And so it ends

Well, the weather held off long enough for us to get our championship game in last night, which made me happy. As I've said, I've been ready for the season to end, and so the only unacceptable thing to happen yesterday would have been for the game to be rained out. Unfortunately, we were unable to recapture the magic of Tuesday night, and lost, finishing a more than respectable second in our first season playing with the big boys of the A division.

However, in doing so, we violated one of my most sacred tenants of double elimination tournamnet play, which is simply this: If you're the team with one loss entering the finals (we were) and you win the first game (we did), you had better win the second (we didn't). You may ask why this is such an important thing for me. Well, it's simple, really - efficiency. If the team with one loss wins the first game and loses the second, it takes 2 games to get the exact same result as it would have taken 1 game to get had said team just lost right away. Really, all we accomplished by winning the first game Tuesday night was to waste everyone's time, ourselves included. Shame on us. Or, conversely, shame on the other team for not winning the first game on Tuesday. It's all circular like that, which is the truly enjoyable part of this.

This stance was formed by years of Bible quizzing, in which the wish, assuming you had no other rooting interests, was to see the tournament end as quickly as possible once your team was eliminated. Since I've become a tournament director who prides himself on getting tournaments done on or ahead of schedule, this position has only been further galvanized. In fact, we had the most terrible violation of this tenant at the tournament I run this year. Not only did the team with one loss win the first quiz and lose the 2nd, they did so with BOTH quizzes going into overtime. Shameful, I say.

This policy is also quite versatile, as it can easily translate to sports like volleyball and tennis, which have matches that are best of 3 or 5 games/sets. The general principle still applies - if your aren't going to comeback all the way, don't waste our time! Of course, all of this only applies where there are no actual rooting interests involved.

Anyhow, the softball season is over, and I'm grateful for the break. Time to lick my wounds (somehow I managed to scrape up the exact same spot on the same shin on seperate plays in each of the last 2 games, the 2nd one REALLY hurt as a result), rest up, and then dive back into my other pursuits that have been neglected for the last several weeks, like reading, blogging, and poker.