The Hyder at T-minus One Week

By Corey Modeste


The last week of planning a tournament is all about damage control. There is not a lot that can be done to make the tournament better or bigger, but many things can be mismanaged to make for a confusing weekend.

The biggest issue is dropouts and the last two days are when we seem to get most dropouts. Between people who were sick or injured all week (and could have dropped out) to those who had a schedule conflict (and could have notified us) to those with legitimate last minute excuses, we have had as much as 20 dropouts in the last two days.
Thankfully, there are also last minute signups that will (hopefully) balance the equation



Overall, players are signing up earlier for the tournament and that’s helped us in many ways. With more time to structure the draws, we can balance them for skill and size. And we can be more through with seeding. There are too many variables to get seeding 100% accurate, but we are doing a better job every year. This year, we sent out early drafts of the pages to certain players to get their opinion. Rather than making the process more confusing (i.e. from too many chefs in the kitchen), we actually got a more a consensus and ended up with a better draw.

Game Day
Starting Friday at about 4pm I get antsy to get over to the clubs to start the tournament, and having things go well is like opening a new present. Does anyone remember seeing the movie Apollo 13, and remember Ed Harris’ role as Gene Kranz? He plays the commander of the Houston center that runs the mission from the ground. It is not the fact that that he is in, charge or that he is the one monitoring all ongoing events, it is specifically the moment when he puts on the new custom vest that his wife sews for him for that every mission launch. I love the excitement and anticipation of starting the weekend and watching it all play out. It is great to see friends again, to recognize people whose face I kind of remember from the year before, or to finally get the chance to put a face to the names I had been looking over the last few weeks. And this year, I’m getting a special vest!

If all goes well at a venue, there is very little for me to do but keep the place clean and get match scores updated on the draw sheets and online. Other than that, I try to keep matches on schedule, make sure that refs don’t skip out on their next match, and move matches around to accommodate injuries, dropout and late arrivals. As long as players are forgiving and focused on the end goal of playing squash and having fun, then most of these issues can be resolved without any lasting impact.

If there is a free court at some point during the day, I’ll try to get on court and play a few games with a friend so I’m not just watching games all day. And then in the evening, either before I head to the party at Grand Central on Saturday or head home on Sunday, I like to stay behind for a bit, not just to clean up and organize for the next day, but to take a breath and unwind before it starts all over again the next day.

And then when Sunday comes and it’s all over, I grab which ever board member is around and still tolerates me and start thinking about what we can do to make for an even better event the next year.