have seen a tournament or two that waited until all rooms were done before sending out the packets for the next round; it doesn't work well, and maybe that's what happened.
I'm not sure I've ever seen an untimed tournament finish before 5:00, so I'm not sure why that was given as an estimated finishing time. The more tournaments you go to, the better you can estimate finishing time, and I expected the tournament to finish around 7 or 8.

Also, the reason the teams are mixed together in the initial brackets is so that any team could theoretically win the tournament. There is no bias involved, and if the brackets are created perfectly, the top and bottom teams will be split evenly between brackets. In this case, the only "problem" I noticed was that teams 2-4 were all in one bracket, but that was probably due to guessing (reasonably) that Michigan B wouldn't play quite as well as they did. To be honest, I don't think anyone even on our team expected they would beat both OSU and Chicago. Since they played very well, they had the chance to play in the finals.

I'd like to thank Wash U for hosting, and additionally thank all the staffers not on the Wash U team for making the tournament possible.

[Charbroil]

You not entering any statistics at WUHSAC during the day when there are individual awards to hand out was pretty mind-blowing.

We entered five rounds of statistics after we decided to give up on putting in bounceback information--and we have those statistics. However, I imagine that you'd prefer statistics which incorporate bouncebacks.

The Rock Bridge thing wasn't resolved after you realized I was right, it was resolved after you sent me emails insisting nothing could be done and I then had to convince your club president to overrule you.

No, John and I both realized at the same time (since we reread over the forum thread) that I was wrong and we should give Rock Bridge the second team. Please let me know if he told you some completely different story, like me insisting that Rock Bridge would only get one team even after he told me that you'd registered two.

Your poor staffing held up Villa Duchesne's tournament last year by about an hour.

This is literally someone else from WashU (Simon). I not only finished on time, but spent all of lunch with Jeffrey Hill doing the tournament statistics. I then staffed my one playoff round, then watched playoff games (the latter part of which you should remember, since I was in your room!)

For this regionals you foisted TDing on Joel at the last minute, reportedly without telling anyone in the leadership of your team.

I told Joel that he'd have to help me direct two weeks beforehand--seriously, do you ask any of my teammates whether your stories about them are at all true before you speak on their behalf? The remaining officers of the team (John & Spencer) were unavailable to direct, as far as I'm aware of.

Edit: I meant unavailable, not "available."

You incompetently randomized WUHSAC's questions.

Fair. Three things.

You left a tournament you directed at St. Charles early, conscripting Jason Loy to finish running it for you during the course of the tournament.

I was driving Dan Donohue to the train station. He did miss his train, and that tournament did run unfortunately late (it finished around 5:00 PM, if I recall), so I guess next time you'll have an actually accurate criticism of this.

I would say that is a fairly staggering list...

...of mistakes on your part...

...and that doesn't even get into your whole thing about not telling anybody on your team last year that you decided you'd rather go trophy whoring at the community college level, which was pretty scandalous at the time.

This is both irrelevant and false--I told John I wouldn't be at SCT three weeks beforehand. Unless you're saying everyone should declare their availability to their team three weeks in advance of every tournament, of course.

[Charbroil]

Some moderators weren't outstanding, but they generally could be understood. I didn't get the sense that any one moderator was holding things up, so I'm not sure exactly what caused it to run so slowly. I have seen a tournament or two that waited until all rooms were done before sending out the packets for the next round; it doesn't work well, and maybe that's what happened.

That wasn't what we did, but we did have issues distributing the first round packets to people--and the ones who got the packets last were also the slowest readers, so that exacerbated things.

I'm not sure I've ever seen an untimed tournament finish before 5:00, so I'm not sure why that was given as an estimated finishing time. The more tournaments you go to, the better you can estimate finishing time, and I expected the tournament to finish around 7 or 8.

In retrospect, this was dumb, though we could probably have finished around 6-6:30 if we'd been able to run the first part of the event at the same rate as the second part.

[Papa's in the House]

I'll attempt to do this with some sort of order and not repeat too many points made by others:

I just want people to know that this was honestly the worst tournament I've ever been to.

Then you have not been to many tournaments. See the thread about last year's Indiana SCT if you would like to see what a bad tournament was really like. This tournament had some problems, but not so many as to make it god awful.

A combination of several mistakes by the TDs culminated in a tournament that did not end until after 7:30 and left several teams extremely frustrated.

This tournament ended before 7:30. Furthermore, a tournament ending this late is not unheard of, especially with larger fields and some relatively inexperienced moderators.

The tournament suffered early on from a lack of moderators. I understand that not all of this was the directors’ fault; some staffers failed to show up or showed up late.

