Projected (as of 5/31/2014):
• 982 individual and 66 team entries
• Morning events: 59 pools of Y12 Women’s Epee, Y14 Women’s Foil, and Cadet Women’s Saber (flighted), plus 29 Jr Women’s Epee teams
• Later in the day: 80 pools in Cadet Men’s Epee, Y10 Men’s Foil, Y12 Men’s Saber, and Y10 Women’s Saber, plus 37 Jr Men’s Foil teams
• Expected end time: 8:25 pm
Actual:
Ah, yes–Day 10, when the mind knows it’s only the 10th of 12 days, but the body thinks it’s time to be done and get home.
Tuesday was another of our jammed-up days, where the morning events had to finish up to make room for the later events. My own playground was the Junior Men’s Foil Team event, for which we checked in teams from 8:00 to 9:00 and expected to finish by about 4:30. But because of the strip crunch, for most of the event we had only a single pod of 4 strips and a crew of 6 referees, which meant that the round of 32 was quadruple-flighted.
With such a small group of referees, each had to handle 3 or 4 matches to get us to the round of 16. At that point, we chose to pause the event and have the captains set their bout orders for the round of 16 while we let the referees eat a (relatively) leisurely lunch before they tackled their remaining 3 or 4 matches each. The medal matches finally ended at about 8:00 pm.
Jill, who was BC chair Tuesday, and I were both fried enough that we sat down together in the late afternoon to lay out the whole next day’s strip plan. I don’t think either of us could have done it working alone by then.
Eventually (after I’d left the building), the Cadet ME concluded the day’s competition at 11:49 pm.
Mary Griffith 