| from: | Nancy Keller [OHSCTA] |
| reply-to: | OHSCTA Yahoo Group |
| to: | OHSCTA, Seth Talyansky |
| date: | Feb 25, 2019, 7:24 AM |
Chess leaders,
I want to thank Catlin Gabel for hosting our 2019 State Championships. Seth Talyansky and his club members were amazing. There was a lot of background communication preparing for the event and he successfully arranged for OSCF boards and clocks to arrive, had rooms and boards set up quickly after school let out, made sure the tournament went smoothly AND managed to still win the championships! Very impressive!
We also managed to time the tournament for the short window between snowstorms! We have been lucky over the years to never have cancelled in the twenty years I have attended this event.
I appreciate Corvallis High School with their high degree of honor. I do plan to honor their request and ask the OHSCTA coaches and leaders if we can officially change 2019 2nd place for 5A Varsity to list Willamette in our records. Norm has already suggested a proposal to tweak the award procedure and we can start debating that. As noted by Jeff, this has been an emotional hot topic in the past but I still think there is room for improvement.
Another topic is when overall pairings conflict with class pairings, which should take precedence in the pairings? I made the decision that it should be overall.
Otherwise, this was an awesome tournament and sportsmanship was excellent. I did not encounter a single disciplinary problem this year and I want to thank all the coaches and players for making this such a successful event! Thank you Jeff Dobbins for making sure we kept organized, followed the bylaws, and came up to Portland just to do the check ins. Thank you Norm and Todd for your excellent abilities making the tournament go smoothly and promptly. Thank you Cottage Grove for volunteering to host next year’s event!
I have pictures loaded on the OHSCTA Facebook site: https://www.facebook.com/pg/OHSCTA/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2035734810053314
https://www.facebook.com/pg/OHSCTA/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2035695000057295
You do not have to be a Facebook member to see these photos and I think you can still download them.
Wow. I just appreciate everyone and in a separate e-mail, I will initiate the discussions to make next year’s event even better.
Nancy Keller
Executive Director