You will come to learn that it is much harder to extract staff than you might think. That the TDs presumably made all the necessary communications to obtain staff and the staffers themselves failed to show should not be held against the TDs or the school. It should be held against the individual staffers that did not show. There were enough players who had attended other tournaments at this mirror of ACF Regionals that the lack of staffers in the morning was not a big deal, since teams on byes were able to read for rooms without staffers. This isn't the best scenario, but it's not the most egregious thing to happen. I was happy to read during Illinois' bye since it meant that I didn't have to just sit around and do nothing (other than watch someone else play).

Of the moderators that were present, most of them were not good at all. I think the only high-quality moderators there were Gordon and Ikshu, and unfortunately I was never in their rooms. We had a pretty decent moderator in our room, but he still read too slowly for my taste. The rest of the moderators were sub-par, blundering through the questions, not speaking clearly, and butchering simple words, including REDACTED. I’m pretty sure one of the girls had never moderated before (probably a last-minute recruit by TDs).

Moderators vary. Get over it. Not every moderator at every school is going to be a Mike Sorice or Seth Teitler. Some will stumble over words they haven't heard before, most will stumble over foreign languages, others will make mistakes with rules, but that's just how quiz bowl works. If you felt like the moderating at this tournament was so bad that it affected your game play, you should have either left or volunteered to moderate yourself. I don't think you did either of these things (correct me if I'm wrong), so stop complaining that a moderator "read too slowly for [your] taste." Furthermore, I think the co-TDs did a fine job of differentiating between the skill of their moderators and putting their best moderators in rooms that would see the most top teams play while having their less good moderators read in rooms where the matches were not as likely to affect the top bracket. Granted, I base this solely on who we had moderate our matches throughout the day and the teams we were playing in those matches.

While [Mrs. L] was a decent moderator (despite her frequent side-comments between questions), [some nonsense I will address later]. Furthermore, I heard from our C team that when Ben was in Mrs. L’s room, TDs did not rotate her out, and when she read answers she directed them specifically to him. This could be misconstrued as bias and is unacceptable. Furthermore, the TDs knew beforehand that Mrs. L was staffing (her name was typed in on the schedule) but they nevertheless placed Ben in her room. This is unacceptable and ought to have been avoided.

Also, people constantly put coaches in to read at tournaments where their teams are playing, especially because, you know, it's sort of a courtesy to let a coach see their team play during a tournament, since if they weren't staffing they would be watching their team the whole day otherwise, and seeing your team play can be very important as a coach.

When Mr. Riley and Mr. Laudermith come moderate at UIUC, I like to do the same thing Charlie mentions if possible.

[getting back to that nonsense]... a mistake made by [Mrs. L] cost us a game against Illinois which we should have easily won. Specifically, Mrs. L gave the answer to the question before our teammate (who had buzzed in) gave her answer (which she knew – this was a very easy question about REDACTED). The question was given to us at that point, but it was grounds for protest at the end of the game when Illinois came within 40 points. The question was then thrown out (along with our 20 points). Mrs. L then read another question in a completely different category, which Illinois answered, and they answered enough bonus parts to win the game. I’m not bashing Illinois here at all, that’s not the point of this article, but I’m saying that an amateur mistake by this moderator cost us the game.

There are a variety of simply wrong statements in this post. First, and least importantly, you "should [not] have easily won" your game against us. The stats from throughout the tournament back up this claim, as does the first half of the match we played against you. Second, I will explain this situation a whole lot better than you have. During the tossup in question, one of Truman's buzzers unexpectedly failed (despite working earlier and during the buzzer check at the beginning of the match). That player proceeded to yell "buzz" and one of my players buzzed with his buzzer within a second of Truman's player yelling buzz. The moderator paused to determine who to award the buzz to, everyone agreed that it should go to Truman, and then Mrs. L started to apologize about the buzzer failing on the tossup on WHAT THE TOSSUP WAS ABOUT. She caught herself midway through giving the answer, but by the time she stopped talking, I was able to piece together the answer to a question I did not know anything about, Truman's player finished Mrs. L's statement and stated something along the lines of "yeah, it's THE ANSWER; I clearly know it's THE ANSWER, etc., etc." I decided to lodge a protest and tentatively award Truman the tossup at that point in time (not protest at the end of the match). I knew that the tossup should have been thrown out, but we were winning and I'd rather have Truman's player get a tossup I was inclined to believe she knew the answer to rather than remain without those points. Truman subsequently went on a scoring run and I pulled the last tossup, putting us within 40 points Truman's score. Since Truman had obtained one bonus part on the question I had earlier protested, thus putting 60 points in question (the 20 points Truman received from the protested tossup and the 40 potential points we could score), I asked the moderator to speak with the TD and have the TD resolve my protest. At this point Truman got very upset that I was enforcing the rules, making some very negative comments about my conduct and my team's conduct that I chose to ignore. When the moderator returned from speaking with the TD, she informed us that the tossup and Truman's 20 points would be thrown out (Truman immediately asked if the replacement would be from the same category) and that she would read the next tiebreaker tossup. The tiebreaker just so happened to be in a different category and one of my players answered it correctly. We then pulled the third bonus part in a relatively hard bonus for the tournament to let us win the game.

