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Greybeard · 07-11-2008, 11:59 PM

I liked the no drape as well. I had a great ref. He explained things, had the bouts under control, moved us right along. I did want to ask him to say "Get Moose and Squirrel" with his accent, it would have been great.

I knew coming in I was going to get smoked, but hey, who would have thought that a stroke and 2 brain surgeries in 18 months would mess with my fencing?

I did not have a "hands on knees" moment, i did do better than I did at NAC, I made some new friends, so all in all, one of my more fun tournaments. People who have read my blog came up and introduced themselves to me and wished me well. Guys, you don't know how much that has helped me get better. So for that reason alone, fantastic tournament. Of course it would have been nice to make it to at least one DE.

Shi no Tenshi · 07-12-2008, 12:25 AM

I must say, I loved the ref I had for Div2 ME. Hilarious snarky sense of humor, and he just seemed to enjoy his job and have fun with it. I like a ref that will give me hell just to see if my mind is all there. He messed with you every time he did your weapon check, and I thought it was great. Then he was the organizing ref for my DE area. Unfortunately I spilled my gatorade on him there....whoops.

Don't know his name though. It made my day fun however.

bigdawg2121 · 07-12-2008, 12:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oso97

A friend of mine remembers that day quite clearly. He tells it as the instructions were "Here is your part of a table of 512. Come back when you're in the 8."

IIRC we walked up to the bout committee table and they told us we would have 4 refs on 4 strips to get it done as quickly as possible. They handed the tableau to the head ref and sent us on our way. As we walked our "pod leader" realized that the tableau was actually 4 separate pages and that our 4 strips weren't even next to or near each other. We all checked in a metric ****-ton of fencers and told them to find the ref with their page and migrate accordingly. I then proceeded to have my head hurt for several hours as somehow foil bouts on old timing were having first period bout scores of 1-1 b/c the fencers couldn't even put a valid light on the box....

KD5MDK · 07-12-2008, 01:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shi no Tenshi

I must say, I loved the ref I had for Div2 ME. Hilarious snarky sense of humor, and he just seemed to enjoy his job and have fun with it. I like a ref that will give me hell just to see if my mind is all there. He messed with you every time he did your weapon check, and I thought it was great. Then he was the organizing ref for my DE area. Unfortunately I spilled my gatorade on him there....whoops.

Don't know his name though. It made my day fun however.

Wasn't me, but we do try.

yodelrodel · 07-12-2008, 02:45 AM

Since many people have asked for it and I'm finally home and can post them, here are the bingo cards. I got a bit lazy on the last day as I caught the plague that was going around the refs. I can't say I came up with all the squares myself as many refs kept coming up with more things to be added in.

I have to say my favorite part was either the trampoline arena with dodgeball, or when the secret word of the day was said and one the head refs looked very surprised and confused at what was going on when all the refs sitting by the bout committee screamed. I can say it was nice to not have many long days for once.

bigdawg2121 · 07-12-2008, 04:54 AM

NB: Dodgeball on trampolines was included in the original incarnation of this thread which my browser rejected.

NB2: that I definitely completed card v. 2 on the 8th when I reffed an event everyone thought I was fencing. Good times...even better decision as I too was suffering George's plague that day.

****Cheers for an event that pulled yodelrodel out of lurking status.****

IanSerotkin · 07-12-2008, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigdawg2121

IIRC we walked up to the bout committee table and they told us we would have 4 refs on 4 strips to get it done as quickly as possible. They handed the tableau to the head ref and sent us on our way. As we walked our "pod leader" realized that the tableau was actually 4 separate pages and that our 4 strips weren't even next to or near each other. We all checked in a metric ****-ton of fencers and told them to find the ref with their page and migrate accordingly. I then proceeded to have my head hurt for several hours as somehow foil bouts on old timing were having first period bout scores of 1-1 b/c the fencers couldn't even put a valid light on the box....

That wasn't even the best part. The BEST part was, after completing an entire tableau of 32 by myself over the course of several hours, going back up to the bout committee when I was finished. I'll let you, Gentle Reader, decide if I was:

a) Given a firm handshake and thanked for my efforts
b) Told to go sit down for a while and rest while waiting for the other tableaus to catch up.
c) Told, "Oh, thank god you're done! Here, go take this pool of Y12 Girls Foil out immediately!"

tchwojko · 07-12-2008, 12:01 PM

Just to be clear, we want more people reffing, right?

edew · 07-12-2008, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by IanSerotkin

That wasn't even the best part. The BEST part was, after completing an entire tableau of 32 by myself over the course of several hours, going back up to the bout committee when I was finished. I'll let you, Gentle Reader, decide if I was:

a) Given a firm handshake and thanked for my efforts
b) Told to go sit down for a while and rest while waiting for the other tableaus to catch up.
c) Told, "Oh, thank god you're done! Here, go take this pool of Y12 Girls Foil out immediately!"

