How the Hyder Gets Done

By Corey Modeste

I am Corey Modeste, an MSRA volunteer and one of the people involved in the planning of the MSRA’s Grand Open and Hyder Squash tournaments.  Some of you may see me onsite during the weekend, but my biggest contribution are made in the months and weeks prior to the tournaments when the key logistical elements are put in place.

 

Not that you were thinking about it (and not that I would accept right away) but if you were to bribe someone to have your matches played on your ideal schedule and against the right seeds, I’d be that person.  While I was a decent league and tournament player a few years ago, somewhere along the line, I realized that I was a really good tournament director.

Even though I know you’d rather play squash than read about how it’s planned, I enjoy planning tournaments so much that this fact didn’t stop me from taking a moment to write about what goes into an event like the Hyder or the Grand. Here is what it’s like, starting with 12 months to go.

Planning for this Hyder begins the minute the previous big tournament ends.  Literally minutes after the 2010 Grand Open final match (men’s 5.5 conso final), my mind turned to ways to improve the Hyder.  Kenny Scher, Jessica Green (fellow MSRA volunteers) and I were having dinner at a bar near the Sports Club LA and I asked everyone what they thought of the event. I got the sense that they just wanted to hang out and talk about everything BUT squash planning, but I suspect they have also learned to humor me over the years.

To keep the debrief simple and effective, I make a list of “what went well” (and should be continued) and “what didn’t go well” (and should be changed).  As a group, the MSRA had long decided that we were not going to try to do everything possible throughout the year, but that we would work to put on a handful of well planned, well executed events, such as our singles leagues and our two big tournaments. Interestingly enough, even though we constantly improve our events and cross items off the “what to improve” list, the length seems to stay constant because we always find new things to do differently and improve.

Hyder at Two Months To Go

We started registration for the Hyder in about eight weeks before the tournament and that is when the stress begins.  Coming off the Grand (and a record 230 players) we felt great and on top of the world. But, none of that means anything if players don’t sign up for the next event.  Are people playing squash in a bad economy?  Is the Hyder too late in the season? Is everyone golfing or playing tennis in the warm weather?  It doesn’t get to the point where I wake up at night in terror, BUT I do spend lots of late nights awake working or thinking of ways to improve the process. Whether it is testing out new software for online shopping carts or looking at historical player data so seed draws, I am always thinking about what I can do to make our tournaments better.

Part of me is rational and calm and thinking about just planning the ‘best event possible’ but I can’t deny that I also want to go big.  We’ve had the good fortune of having record turnouts for the last few years of our tournaments. Now, I am a mostly rational person and I know that we cannot break attendance records every year, but I also love it when signups start to roll in.

For the six weeks preceding the tournament, if you play squash in NY, then it’s likely that I’ve approached you to play the Hyder. If you are a NY squash player and you have NOT yet heard from me, let me know, as we have things to discuss.  Through a combination of people signing up voluntarily, people being cajoled into it and people threatened with bodily harm if they don’t sign up (like Brad Feld and Julie Lilien) people eventually do sign up.  I am not sure if we will have a record this year; in large part because last year we had a freakishly large Hyder draw of 212 players. But, at 169 players with 10 days to go, I think we’ll end up 190, which is considerably above our historical average of 150.

Next week: The Hyder at T minus one week.