by fenella » August 14th, 2009, 3:10 pm
I, too, was frustrated. I don't think that it was a reflection on the club or the team. The FnF people were very nice. The tournament was fun. I still like the venue.
I did have some issues with it, though. It didn't seem like everyone knew what was going on. There were mistakes made on the C2's (which I believe were fixed...I saw some people writing down question marks in the win/loss column instead of just checking to see who won). The frustration was that there seemed to be a conference after nearly every race, which slowed things down. It seemed like there was confusion over which team won...even on the second day. I was, um, taken aback, that, even with the tournament running as late as it was, there was a 5 minute break to vacuum the floors. (even if it did come as the result of another team's complaint...not the fault of FnF...just frustrating). I think things would have been quicker if the "90 seconds from the time the previous team picks up their boxes" rule had been enforced. I also think that warm-ups should have been cut back. At a lot of tournaments I've been to, the judges cut them down, and by the end, just ask the teams if they really need them and move right into racing. At some points, we were only getting in 4 or 5 races an hour instead of 8 or 9. All in all, I didn't hate the tournament or anything...and I wasn't at the other tournaments this year, so maybe it was just a fluke (things weren't this slow last year, as I remember). Everyone was really friendly, which was a plus.