Now, what I find outrageous in this whole ordeal is that: 1) Truman did not want the rules to be enforced so that they could win a game; 2) Truman (and especially the player that got the protested tossup) made negative comments about my conduct and my team's conduct when I attempted to enforce the rules; and 3) one of Truman's players publicly repudiated a coach that moderated for this tournament out of the kindness of her heart rather than watch her player play after that coach made a mistake that any moderate could potentially make. I think this conduct is unbecoming of the team, the players on that team, and it reflects very poorly on the team and two of its players. I thought Truman was a very good opponent and I enjoyed playing them because of how close the game was. I do not, however, appreciate being insulted in the middle of a game for something that is not my fault.

EDIT: It appears that in the process of me making this post, Kevin made a subsequent apologizing for some of his comments, so some of this is probably going to be a bit more harsh than it should be.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

We entered five rounds of statistics after we decided to give up on putting in bounceback information--and we have those statistics. However, I imagine that you'd prefer statistics which incorporate bouncebacks.

Those were all entered during lunch and later by people who later told me they were amazed you hadn't done anything on the stats.

No, John and I both realized at the same time (since we reread over the forum thread) that I was wrong and we should give Rock Bridge the second team. Please let me know if he told you some completely different story, like me insisting that Rock Bridge would only get one team even after he told me that you'd registered two.

The last email I was given from you on the matter says
"Hello,

As I mentioned in my previous email, it was my mistake that I put down Rock Bridge for two teams instead of one on our field. We only received a registration for one team, and while I apologize for the confusion, there is nothing we can do unless another team chooses to drop.

With regards,
Charles Hang
Washington University Academic Team"
which given the context of the rest of the emails indicated to me you understood that we should have been in the field because of your confusing field updates, but weren't going to do anything about it.

This is literally someone else from WashU (Simon). I not only finished on time, but spent all of lunch with Jeffrey Hill doing the tournament statistics. I then staffed my one playoff round, then watched playoff games (the latter part of which you should remember, since I was in your room!)

I was told that both you and Simon were to blame for the room running far behind time.

I told Joel that he'd have to help me direct two weeks beforehand--seriously, do you ask any of my teammates whether your stories about them are at all true before you speak on their behalf? The remaining officers of the team (John & Spencer) were available to direct, as far as I'm aware of.

Yes I do, or I wouldn't have posted this in the first place. The first post from Joel about him being TD is under a week and a half before the tournament, which is right before I heard from people at Wash U that you had not consulted with them over the decision to allow an inexperienced freshman to run a major tournament. Changing tournament directors even two weeks out is very much pushing it, especially if the replacement director has never had any experience directing anything.

I was driving Dan Donohue to the train station. He did miss his train, and that tournament did run unfortunately late (it finished around 5:00 PM, if I recall), so I guess next time you'll have an actually accurate criticism of this.

Here is your exact quote after that tournament - "I especially want to express our gratitude for the help of Jason Loy, without whom this tournament would literally have disintegrated, especially when I had to leave right after the last round to drive some people home." It's not during the tournament I guess, so I'm wrong about that, but I would certainly be amazed to have a tournament director leave during a tournament wrap-up, and would be doing everything I could to get a different person to drive players out. I certainly find saying Jason Loy was needed for your tournament to happen or else it would have disintegrated to strike confidence.

This is both irrelevant and false--I told John I wouldn't be at SCT three weeks beforehand. Unless you're saying everyone should declare their availability to their team three weeks in advance of every tournament, of course.

Your response here just goes to show how out of it you are. The fact you told John three weeks before SCT (when one of the relevant tournaments, CCST, was 2 weeks before SCT, thus making it more like you let John know at a week's notice that you were effectively quitting your real team) has nothing to do with how incredible it still was that you did not let anybody on Wash U's team know you weren't playing for them after over a semester of letting them think otherwise (after you had played tournaments for them), and were switching to a community college for no particular reason other than a cheap attempt to win a trophy that, for you, is meaningless. It certainly shows how much regard you have for allegiance to your team, and the fact that you are given leadership positions at all at Wash U after abandoning them like that I think speaks poorly on their team.

[chemist685]

Again, I apologize to all teams I've offended, most specifically to Carbondale. After seeing all of the rebuttals here, I can tell that most if not all of my arguments were ignorant, insensitive, or untrue. While there may have been some minor issues, they did not warrant such a vehement and reckless response. My apologies again.

[Bored Raptor]

There seems to be a lot of vitriol surrounding this thread, and I would like to try to clear some of that up. Especially since Charles keeps bringing up points that I feel need to be clarified.

