SHARING THE SPOILS

Holiday Tournament - December 7, 2018

Who doesn’t just love Christmas? Especially since it’s only about 30 days after Thanksgiving and you are still scraping off the last dust particles of your extended family visitations, the last taste of the turkey leftovers from your taste buds and swearing off poultry for at least 11 months, and wiping away the last tears of the Detroit Lions public holiday display of complete ineptitude. All, just in time to repeat the entire fiasco anew. (Except for the Lions. There is only so much agony and abuse a Michigander can take.)

Julie. Just... awesome!

Welcoming in the joyous season, there is nothing better playing squash with the traditional annual Holiday Tournament. It’s a Swiss system style format where everyone gets 4 matches, against random opponents, no handicapping. Why they call it the ‘Swiss’ system is anyone’s guess unless for some reason they lay claim to inventing it which would be hard to prove and I’m sure no one really cares anyway. I digress. To get into the Christmas spirit, I do encourage all attendees to dress in appropriate garb. The more hideous the better. We did see some green and red combinations, Greg Allare’s red short shorts raised a few eyebrows, maybe he was going for the 1980 John McEnroe look…? Julie Vande Vusse once again treated us to the most stunningly grotesque squash shirt that she enchantingly repulsed us with last year, reminding us that beauty and ugliness can indeed live in harmony. The perfect Yin and Yan combo. I want one. And yet… I don’t. And Janie Franklin was simply adorable in her headband / reindeer ears, a perfectly amusing and novel way to spread the cheer!

 

Henry Gembis and Janie Franklin

Twenty-four registrations. That’s the max for this event since any more and we’d be playing until midnight. One player informed me 3 hours before the start time that he wasn’t able to play (Grrrr~!) but miraculously turned up 10 minutes early anyway to take part. (Yay! But.. huh?) Unfortunately, we still did have 2 1/2 no shows. I have no idea why 2 of them stayed away (I didn’t send enough e-mails?) but we know exactly why we had a half absentee. Steve Brown is a smart guy. At least that’s the word on the street. He was the first person to register for this tournament, so I know he received my e-mails. And all my reminder e-mails. And all the reminder e-mails to the reminder e-mails. Plus the final reminder e-mail. I am also pretty sure they all said the tournament started at 5pm. So why he thought it was 7.30pm is a mystery that even Steve admitted he can’t solve. Kudos to the man however - he did eventually turn up, with gift in hand and took all the ribbing in good stride. He was also allowed to take part in the post tournament gift choosing ceremony where he appropriately ended up with the pumpkin (?) pie. Ahhh, Steve we will miss you next year.

So onto the squash. It is an important part of the evening, otherwise there would be little point gathering them all and providing a keg, right? The appeal I find of this event, is that who really wins is irrelevant. Since there is no handicapping, the top ranked players will end up with the most points. But this format gives everybody a chance to play against members they would typically never meet up with otherwise. That being said, we do on occasion end up with a final order that would not reflect our club ranking.

We had 2 players sharing first place - Jeff Gembis and Greg Allare. Greg’s biggest victory of the evening was his third match where he took out JC Tibbitts 3 games to zero. That set him up going into the 4th and final match with a 1 point lead over the rest of the field. Jeff’s most important result was in his second match, taking out Colin Bayer 2-1. Jeff was 1 point behind Greg heading into his 4th match. He played Joey Gaylord and held off the resistance - just - to take all 3 games putting a little pressure on Greg to win all 3 of his if he was to become the sole victor. Let me introduce this year’s spoiler, Brandon Tasco. Now on paper, I don’t think anyone would predict a Tasco victory. And you’d be right, Brandon didn’t win. But, he did take the third game and thus preventing Greg from hogging the spotlight all on his own, forcing him to hold hands with Jeff atop the podium. For Brandon’s sake, his reward was ending up a surprise second place, also holding hands here with David de la Nacho-Chapo-Torre.

Third place was dished out between JC Tibbitts, Colin Bayer and John Rogers, and a couple pleasant surprises for fourth: Matt Paradiso and Julie Vande Vusse, along with Joey Gaylord.

 

The Christmas Crew!

As usual, the presentation went very smoothly, I hope everyone was very happy with their gift. I certainly was - and I sincerely thank you all for it as well. Once again, I haven’t heard of anything that needs to be added to the banned substances list, although I was asked that since the new law that recently passed in Michigan, if any allowances would be made for that. Just let me say, as long as my surname is “Joint”, ironically, he answer is an emphatic “no”. Wishing you  all a Merry Christmas!