Mid-Atlantic RYC Announcement, Update, Wrapup, Collapse
Have you ever been so busy doing a thing you didn't even have time to talk about it. That would be me this weekend, as we hosted a Regional Youth Circuit event. Specifically we hosted the last possible one to qualify for Nationals. We had 76 fencers and something close to 120 entrants. Here's the results.
What the results don't show is the incredible club we have who volunteered so much time and energy to make this event possible. Set up in UNCG's Health and Human Performance building, was the smoothest and fastest ever. During the event volunteers were always at hand to score keep, help the little ones get on and off strip, run errands, get referee lunches, and generally make this event go about as smooth as it possibly could.
Parents only stormed the Bastille once, and it was delt with by me, poorly but it was delt with. I have to get better at dealing with seiges of rambling combativeness.
No event started later than 40 minutes behind (and that was so the Referees could eat lunch).
Breakdown went smoothly, and both days we were out of the gym before 6pm. It really coudn't be much better than that. We did have lessons learned of course. I didn't put together that if the fencers all paid in advance, there wouldn't be money to feed referee's and volunteers, nor would there be money to pay the referees. Fortunately we had willing volunteers who paid those expences out of pocket, and the process to get those people paid back is well underway.
I took yesterday as a mental health day to recover from the weekend. Even when an event goes as smoothly as this one did, it takes its toll on you, and that toll had to be paid. We call this "tournament hangover", and I am still not recovered fully. Maybe I should have drank or something to cushion my system. All I know is that even as I write this, I sure could use a nap. Oh well, Saturday is comming.