1. A lot of people seem to think that there is no conflict of interest in letting a moderator moderate for a player that happens to be on her team. While I do accept that many coaches would never dream of cheating in such a manner, that situation should never have come up in the first place in this tournament, especially since it appears the runners of this tournament were aware that both the player and coach were coming in their respective roles. It would prevent a situation like that from ever occurring in the first place. Not doing so seems to indicate a lack of planning on the directors part.

2. I have only recently started moderating tournaments and seeing them run from the inside, but from a players perspective, i have never been to a more frustrating tournament. There were slow moderators, long delays, lunch times being cut in half...just about everything that could go wrong seemed to. And while I know that running a tournament is hard, the sheer lack of concern I saw from the person nominally running the tournament was galling.

3. This was not the first badly run tournament I have seen from Wash U this year. Helping to run WUHSAC this year was appalling: there were issues with getting questions in on time, grammar errors in the questions themselves, missing answers, not to mention the fact that at least 3 of the packets were not randomized properly (or at all). It really was a shame, as Wash U has run some fantastic tournaments, and WUHSAC rates among my finest high school quiz bowl memories, but this year they just do not seem to be at that same level of performance.

4. To the University of Illinois and the moderator, what made the error so appalling to us was the way in which the moderator let the answer slip. There was a lot of confusion around the question, but she just seemed to drop the answer out right before our player said it. There seemed to be no conceivable reason why she should do so, and it really was the icing on what was in general an extremely frustrating day (not because we did worse than expected (we had a record that was about what we thought we would at the beginning of the day, just because of the aforementioned delays). Looking back on it now, the mistake is quite forgivable (and happens to everyone) but in that moment, it was really the straw that broke the camels back.

5. To Charles, asking parents to help run a tournament for you is considered (I hope) to be extremely bad mannered, especially since earlier in this thread you said you had enough staff to run the tournament better than we ever could (I also question the validity of your statement that Truman can draw more moderators than Wash U, but that's another story). My parents were there to watch a few games, not help you with YOUR responsibilities. If you can't get enough staffers, look to your own team, many of whom I saw were conspicuously missing in staffing their own tournament.

Overall, the controversy with Illinois and the moderator was the result of a long and frustrating day (I know I was nursing a migraine by then) and an unfortunate incident that would make any team very unhappy (Im sure Illinois would be unhappy if the same incident had happened to their team). The main grievance here, imo, is the way the tournament was run (generally, in our experience, badly) and the way the tournament director handled himself throughout the tournament (also badly). We were not trying to suggest that Illinois was in the wrong to protest, or that the moderator was wrong to read a new question, but please look at it through the eyes of a team who just suffered a pretty frustrating defeat due, frankly, to the mistake of a moderator at the end of an extremely frustrating day

[Bored Raptor]

In reply to the gentleman from Illinois, we might not have won easily (in fact, it was a very close game), but you cant deny that had the moderator not slipped up, we would have won that game. Thats part of what made the whole incident so frustrating: the fact that we had a win taken from us by forces out of our control

[Charbroil]

We entered five rounds of statistics after we decided to give up on putting in bounceback information--and we have those statistics. However, I imagine that you'd prefer statistics which incorporate bouncebacks.

Those were all entered during lunch and later by people who later told me they were amazed you hadn't done anything on the stats.

I stopped trying to put in the bouncebacks about half an hour before lunch, so yes, we did enter most of the statistics during lunch. Given that other people are also taking hours to enter statistics in the same format as we speak, I don't think my rate of doing so was out of line.

No, John and I both realized at the same time (since we reread over the forum thread) that I was wrong and we should give Rock Bridge the second team. Please let me know if he told you some completely different story, like me insisting that Rock Bridge would only get one team even after he told me that you'd registered two.

The last email I was given from you on the matter says
"Hello,

As I mentioned in my previous email, it was my mistake that I put down Rock Bridge for two teams instead of one on our field. We only received a registration for one team, and while I apologize for the confusion, there is nothing we can do unless another team chooses to drop.

With regards,
Charles Hang
Washington University Academic Team"
which given the context of the rest of the emails indicated to me you understood that we should have been in the field because of your confusing field updates, but weren't going to do anything about it.

The rest of my emails actually imply that it was my fault that I registered you for two teams when you'd only registered one, and that thus we could only give you one. Your interpretation is mistaken.

Also, I think you're missing the part about how this didn't actually affect the results of the tournament.

This is literally someone else from WashU (Simon). I not only finished on time, but spent all of lunch with Jeffrey Hill doing the tournament statistics. I then staffed my one playoff round, then watched playoff games (the latter part of which you should remember, since I was in your room!)

I was told that both you and Simon were to blame for the room running far behind time.

I was in a different room (in a different bracket!) than Simon, so your interpretation of events is literally impossible.

