Friday, March 28, 2008

Tournament 3 - Observation two - Organization brilliance for the most part

I was impressed by much of Paganello. I would argue it's not really an Ultimate tournament; it's a disc event that includes a tournament.

Pictured Above: Rocky Beach of SeXXXpensive looks to throw against the eventual winners Scandal in pink (photo courtesy of Anatoly Vasilyev)

Here are a few things that I thought were excellent organization elements of a tournament that might be added to other tournaments. Of course they're not all doable, but here's a list:
  • A PA system announces the 5 minutes to game time, 1 minute to game time, game time, 5 minutes left, and the game over. These announcements are accompanied with theme music. The music was not too loud to be distracting, which other tournaments have done because the sound system is located in one single point.
  • At the tournament you buy some tickets which you can exchange for food, drinks, beer, etc. Much better than having to cart around money, and they had a happy hour during the day.
  • The tournament printed out a little news letter each day. On that sheet it included a schedule for the day as well as articles about events from the past day.
  • Members on your team get SMS text messages for the time and field of your morning games. This one should be implemented for all tournaments in the future that don't have preset schedules and you know where you are seeded.
  • Every team plays on one of the two showcase fields at some point of the tournament.
  • There were different tournament packages to be purchased where they set you up with a hotel room depending to suit your spending.
I didn't like everything with the tournament, but they're lesser complaints and not so much about organization.
  • I was disappointed that you had to fight for the fish on the first night. I had two chunks which I thought were great.
  • I didn't like playing in sand. Sure you can layout, but I hurt my back and tweaked both my knees due to the unstable ground.
  • I would have preferred a quick flurry of games as opposed to having games spread out through the day.
All in all, it was an experience that I suggest each player makes an effort to see at least once.

PJ

3 comments:

Josh said...

I believe the team in pink was "Scandal" from Chicago.

Peter Andrew Jamieson said...

Thanks for the correction.

PJ

Handy said...

Sand is a personal preference on your part, I happen to love it. However, the time between games at Euro ultimate is infuriating, it makes it basically impossible to get a rhythm. I remember my team smoking hash between literally every game because we had 1+ hour between each game. Sigh...