Grant, you weren’t at the National Junior High in Peoria in around 1989, they handed out trophies until nearly 5AM.
I wouldn’t get in a hurry to see it posted, the last National where they had a parents and friends 4 round tournament (Houston 12/05) took nearly 30 days to get rated.
tanstaafl:
Thank you for providing feedback on this event. I will be forwarding some of the posting and references to the Scholastic Council and Diane Reese.
Today, I also spoke with some coaches who just returned from the tournament. Your reports are consistent with the overall impression of the tournament for other people as well.
All the best,
Beatriz Marinello
I was a floor TD at the Junior High Championships. This was my first national tournament directing in over 4 years. Overall, I was very impressed with the other staff and how well it was run. Many of the TD staff actually commented that (asided from the tornado that went by 14 miles south of the hotel) that this one of the most smoothly run national tournaments in a while. The great thing that happened was also that this was one of the first nationals (I hear) that they didn’t have to completely close the floor at one point. (lost the bet, thought it would be closed by round 5 at least).
On the comments on advertising. The Galt House Hotel sent out press releases to every paper and TV station within 100 miles I believe and our Local (kentucky) Scholastic Director also invited the local media.
One of the schools in NY had connections within one of the networks and actually sent a camera guy that videotaped during most of the tournament as well.
Over all great impressions. I think it was better organized than my last national i TD’d in which was SuperNationals II in Kansas City.
Kudos to Diane and Robert Tanner.
Too bad he’s on the EB now and won’t get to work under him as Head TD much for a while (:
I think you need to check your math Mike. In my daughter’s section as an example, out of 219 participants there were 100 plus scores. Of those at least 25 (possibly more) were already trophy recipients. That means 75 or fewer additional trophies.
I can supply the name of a trophy manufacturer that would provide a nice trophy for less than $4 each (not the simple figure on a base that most organizers give out as “participant” trophies). As a matter of fact, Trophies Plus has an 8 inch trophy for $3.25. Even at $4, it would work out to an average cost of less than $1.37 per participant.
I think the other sections will be similar or have an even lower cost. In the K-9 championship section, for example, there were only 44 plus scores. With trophies to the top 25 plus class trophies, there might be a dozen or fewer extra trophies given out.
Update: I checked and it would be less than 300 added trophies for this 1100+ player event. Only a little more then 1/4 (not 1/2) of the participants would get a “Honorable Mention” or “Plus Score” trophy.
Your remark that the it would cut into the USCF’s profit was interesting. I’m not one of those that considers “profit” a dirty word, but how much profit is enough at a scholastic tournament? How much is it worth to the USCF to recognize the achievement of finishing with a good score in a national championship?
I’ve had people tell me that they don’t like participant trophies that reward people for just showing up. I can see their point, but finishing with a plus score in a national tournament is a much bigger accomplishment than just showing up at a local tournament. There are a lot of trophies like this given out for just showing up – I think we should recognize the accomplishments.
How much more likely is it that the winner of one of these trophies will come back to one of our national tournments the following year? Or bring their friends? Will recognition like this make it more likely that they will continue to be USCF members? Cost is only one part of the value equation. I think in this case the cost is relatively low and the benefits are well worth it.
As for the time it would take to distribute the trophies, surely we can figure that one out! After the other trophies are given out, simply announce that everyone that scored at least 4 points should get in line to pick up a trophy. Have several lines set-up, arranged by last name, and check their name off a list. You could even post the lists and let people start picking up trophies while the bigger awards were being given out.
Mike, I’ll grant that giving an additional couple thousand trophies would take a long time, and may even go to 5 AM. I did, however, want to mention that the delay at the Peoria JH in 1989 had very little to do with the number of trophies to be awarded. There was a pairing program available that did pairings and tie-breaks and was going to be used for the entire tournament. The tie-breaks announced in advance were modified median, and those tie-breaks were going to be used for both individual and team trophies.
The pairing program worked fine on smaller tournaments and had wonderful graphics that would show the pairing cards flipping up into vision. Unfortunately, heavy graphics in 1989 made the program too slow to use, the program was abandoned, and all of the pairings were done by hand.
There were three sections (K-9 championship with 160-190 players, K-8 championship with 320-360 players, and the reserve section with over 450 players). The final round for all three sections ended after 7 PM.