I told Joel that he'd have to help me direct two weeks beforehand--seriously, do you ask any of my teammates whether your stories about them are at all true before you speak on their behalf? The remaining officers of the team (John & Spencer) were available to direct, as far as I'm aware of.

Yes I do, or I wouldn't have posted this in the first place. The first post from Joel about him being TD is under a week and a half before the tournament, which is right before I heard from people at Wash U that you had not consulted with them over the decision to allow an inexperienced freshman to run a major tournament. Changing tournament directors even two weeks out is very much pushing it, especially if the replacement director has never had any experience directing anything.

You seem to be under the bizarre impression that I told Joel to direct the tournament, then crawled under a rock somewhere and hibernated until yesterday. Whereas I did ask him to take care of much of the actual work for this tournament (like writing up the schedules and invoices), he and I were talking about what we were going to do through the entirety of the planning for the tournament and at no point was I in the dark about what was going on--for example, whereas he wrote up invoices and schedules, I seeded brackets, contacted teams, processed payments, etc. I also looked over all of the invoices and schedules after they were written up (though I did miss the minor issue with Truman's discounts, which I apologize for). We also walked through the entirety of our plans for the tournament the day before.

I was driving Dan Donohue to the train station. He did miss his train, and that tournament did run unfortunately late (it finished around 5:00 PM, if I recall), so I guess next time you'll have an actually accurate criticism of this.

Here is your exact quote after that tournament - "I especially want to express our gratitude for the help of Jason Loy, without whom this tournament would literally have disintegrated, especially when I had to leave right after the last round to drive some people home." It's not during the tournament I guess, so I'm wrong about that, but I would certainly be amazed to have a tournament director leave during a tournament wrap-up, and would be doing everything I could to get a different person to drive players out. I certainly find saying Jason Loy was needed for your tournament to happen or else it would have disintegrated to strike confidence.

[/quote]

We only had five staffers, so my statement could be rewritten as "Without our other experienced staff, who helped handle things while I had to take care of another tournament related matter, this tournament wouldn't have been possible." I would say this is true for every tournament.

As for the leaving during wrap-up thing, in my mind, making sure people got home was part of the wrap-up. I mean, I guess you can say that's untrue, but since I told him I'd take him to the train station afterwards, I wouldn't agree.

Also, even if Jason hadn't attended (which, given that he told me he would be there weeks in advance, is like accusing me of being inept because I would have had issues if the best quarter of my staff decided to vanish), we still would have been able to run the tournament by having teams read on bye rounds. It would have run slower, and Dan would have definitely missed his train (as opposed to just missing it), but we would still have been done in all likelihood by 6-6:30. Not the end of the world for a summer open.

...and that doesn't even get into your whole thing about not telling anybody on your team last year that you decided you'd rather go trophy whoring at the community college level, which was pretty scandalous at the time.

This is both irrelevant and false--I told John I wouldn't be at SCT three weeks beforehand. Unless you're saying everyone should declare their availability to their team three weeks in advance of every tournament, of course.[/quote]
Your response here just goes to show how out of it you are. The fact you told John three weeks before SCT (when one of the relevant tournaments, CCST, was 2 weeks before SCT, thus making it more like you let John know at a week's notice that you were effectively quitting your real team) has nothing to do with how incredible it still was that you did not let anybody on Wash U's team know you weren't playing for them (after you had played tournaments for them), and were switching to a community college for no particular reason other than a cheap attempt to win a trophy that, for you, is meaningless. It certainly shows how much regard you have for allegiance to your team, and the fact that you are given leadership positions at all at Wash U after abandoning them like that I think speaks poorly on their team.[/quote]

I really think the argument that I'm a bad person (would you feel better if I said I was? If so, sure, I'm a bad person.) is somewhat disconnected with the accusation that I'm a chronically inept tournament director who should never direct anything ever again. At last count, I have two events under my belt which are beyond reproach (ACF Novice & GIT), plus three with various flaws (St. Charles Open, WUHSAC, and ACF Regionals). Given that all but one of these events ended before 6:00, all but one had statistics available the night of, and all guaranteed 9+ games read by generally competent moderators despite the fact that three suffered from structural weaknesses (SCC Open & ACF Regionals, in terms of staff; WUHSAC, in terms of question completion) outside of my control, I think calling me a chronic incompetent who should never direct or staff an event again is simply wrong.

[Charbroil]

I've received apologies from both Kevin and Jared, so as far as I'm concerned, this affair has been resolved to my satisfaction. We'll do better next time, and Truman will not post angry and somewhat inaccurate statements. Still, I wanted to clarify some things.

1. A lot of people seem to think that there is no conflict of interest in letting a moderator moderate for a player that happens to be on her team. While I do accept that many coaches would never dream of cheating in such a manner, that situation should never have come up in the first place in this tournament, especially since it appears the runners of this tournament were aware that both the player and coach were coming in their respective roles. It would prevent a situation like that from ever occurring in the first place. Not doing so seems to indicate a lack of planning on the directors part.

