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.)
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| 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!
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| Henry Gembis and Janie Franklin |
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.
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| The Christmas Crew! |
