Chapter 41: Be Our Guest

Friday, January 15, 1982

From D-Day to T-Day. This was the weekend of our tournament. The judges were all recruited. The scoresheets were ready. We’d set up our ‘tab room’ in the Home Ec room, which Angie said gave her flashbacks. We’d chased off the Home Ec students for the afternoon. We had stacks of forms, one for each registrant. We’d need to update them to cover whoever actually turned up, of course. There were always a few last-minute additions or deletions.

I had normal classes until Debate, at which point I went to the Home Ec room and put my stuff aside. So did Angie. We’d go from here to the cafeteria to help check people in. Many of the team were ‘floaters’, assigned to a classroom wing to help guide people to their rounds, solve problems, whatever needed doing.

Before they split off, Meg addressed us all. Ms. Demme was there as well. No one particularly liked that — not even Ms. Demme, I think. We had two other coaches helping — Mr. Foster, from Northbrook, and Ms. Simmons, from Westchester. Neither Mr. Foster nor Ms. Simmons were going to hang out much in the tab room; they were acting as adult supervision in the cafeteria.

But Ms. Demme was the most recent district coach to host a tournament. Mind you, it was — well, not quite a train wreck, but bad. One of the least well-organized, latest-running, most confused tournaments I’d been to. But she’d done it, and in her mind, she was the greatest organizer in history. She’d demanded to be in the tab room, overseeing us incompetent students.

Meg put her foot down. I’m not sure Ms. Demme got it. Actually, I’m sure she didn’t. But Meg did her best, and she knew we would get it. All of us.

“Everyone! It’s just about time. Teams will arrive any minute. I know you have initial pairings ready and can add newcomers as they arrive. We’ll send a runner every time someone new turns up or someone drops. The priority is to preserve competition. If someone drops, and someone else arrives, they’re a replacement. I’ve seen some schools handle that by giving two first-round byes. If I see multiple byes in the first round, I want to know why. Similarly, if we have two Extemp rounds fall below six contestants, I’ll be unhappy.”

That was for Ms. Demme’s benefit. I believe she had five first-round byes.

“Lizzie is in charge of the tab room. That doesn’t mean everything goes through her. That means every major decision goes through her and she knows what’s happening. Lizzie or I make the call. No one else.”

That told you something about Meg’s faith in Lizzie. She was a junior and in charge. Our seniors were good, but none of them would manage the pressure as well. If it was me, I’d have put one of Cammie, Angie, Janet, or me in charge if we didn’t have Lizzie, but I supported Lizzie over any of the rest of us. But then, I knew I’d already be in charge of something, and so would the others.

Lizzie smiled. “Thanks, Meg! I know everyone will work well together and I’ll just be able to pretend I helped.”

Ms. Demme frowned a bit. I know she disapproved of Meg being on a first-name basis. I wasn’t sure if she also disapproved of Lizzie or not.

“Steve is in charge of CX pairings. Nothing — and I mean nothing — happens on pairings without Steve’s input. If you think he’s wrong, it goes to me. No one else can overrule him.” She was staring at Ms. Demme, but Ms. Demme was staring at me and missed it. I hoped we wouldn’t have a blow-up.

“Cammie is in charge of Extemp pairings. Same as with Steve; her word is law. Brad’s in charge of LD pairings. Janet is in charge of hospitality. Call Angie if you need to escalate a situation — someone’s disgruntled, there’s a fight, whatever.”

Steffie spoke up. “Alan’s in charge of Dramatic. Linda’s in charge of Humorous. Debra has Duo. Mikayla will cover anything else Drama-side. All of you report to Lizzie, as we discussed.”

Meg nodded. “I expect all of you to respect Ms. Demme, Mr. Foster, and Ms. Simmons. However, you are in charge unless it becomes a matter where a teacher is required, which is not the regular business of running a tournament but things like health and safety.” Ms. Demme looked displeased about that. Even so, I don’t think she was hearing it the way Meg meant it.

“I’m going to be in the cafeteria as long as other schools are on site unless there’s a crisis. Now, are we all ready to kick some butt and show them we’re as good at hosting as we are at competing?”

“Yes!” we all shouted.

“Good. Get going!”

‘Get going’ turned out to mean ‘sit on your ass’. Since I had the time, I put on my suit and my Phantom mask. Pretty much everyone loved it — except Ms. Demme, of course. I’m pretty sure Meg knew how that was going to go, and since she’d approved, hey, why not?

