Mill Valley forensics team hosts fully-virtual tournament
The tournament was the largest ever hosted by the team
Juniors Noah Reed and Grace Emerson say that though the tournament had a rough start, it was a success.
March 17, 2021
The forensics team hosted a virtual tournament, Thursday, March 11 through Saturday, March 13, the largest the team had ever hosted.
Proud of their success, junior Grace Emerson played a crucial role in setting up and the course of the tournament. The team was required to find judges, instruct participants on the rules, and dictate the tournament.
“We had to do a ton of preparation for the tournament,” Emerson said. “This included recruiting judges, making sure they were signed up and connected to Tabroom (the website on which the tournament was hosted on), assigning judges, and logistically discussing what we would do on the day of the tournament.”
The team worked until the last second trying to make sure everything was prepared.
“The easiest part was assigning judges to certain events. We had a lot of time to make sure everything was set before the tournament began,” Emerson said. “The hardest part was finding replacements for judges during the live rounds. Inevitably, a judge forgets to come or other situations arise, so we have to make sure that we have some judges on stand-by who can fill in. Finding those people typically proves difficult.”
Sharing Emerson’s frustration with the process of selecting judges, senior Patty McClain says this year was a whole new experience.
“In previous years, we have all of our judges physically present, which makes things a little bit simpler,” McClain said. “It’s important to get enough parents and community members to judge for home tournaments because there is nothing more stressful than trying to find a judge at the last second when the tournament is already in motion.”
Though it also stressed him out, junior Noah Reed felt very content with how the tournament went.
“[The most important part was] organizing and communicating with the staff, when things inevitably [went] wrong,” Reed said.“Despite a few setbacks, it ran smoothly.”
The team overall is proud of their abilities to work together to pull off the tournament.
“All things considered, our tournament was fairly successful” McClain said.