We did know that Coach Lorinskas was coming as a staffer, but I don't think this is any different from having two people from Truman staffing ACF Novice--are you saying we shouldn't have let them staff because we should have questioned their ability to do so?

2. ...lunch times being cut in half...

I'm pretty sure every team got an hour for lunch--I originally said lunch would end at 1:15 PM, which brought out concerns that rounds would end at 12:45, leaving 30 minutes for lunch, but rounds ended at 12:30 and I extended the end of lunch to 1:30 PM anyway.

And while I know that running a tournament is hard, the sheer lack of concern I saw from the person nominally running the tournament was galling.

Since I've already explained the sleeping incident, would you like to explain?

3. This was not the first badly run tournament I have seen from Wash U this year. Helping to run WUHSAC this year was appalling: there were issues with getting questions in on time, grammar errors in the questions themselves, missing answers, not to mention the fact that at least 3 of the packets were not randomized properly (or at all). It really was a shame, as Wash U has run some fantastic tournaments, and WUHSAC rates among my finest high school quiz bowl memories, but this year they just do not seem to be at that same level of performance.

WUHSAC did not go as well as we wanted on a number of levels, but I would disagree that it went more badly then in previous years. The general consensus (including among people who have no incentive to sugarcoat my actions, like Charles Dees) was that the average quality of the questions was significantly higher, which combined with the much greater number of rounds offered (despite the fact that the tournament was only about two hours longer) implies a higher efficiency on our part. Obviously the set could have been significantly improved, and we will do better next year, but I think the only reason it looks as if WUHSAC was less well organized this year was because you didn't see the controlled chaos in the background last year.

5. To Charles, asking parents to help run a tournament for you is considered (I hope) to be extremely bad mannered, especially since earlier in this thread you said you had enough staff to run the tournament better than we ever could (I also question the validity of your statement that Truman can draw more moderators than Wash U, but that's another story). My parents were there to watch a few games, not help you with YOUR responsibilities. If you can't get enough staffers, look to your own team, many of whom I saw were conspicuously missing in staffing their own tournament.

I think you misunderstood me--I never said that we could have run the tournament better than you ever could, nor did anyone else; Charlie said that he didn't think Truman could run a tournament like WUHSAC, but that's the closest I can get to your statement.

I also never said Truman could draw more staffers than we could in absolute terms, though Kevin himself said our team was the same size as Truman's. Rather, I was comparing Truman's ACF Fall mirror and our Regionals mirror, the former of which could inherently draw on more staffers because many older players who don't play ACF Fall (and who thus can staff) do play ACF Regionals.

As for the incident with your parents, I saw them sitting around, so I assumed they weren't doing anything. I think scorekeeping is more interesting than sitting around, so the next time I saw them, I asked if they might be interested in staffing. They gave me awkward looks, and I realized they might not actually plan to stay around for the whole time, so I said never mind. I apologize if they found that offensive, but seriously, I think this issue is being exaggerated.

Finally, I object to the implication that our team wasn't staffing the tournament--all but three or four of our members who regularly show up to events were staffing, and the ones who weren't generally gave me good reasons for not doing so. Regardless, implying that's a fault on my part is unfair, since I'm sadly not gifted with the ability to clear my teammates' schedules and compel them to staff tournaments. I suppose we could have capped the field at, say, 14 teams, but given that I'm pretty sure 3 of the last 4 teams to register were from Truman, I don't think you would have found that any more preferable.

...the way the tournament director handled himself throughout the tournament (also badly)....

Again, I'd like examples of how I handled myself "badly." Unless you're alluding to the napping incident--which I explained to hopefully everyone's satisfaction--or to the incident with your parents mentioned above--which I believe I explained earlier to no immediate protests--I really don't understand what you might be referring to.

Regardless, I consider all of this resolved to my satisfaction, and I look forward to the next time I see all of you (presumably at ICT).

[Bored Raptor]

Just because my parents were sitting around does not mean they are free staff. What I'm saying is that I don't think you should have asked in the first place. Also, if you have issues with staff, why not make it a requirement for people on your team to help staff tournaments that you run? That way you give them time to plan around your tournaments, not over them. I never said your entire team wasn't there, just that it seemed like there were not as many as should be. You have a fairly large team, enough to make a good backbone of scorekeepers and moderators, without putting a huge burden on anyone.

Also, I never questioned Coach Lorinskas ability to staff. I questioned the planning that led to her reading for her team in the first place. If that is how quiz bowl is run at the college level, then thats fine, but generally I think its better to avoid such conflicts of interest whenever possible.