From 3:30 to 4:30 we got a handful of partner changes, drops, and adds. We updated pairings accordingly. First round pairings went up at 5, on schedule. On the Extemp side, a couple late shuffles got them moving at 5:15 — fifteen minutes late. There were three more drops and adds after pairings went up, but we started the first CX round at 6:15.

Things went smoothly, and we had Extemp round two in progress by 7:30 and CX round two at 8:30. We were on track to wrap up competition by 10pm. Already I’d heard that two schools wouldn’t have their buses back in time. They were expecting 11pm to midnight. Or the 1am that Spring Woods managed last year.

I dove into pairing as soon as we got back the score sheets from second round. Cammie had already wrapped up Extemp with little pressure using a variation of the method I’d be using. No one (meaning Ms. Demme) paid attention to her, because CX would be the one that would keep us late. Or, I hoped, let us get home. Honestly, Extemp might have been harder, but, in theory, she had an extra hour, not that she’d need it.

Pairings are conceptually simple. You want the top teams out of rounds one and two facing each other in rounds three and four, the middle teams facing the middle teams, and the bottom teams facing the bottom teams. Some tournaments re-pair fourth round, but that’s a lot of work and slows down Saturday morning. Most just pair between second and third rounds.

A lot of tournaments do what we were doing — high-high followed by high-low power matching. Third round would pit the top two teams out of first and second rounds against each other, then the third and fourth teams, and so on. Fourth round would then put the top 2-0 against the bottom 2-0, the second-highest 2-0 against the second-to-bottom 2-0, and so forth.

This would be easy with computers, of course, but this was 1982. No one used computers. I knew how I was handling this, if I could keep Ms. Demme from mucking it up.

As soon as we had all the forms, I split them into eight piles. I had seven people lined up — Cammie, Sue, Angie, Amit, Gene, Megan, and Anne — plus me. Each of us took a pile and sorted it. We’d started with about eighty teams, so each pile had ten sheets. At that size, it’s not bad to pick a starting point and insert sheets. Not as efficient as splitting and merging, but anyone halfway sharp can sort ten pieces of paper in a couple minutes, tops.

In under five minutes, we had eight sorted stacks. Cammie, Sue, Angie, and I took two stacks and started merging them. Merging goes fast because one of the top two sheets will always be next.

I was halfway through my stack when Ms. Demme said, “What are you doing?”

“Sorting.”

“Why are there forms all over the place?”

I stopped. “Because we’re dividing up the work.”

“That makes no sense! You’re looking at each sheet several times. You should just be filing them once.”

“It seems like that, but if you do it that way, you have to search for where they go each time. It takes longer. I can show you, but please, not right now.”

She huffed a bit. “Fine!” I was pretty sure I hadn’t heard the end of this.

Ten minutes in, we had four stacks and Cammie and I were merging. Another five minutes and I was merging the last two stacks. Ms. Demme interrupted again. “It’s been almost half an hour!” No, not really, but, okay. “I’m not seeing any progress. You’re just shuffling paper. I know how to do this. We need to start over!”

I nodded to Lizzie, who was waiting. She pulled Ms. Demme aside. “Ms. Demme, Steve has this under control and it’s his responsibility. Please, just let him handle it. I know there’s a lot of stress, but, believe me, he knows what he’s doing.”

“But he’s not even taking it seriously! It’s a waste of time. And that ridiculous getup! ‘Phantom Of The Tournament!’ Pshaw!”

I tuned it out. Lizzie knew her role — keep Ms. Demme out of things and distracted. I finished the merge and started pairing third round, which is super-easy. Just write down every pair of sheets. Pairing fourth is a bit more work. I found the bottom 2-0 team and counted. Odd. Okay, top 1-1 goes in the mix. Then I split the 1-1s out. The 1-1 stack went to Cammie, 0-2s to Angie. We started writing down pairings. Top sheet goes with bottom, second goes with second-from-the-bottom, and so on.

From Angie’s area I heard a somewhat sharp “Don’t move that!”

Ms. Demme said, “I was just looking! Goodness!”

Angie managed a conciliatory tone. “Please be careful. If anything shifts, we would need to re-sort the entire stack.”

“I can’t believe you’ve sorted anything yet! I’m going to have to look at this.”

“Please wait a few minutes. If I don’t get these recorded first, it’ll be a mess.”

“We’re just wasting time! This takes hours! I’d like to get home!”