The NTDs in charge of the pairings for the two championship sections did everything by hand, and were still manually figuring out the tie-breaks for some of the trophies at 2 AM. As tie-breaks were calculated, trophies were awarded, but there was often a significant delay between trophies because they recipient had not yet been determined. In the reserve section Erv Sedlock and I did the pairings by hand, but we had a high school kid who had developed a tournament assistant spreadsheet (I don’t remember if it was Excel or Lotus). We were going to let him run his spreadsheet in parallel as a test while we used the new pairing software that was going to run the tournament. Once we saw the speed of the software we decided that the test would become a live acid test. With that spreadsheet we were able to give him the manually-paired pairing numbers to input and he could generate alphabetical pairing lists. He also entered the results and was thus able to not only generate wall charts, but also generate final standings with the tie-breaks (we lost about 20 minutes as he corrected a formula for the tie-breaks, but it saved us all of the tedious manual calculating). The last trophy in the reserve section was awarded well before 10 PM.
With our section done, Erv, Mike and I left a bit after midnight. I heard that around 2 AM the waiting participants were told that they would be mailed trophies if they won one, but some decided to stick around.
Tanstaafl, if I have added correctly then it looks like there were 1128 participants, of whom 494 scored at least 4 points. If we ignore the class trophies, it also looks like 220 were in the top 25 of each section or tied for 25th, so I’m guessing there were 175 place trophies and 45 honorable mention trophies awarded to them. Again, if we ignore the class trophies, that would mean an additional 274 plus-score trophies to be awarded.
$4 per trophy for 274 trophies would come to $1096, or roughly $0.97 per player. The necessary over-buying to reduce the risk of having too few trophies would increase that cost a bit, but probably still noticeably less than the $1.37 per player that you initially roughly guessed at.
edited after seeing Tanstaafl’s revision to his post that made some of my comments redundant.
A couple of us (I’m at the USCF office this week) came up with a better idea this afternoon: T-shirts for everyone with a plus score.
Disadvantages:
They wear out, get dirty, etc.
Mom can’t put it in the tropy case.
Advantages:
First, they can be handed out when the kids turn in their last round games.
Second, they’re MUCH more likely to be something the kid will like. Who wants another small trophy?
Third, we can probably get a sponsor for them.
Finally, they’re likely to cost less than trophies.
A really cool thing would be if we could print the final score on them. (This would require some guesses as to the score distribution and appropriate T-shirt sizes.)
Imagine kids showing up at local tournaments with T-shirts that say something like:
The K-12 in Terre Haute gave shirts to all participants. The name of the tournament was on the front and a large Pepsi symbol was on the back.
One of my favorite souvenirs from a tournament was a plastic cup for the grade level in Tucson. The cup was given out at a local deli chain. It had the logo for the tournament with the date etc.
Both of these events were back in the day when national scholastics were bid out. Each one had something unique that made it stand out.
I think it would be nice to give them ALL t-shirts if you can get a sponsor to pay for it. Why not? The sponsor would probably rather have them all get the T-shirts. For that matter look at getting a sponsor for some chess boards (print their logo on the border along with the tournament name & date) and give those away as well. Maybe let the winner in the last round keep the board – less work and an incentive not to drop-out. If you think the t-shirt would be nice at a tournament, imagine playing on a board that says “I won this board at the Nationals”.
I still think more trophies would be better. The trouble handing them out is something we could handle if we decided to. The expense would be minimal. A trophy from a national championship would always find a place in the trophy case, and wouldn’t be outgrown in a year.
Let’s brainstorm on this a bit, then I’ll put up a poll in a few days with the various ideas.
I think the biggest positive was that the tournament was very well directed both on the floor and in the backroom (I loved being able to look up the pairings before we left the hotel room). The way parents were eventually allowed in the tournament room (after the first several minutes each round) was fairly well thought-out. It was the best arrangement that would fit the playing site and was handled in a way that caused minimal (if any) disruption to the players. I have a minor nit-pick that there could be better communication for WHEN the parents were allowed in (post a sign!) – but this really wasn’t a big deal and I think things were handled very well overall.
I think the biggest negative is that parents were (at best) an afterthought. Yet another national tournament with parents reduced to sitting on the floor outside the tournament room. There would have been plenty of room for a lot of chairs if somebody had just thought to ask for them ahead of time. This was surprising with every thing else that seemed so well thought-out. I guess from now on I’ll just bring a camping chair with me.
[b]
Tanstaafl wrote:
"On the subject of trophies – I’d like to see more. I think just finishing with a positive score at a national tournament should be worth a small trophy (“honorable mention” or “plus score” or something like that). " [/b]
I generally favor a trophy rich environment but I think a trophy for any positive score goes too far and potentially devalues the trophies that are awarded.
I admit this trophy business and finding the right balance is is tricky business. However, I think the USCF does a good job at providing due recognition for strong performances at its scholastic events. Class awards in the championship sections, the existence of Under Sections, team awards, and honorable mention trophies all combined seem to result in a lot of kids getting trophies.
