I have been tired, bone tired, since Monday. The kind of tired you drift off even with the sun in your eyes, as it happened in the food court at Hartsfield C Concourse. The kind of tired where you drift off at the gate, and again on the plane, writing in mid sentence. The tired of having gotten more than you expected accomplished, and needing to recover. This year’s HSNCT was one of those.
It’s not when you do it once that gives people faith in your abilities, it’s when you do it repeatedly. If this weren’t true, last year would have felt more like this year’s HSNCT, instead of a four-day walk on eggshells. This year felt like something we can build off of, that we matched the standard of last year, exceeded it a little, made it run polished and smooth. A standard requires repetition to be a standard.
What struck me most about this year’s event was that people who had been away from the game, or had been cut off from competition by COVID, seemed to have their spirit renewed by coming to HSNCT. I heard plans being made, to help restart the teams they joined in high school, to help their high school league get to tournaments farther away, and to start teams where there were none before.
For those who have been soldiering through this to keep the lights on, there was a sense that they could stop and rest for a little while after this tournament. They didn’t need to worry that it would all fall apart without them. I think for the first time in a long time, a lot of people had a relaxed Memorial Day. That’s not to say that there won’t be some burnout that will take a while to recover from, but for a lot of people, the possibility of recovery is only apparent now. And I hope it grants them that.
I pulled a long Sunday at the tournament. I awoke ahead of my alarm at 5:10, and I carried my third cup of tea of the morning into the game room at 7:30. The room captain for the wing must be ready to go ahead of the deadline. Six rounds, five packets read later, and I was in the control room checking the matchups for playoffs were correct on the webpages. Once that was complete I helped hand out the assignments for playoff moderators, and then off to read four more rounds.
Once those four rounds were done, we packed up the room, returned the buzzer and clock to equipment headquarters, and I waited for my cleanup task. Even though I probably could pull rank and get out of this task, I never do, because I like to have that break in the action before the last wave of craziness ensues. I returned from that task, and the pedometer on my watch buzzed announcing 10,000 steps on the day. Six PM, the dinner break, and I was far from done.
I was tagged with the third official task for three rounds, and I had a new task inside that. The Online Question System has had an untested option: Observer Mode, in it for months, but the guidance was not to try to use it yet. And so of course, who do they send in to test? The software tester! While the finals played out in the ballroom, I typed up my User Experience report and sent it off to be fixed over the summer.
I pulled myself out of the cleanup tasks in the headquarters a little before 11pm, so that I could do the press releases before I slept. With the story for the local Chicago papers being truly a local story, with a narrative of the two best teams in the country being 20 minutes apart all year, I decided to add some extra customization to the story. Once that story was written, I worked my way through all the playoff teams’ press releases before resting. And at 1:30am I turned out the lights and went to bed,satisfied I had done what I could that day.
A change of flight this year meant I didn’t get my normal Monday morning activity. Usually I’m on the 6am flight out of Hartsfield, meaning I have to wake at 3am, shower, pack up and catch a taxi because MARTA isn’t open that early on a holiday. Even at that hour there’s still a little buzz around the hotel, some teams squatting in a room playing board games, or practicing for next year or next week. People still buzzed on the whole weekend letting the energy dissipate into the air conditioning. I missed that this year, MARTA was open at 6, but the skyway to the station was not, so I had to exit into the Atlanta streets as dawn came over.
Working through the weekend, I found myself reminded of my history here. The coach who remembered me when I read for them as a player, the staffer who played against me, the coach who used my book to train their team to get here, the all-star who finally remembered where they had heard my voice before, on the old HSNCT recordings. My feet have left so many scuff marks on this whole thing.
I delivered my last three study sheets to the team today. Due to the school’s baseball team playing for the WPIAL championship on Tuesday afternoon, school was cut to a half day, so our practice was cancelled. Since next week is both finals and the last week of classes, we’re done for the year, but just getting organized for summer. We’re going to keep it going, and you’ll get to see it happen.