As for lunch, we were let out at roughly 12:30, with it taking 10-15 minutes to go to the nearest food in Wash U. So, your time to get food is roughly cut in half.

As for WUHSAC, I got the impression from a number of staffers that there were logistical problems with the tournament, and given their frustration level, I would say that there were a bit more than normal. Simply excusing things like grammar mistakes and answers missing by calling it "organized chaos" is inexcusable: these things should have been sorted out days in advance, not 10 minutes before the next round. All of this implies a lack of planning that I hope is rectified.

I'm not saying that delays don't happen at every tournament, but that there were problems at this tournament, and others this year, that I don't think should have arisen and can easily be fixed, should you choose to put a little more prework into tournaments.

[ZhangC1459]

I just want to say that despite any problems there might have been in the logistics of the tournament/running of the tournament, I had fun. Even though I got owned hard playing solo.

But, Charles, I want to address something in your last post regarding Nick's parents... I'm not going to quote your post, though, as I don't want to have to sort through your usual wall of text to find the one statement that I have issues with. Anyways, I'm not sure whether your parents are as appreciative of your, um, talents, as Nick's are, but perhaps instead of "sitting around doing nothing", they were, you know, watching their son play? I'm pretty sure they would have preferred to be in the room Truman A was in at all times instead of staffing for a tournament that they really didn't even have to come to at all.

I don't want to get into the Coach L discussion as that's already been resolved and I only know of it from the Truman point of view, as I rode to and from WASHU with them so my opinion would more likely than not be biased against someone who I've never even heard moderate before.

As for Hang's trophywhoring, I seem to recall an incident in Springfield involving a certain WASHU C team in division 2, where eligibility be damned, someone honestly had no right playing D2 questions.

[alexdz]

Axiom: Directing a tournament is hard.
Corollary: Stuff happens; and you deal with it the best that you can.

I wasn't there, so I can't possibly make any implications about details of this situation. But as someone who has directed or co-directed six high school tournaments and one college tournament, I can say with a great deal of certainty that not a single one of those seven has been without at least a single incident. Nor has any of the tournaments I've staffed (11+, if I've counted correctly).

It seems as though a lot of vitriolic statements are being made - and not all without reason, as has been shown. But I can recall at least once (during Tiger Bowl III this year) thinking that everything was running smoothly, when indeed the ever-amazing Jason Loy was in fact reading a room when I thought he had left. A scheduling reshuffle had gone awry and I didn't have anyone covering the room. That kind of thing should never happen, and yet it did even though it was my sixth time directing! The idea that because Charles was napping (and lets be realistic here - he can't have been in a deep sleep, so I'd venture to say that this nap was more of a "relaxing quiet time with his eyes shut") he had abandoned the tournament is preposterous, since as he's said, he can't very well have barged into a room during gameplay. When you aren't presented with a problem to solve (and lets face it - that's pretty much what TDs do on tournament day if they aren't staffing themselves), there's not much to do but savor the time to relax while you can.

Also, having run the Region 11 SCT this year, I'll be quick to point out that drawing staff for a college tournament is many times harder that it is for a high school tournament! You can use college players to staff the latter, but most of them would prefer to play the former if they can make it. It does not seem at all unreasonable to ask for teams to bring staff (which I did multiple times for SCT to no objection from Truman). It's a bit odd, perhaps, to ask parents in attendance to staff, but of course they can politely decline and other arrangements can be made to accommodate rooms running.

On the issue of staffing, I agree that folks who have volunteered to moderate while accompanying their teams as a coach deserve the chance to read for their teams at least once or twice over the course of the day. I'm not even a coach for them, but I was delighted to have the opportunity to read for South Callaway multiple times during Jason's middle school tournament at Tuscumbia. It's a courtesy we extend to those who have volunteered to give up their time to help the tournament run efficiently. If it were to ever become a problem and bias was detected, even during the course of a tournament, we would seek to find an alternative arrangement. It seems incredibly judgmental to presuppose bias where we should presuppose integrity.

Given those defensive statements, I will again say that I was not present for any of these alleged transgressions, and there are indeed examples of things that Charles Hang has done which have impeded the efficient progression of a tournament, which have been stated above. In no way am I attempting to blanket-defend his actions - just wanted to point out that decrying this tournament as rubbish (considering that it actually finished at all and was staffed enough to accommodate everyone that signed up despite many potential staffers from Missouri being occupied at two additional events) is a little melodramatic.

[Cheynem]

I do think that teams could get slight advantages from having their coach read a match, as in being more familiar with their cadence, speech patterns, mannerisms, none of which demonstrate lack of integrity on the coach or team. HOWEVER, that's really the same as one team having had Random Moderator A at more tournaments than another. I guess I would say for finals matches, it might be best to select a reader both teams are comfortable with (which may be a coach, who knows). I will also say that in the college game, people associated with one school read matches for that school all the time.