Here in Illinois, our championship scholastic events have traditionally followed the National model with large trophies for the top finishers (not as large as at Nationals though), many trophies for each section, and then trophies for each grade. The result was that almost every kid that scored 5/7 or slightly less took home some kind of trophy.
This year, there was a significant retrenchment both in terms of size, and numbers of trophies awarded. The grade trophies were eliminated. The result was a good number of 5 point scorers walked away with no award.
I thought this unfortunate.
But as mentioned, this trophy business is tricky and reasonable minds can differ.
At the beginning of this scholastic chess season I shared some further thoughts on this topic at chessdad64.journalspace.com/?entryid=143.
I may have a workable solution that will satisfy everyone on the trophy issue.
BTW I noticed that at SuperNationals, there were “participant” trophies for sale. Obviously, some parents thought just being there deserved a trophy. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but I think a winning score at a National event DOES deserve some recognition.
Realizing that not everyone cares about another “Honorable Mention” trophy and that not everyone agrees with me about how many should be distributed, how about giving players with a winning score a “voucher” for a trophy? The USCF would pay for the trophy, but not bring them or distribute them at the tournament. Instead, the winner would have to pay shipping charges from Trophies Plus. Players (or their parents) could also BUY “vouchers”, BUT only players with a winning score can have an “Honorable Mention” – everyone else just gets a “Participant”.
This S&H is probably as expensive as the trophy itself, but there are advantages:
- We won’t waste money on trophies people don’t want. (we’ll probably pay for half as many trophies this way).
- We won’t have the hassle of handing out that many trophies at the tournament.
- We won’t have to transport (and pay for transporting) a bunch of trophies (that people may not want).
- Everyone that wants a trophy will have one.
- By paying for the trophies for everyone (with a plus score) that wants one, the USCF doesn’t look “cheap”. Instead, it’ll look like a reasonable compromise for logistical reasons.
As a parent, I’d be willing to pay the shipping charge for one of these trophies. A lot of the big winners have to do that anyway (try bringing a 3 ft. high trophy on a plane with you). I think we still need the bigger awards at the tournament, but having the “Honorable Mentions” handled this way would save a lot of work. I think just having a couple of “Honorable Mention” and “Participant” trophies at the tournament (so people could see what they’re getting) would be enough.
besides the over 400 place trophies that were awarded, another 50+ "tied for 25th place trophies wer awarded as well. When you consider blitz and bughouse and the parents tournament there was a little more than 1 trophy awarded per 3 kids that entered.
Jerry Nash tells me that part of the reason there was so much confusion during the tornado warning on Friday was that at around the same time there was a fire in one of the towers of the hotel, so they had two different, and conflicting, evacuation plans to follow.
The fire evacuation plan called for people in that tower to go out to the street, which of course is the wrong place to be during a tornado alert.
Are you sure about your numbers here? I see 25 place trophies in each of 6 sections for a total of 150(not 400). When I added up the total number of trophies for those that had plus scores I got less than 200 trophies for nearly 500 players with plus scores (out of 1100+ total players). There were a few class trophies that went to players with fewer than 4 points, but I don’t think they add up to nearly as many as you’ve mentioned. I included the place trophies, class trophies, tied for 25th trophies and “honorable mention” trophies.
I didn’t add in the bughouse, blitz, and friends/family tournaments. I felt these were actually separate events (separate ENTRY FEES) and deserved separate consideration.
Brilliant! My kids would much rather have an extra t-shirt than a trophy for 100th place! Or a cool pen. Or some other kind of little premium–stress ball, water bottle, whatever.
That fact that it’s ultimately consumable and will wear out eventually is an advantage. And it doesn’t devalue the trophies that are handed out.
There wever 400-500 trophies given out all together, including team and the side events. Every child received a medal as well.
In the actual tournament only 150 place, 150 team, 30 class prizes for champs section. 18 plaques, 50+ “tied for 25th place” trophies…
When I was in High school playing chess, I would have thrown away (or replated) any trophy that said less than 10th place. I would have considered a ‘15th place trophy’ to be sad to have in a trophy shelf beside all the 1st place trophies for my other hobbies/sports.
I would agree with you for a local tournament. For a national championship, 15th through 25th place isn’t too bad.
Normally, I’d say the more trophies the better. But I have to wonder if 150 team trophies isn’t really just too many. Were there even that many teams? Of course, my daughter doesn’t HAVE a team from her school, so I’m not as concerned for team trophies. But still, if you’d showed up with a 4-person team then you’d just about be guaranteed a trophy, right?
This doesn’t really satisfy the need for INDIVIDUAL trophies though, since the team trophy is supposed to go to the school.