Was this the 2004 in Charlotte's warehouse space? I remember doing that one and it just seemed like it never ended. I'm reffing and reffing and reffing and those bout slips keep coming. Must of felt like those Nazis in their cliff-top bunkers seeing those landing crafts coming ashore on D-Day. (Ooh, godwinned this thread...)

mgriff · 07-12-2008, 01:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by IanSerotkin

That wasn't even the best part. The BEST part was, after completing an entire tableau of 32 by myself over the course of several hours, going back up to the bout committee when I was finished. I'll let you, Gentle Reader, decide if I was:

a) Given a firm handshake and thanked for my efforts
b) Told to go sit down for a while and rest while waiting for the other tableaus to catch up.
c) Told, "Oh, thank god you're done! Here, go take this pool of Y12 Girls Foil out immediately!"

Ah, that was that delightful SN in Austin, when the schedule was ridiculously frontloaded and the numbers for most events were up at least 20% (some were doubled from the previous year). We were about 20 strips short of what we needed at 8:00 am each of the first three or four days, and on the first day, 20 of the strips we did have had no electricity until 11:00 am. It took us about three days to figure out how to plan the necessary delays (sometimes 3 or 4 hours) to be able to announce them as fencers checked in. (One of the rules of BC is that everybody can cope with delays much better if you can tell them how long they will be.)

The event with the table of 512 (I thought it was Div. 2 MF--usually the Div. 2 events are bigger than Div 3, because you have all the Cs, too) was originally 308, but on the day ended up at 295. Dan McCormick even had to write a patch for XSeed to accommodate the 512--when he originally wrote it, it never occurred to anyone that we might one day have an event that large. It was ridiculously ugly to run--the DE tableau was 16 pages and took a whole physical table to lay out the one event--I think we had at least three people to run the tableau. The A and B bout slips alone were over 40 pages to print and slice and sort, and XSeed does not allow any intermediate tableau to be printed, so that we had to go directly from those 16 pages to the round of 8 (one finalist for every two pages). The potential for errors was daunting--if we'd entered a pool wrong or mis-sorted the DE slips . . . . We don't want to do a 512 on XSeed again. Ever.

(But at least there was no rep.)

Mary

PeterGustafsson · 07-12-2008, 02:22 PM

Hi!

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigdawg2121

3) Totally agree with Peet....whole page of D3 MF by yourself the year it was a table of 512 sucked hardcore.

Oohh, my gutter mind working at full speed...

Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

catwood1 · 07-12-2008, 02:37 PM

Positive memories:

1) Referee bingo. AWESOME idea rob, made the whole week more fun.

2) Trampoline dodgeball. Never thought I'd see an actual trampoline dodgeball arena...

3) Getting to actually coach and cheer for teammates at a NAC on my days off. Every day of every NAC I've ever been to before I have been reffing and not coaching or fencing.

IanSerotkin · 07-12-2008, 04:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by edew

Was this the 2004 in Charlotte's warehouse space?

Nope, this was 2003 in Austin.

The only distinct memory I have from Charlotte was that the A/C was completely inadequate, making it so hot in the "warehouse" that half the refs were stripping almost down to their boxers.

downunder · 07-12-2008, 07:54 PM

I love the referee bingo!!

Can you explain what role the 'secret word' has?

hello? · 07-12-2008, 08:30 PM

Referee Bingo is the best! Thank you for sharing......I have to say I loved having Nationals in San Jose. Plenty of restaurants within walking distance. Having the Marriott and the Hilton connected to the venue was great. The events seemed to run well and end early on most days. I loved the lack of drapes. Made seeing the bouts easier and the venue seem cleaner.

SEM Fencer · 07-12-2008, 09:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by downunder

I love the referee bingo!!

Can you explain what role the 'secret word' has?

On PeeWee's Playhouse, PeeWee Herman always had a word of the day. When he said the word, everyone went nuts, screaming, yelling, etc. Summer national words of the day included reseed, runners and technicians, not sure what else. Everytime we heard "Runners to the bout committee" or "Technician needed on strip 32," we would go a little nuts

HDG · 07-12-2008, 11:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SEM Fencer

On PeeWee's Playhouse, PeeWee Herman always had a word of the day. When he said the word, everyone went nuts, screaming, yelling, etc. Summer national words of the day included reseed, runners and technicians, not sure what else. Everytime we heard "Runners to the bout committee" or "Technician needed on strip 32," we would go a little nuts

There are a number of referees that for the life of me I can not imaging going "a little nuts".

KD5MDK · 07-13-2008, 12:46 AM

You mean like Greg Dilworth where it's impossible to imagine, or Justin Meehan, who starts there?

SEM Fencer · 07-13-2008, 01:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KD5MDK

You mean like Greg Dilworth where it's impossible to imagine, or Justin Meehan, who starts there?

LOL. Probably just everyone in between. And who knows, maybe some refs, while they showed no outward signs of responding to the word of the day, were experiencing their own private, internal celebration.

peet · 07-13-2008, 02:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SEM Fencer

On PeeWee's Playhouse, PeeWee Herman always had a word of the day. When he said the word, everyone went nuts, screaming, yelling, etc. Summer national words of the day included reseed, runners and technicians, not sure what else. Everytime we heard "Runners to the bout committee" or "Technician needed on strip 32," we would go a little nuts