I originally was a little leery about the conflict of interest thing, but after discussing it with a few people and seeing the various examples (such as players reading for their B team, which does happen all the time), I think this was probably a non-issue. If you thought the moderator was engaging in egregious behavior, you should have brought it up at the time (and aside from a human error in a match not involving her team and some vague rumblings about "directing questions" at Ben, I don't really see any egregious behavior).

[Charbroil]

...but perhaps instead of "sitting around doing nothing", they were, you know, watching their son play? I'm pretty sure they would have preferred to be in the room Truman A was in at all times instead of staffing for a tournament that they really didn't even have to come to at all.

When I said "sitting around doing nothing," I literally mean sitting in the hallway--obviously, if they were in a room with a game going on, I wouldn't have even seen them! Beyond that, the implication that we were in desperate need of staff, so I tried to conscript Nick's parents is absolutely ridiculous--I made a brief offer, realized that it wasn't likely to be accepted, and rescinded it.

Also, if you have issues with staff, why not make it a requirement for people on your team to help staff tournaments that you run? That way you give them time to plan around your tournaments, not over them. I never said your entire team wasn't there, just that it seemed like there were not as many as should be. You have a fairly large team, enough to make a good backbone of scorekeepers and moderators, without putting a huge burden on anyone.

Bluntly put, I think this argument is absolutely ridiculous--of course we required people to staff, and all but a couple of people on our team did staff. What more do you expect us to do? If someone says "my parents are going to be in town, and we're doing [some prearranged thing]," or "I have an [academically related meeting] in the morning, I'll be there in the afternoon," do you expect me to say "No, a press gang will be at your door at 7:30 AM, bring a clean change of clothes and a toothbrush?" Stop asking for the impossible.

As for lunch, we were let out at roughly 12:30, with it taking 10-15 minutes to go to the nearest food in Wash U. So, your time to get food is roughly cut in half.

There's a Subway 3 minutes from where we held the tournament, and more food within 5 minutes. As far as I'm aware, every tournament gives an hour for lunch, and more than a few of them have less convenient food options than WashU does. Stop asking for the ridiculous.

As for WUHSAC, I got the impression from a number of staffers that there were logistical problems with the tournament, and given their frustration level, I would say that there were a bit more than normal. Simply excusing things like grammar mistakes and answers missing by calling it "organized chaos" is inexcusable: these things should have been sorted out days in advance, not 10 minutes before the next round. All of this implies a lack of planning that I hope is rectified.

If you're trying to imply that we didn't do any planning before the tournament, then that's blatantly untrue. Your "impression" is based on nearly no evidence--at most, you can say our tournament was somewhat more chaotic than previous years' editions (which I don't necessarily believe, but that's a subjective judgment), but given that we doubled the number of games offered and increased the number of packets by 60%, I would say a slight increase in confusion (which resulted, notably, in an event which still ended at a reasonable hour and had stats available at the same time as previous WUHSACs) is really not that serious.

[grapesmoker]

There's nothing wrong with asking onlookers, parents or otherwise, to help with staffing. I'm not going to wade into this morass, but that's neither rude or inappropriate.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Yeah, who cares if Charles asked Nick's parents if they were interested in staffing? It was a question that immediately got shot down because they weren't interested, leaving the tournament in no worse place than it was before he asked, and the potential payoff of it was having another staffer or two, which would have made the tournament go smoother and alleviate some of the other complaints here. It's really a no-brainer, and also a non-issue.

Also, in case you guys forgot, ACF literally offers discounts for other teams to bring staff. They wouldn't be doing this if there weren't a long tradition of teams helping to provide staffers for other people's tournaments, and a long standing problem with hosts having to scramble for readers everywhere. I think you guys need a lot more historical perspective here before passing some of these judgements.

[bad80smusic]

...and that doesn't even get into your whole thing about not telling anybody on your team last year that you decided you'd rather go trophy whoring at the community college level, which was pretty scandalous at the time.

This is both irrelevant and false--I told John I wouldn't be at SCT three weeks beforehand. Unless you're saying everyone should declare their availability to their team three weeks in advance of every tournament, of course.

Christ, you two, get a room.
Clearly this tournament was run more imperfectly than most. The moderator quality wasn't amazing, but it wasn't uniformly abysmal either. I'm no fan of trophy-whoring and baby seal clubbing, so I've very little incentive to defend Charles Hang, but I think the responses have been a little heated. Like, I, for one, would have loved for the tournament to have included scantily-clad SI Swimsuit models feeding me grapes as I played. Unfortunately this was not the case. Stay tuned while I rage about it for 1500 words.

[Important Bird Area]

This thread is about to get locked for being unproductive. Feel free to start a new, more constructive thread to discuss issues distinct from this particular ACF Regionals site (eg, should coaches get to moderate for their own teams?).