I did not think it was going to happen so I volunteered directly with Ron Domanico to help with weigh-ins. This was going to be a gratis service of doing weigh-ins, and helping make sure that the coaches had updated weigh-in sheets. After I let Ron know that I was going to help him out I contacted Pete to inform him of my plans. I brought up Trackwrestling again, and he told me that he had gotten it approved through GHSA time for me to plan some changes. Pete got me invited to the GHSA offices in Thomaston for the seed meeting, and I got permission from my administration for professional leave on Friday the 15th for the Duals. Then came the BLIZZARD.
The push back of qualifiers, meant I had to compress a weeks worth of work into 3 days. I started off by getting approval for another professional leave day for the seed meeting that got moved to Tuesday the 12th. I used the 12th to Seed the brackets as the meetings were held. It was fun to be there for the seed meeting, and I was able to pick up email addresses for the coaches that attended. After the meeting I stayed in the GHSA offices working on my email list. If I could get an email address for all 72 coaches in the tournament, I would be able to send them directions on how to enter there rosters. Entering a roster for one team is not a huge task, so I figured the coaches would be cooperative. I managed to get over half of the coaches to enter their roster online before the tournament. That means I had to enter the other half.
After a team weighed in, I would get there weigh-in sheet, and Alpha Master. For the coaches that entered their roster, I would verify it, and change weights as needed. That usually took me about 5 minutes per team. For the rosters that were not entered, I would have to enter every name and weight class. Some teams brought more than 30 kids. I entered, and verified wrestlers from 6:00pm till 12:00midnight on Thursday.
Friday morning came, and I was back at the coliseum at 7:00am. More weigh-ins, more entering, and verifying wrestlers. At the very end of the first round I got caught up (did not watch a match yet), and Robert Horton arrived to help. As a dual would end, the winning teams score keeper would take the book to the head table, it would be copied and given to the announcer, then I would either go get it, or Carson would bring it to me. As Robert and I pushed forward, I started getting texts from a few people including Cliff Fretwell. He was asking about the Internet connection, and whether or not he was going to set up a live feed for the finals. Just as Robert and I got caught up for the first time, Cliff texted me again asking where the updates were(joking) and I replied with a one word "current". I walked away from the table and watched some wrestling. The worst part of the task was over, and more people came to help. Chris Young was a big help, and he brought more help with him all the way from Bremen. Emily Spikes showed up representing the HILL. I meet Emily about 4 years ago at Duals, and she was a big help. The rest of the day had some great close duals, and we were all able to get a good look at them by sharing the workload. I got out of the coliseum about 12:30 with everything up to date.
Saturday morning I was back at the arena by about 6:30. Art was there seating up towels to mop mats. I had to manually shift some matches around within 4 of the brackets so I was double checking them. At 6:45 Art was a little anxious about his help that was supposed to be there, so I mopped a couple of mats before they arrived. Next thing I know the duals were up and running again. I had nothing to enter till the round was over, so I watched a lot of wrestling. Robert, Chris and Emily were all coming back to help, and Gwen and Danny Lutz were on the way to help as well. Danny does a ton of work with Trackwrestling for our Team Georgia group, but he had never done a dual so I got to show Gwen (she got there first) and she showed Danny. I am so impressed that I was able to teach Danny something about Trackwrestling:0
With all of this great help, I was able to watch a lot more wrestling.
The hardest part of our task was deciphering the score books. There are a number of different types of score books, and quite a few different ways to fill them out correctly. You have to have a good feel for wrestling to get all of the information you need from those books. Some teams used nick names for the wrestlers, and some had information on the wrong lines. Many had addition errors on them. With all of this decoding, and entering going on, it was easy to get it wrong. When we came up with a mistake we would continue going over the book till we got it to match, or found the mistake in the book. If that sounds terrible to you it probably would be. I like solving puzzles, so that part of it was fun for me. The conversations at our table were great and I could not ask for a more enjoyable group to work with.
Best note on a match from a score keeper. There was a takedown by a really good wrestler, 6 team points for that wrestler, and the letters MF by the other wrestler. We just were not sure what the MF stood for so I went to find the coach to ask him. He told me that the other wrestler had gotten hurt and forfeited the match. I went and verified with the score keeper and she told me that it meant Medical Forfeit(Should be Injury Default) . I told her and the coach that I thought she was saying that their wrestler had beaten the MF out of the other guy.
No comments:
Post a Comment