If it is indeed true that Harvard sacrified tournament staff quality to field additional teams, then there is a severe problem. Not being there, I cannot comment. It is my humble opinion that fall tournament results be used to determine how many teams a spring host school can bring to the ICT, with one being a bare minimum. Now, moving on to players/moderators: Most programs should have a "core", that is, a group of people who can be counted on to go to tournaments, and a "fringe", a group of people who can be counted on to attend the occasional practice and to assist with on-campus tournaments. At GMU I have 6-8 people in my "core" and about 3-5 people in my "fringe" (which itself can expand greatly once we know we are going to host a tournament.) For example, for the Randolph-Macon Commonwealth Academic Tournament (a tradition, dear readers, I might revive indefinitely at GMU possibly as early as January 2001), we had 7 people in our core that regularly attended practice. >From there, I actively recruited friends, former team members and the such. THAT IS PART OF BEING A TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR. I then had a staff on Monday before the tournament of about 25 people; although 5 of them dropped out, the staff that remained of 20 people was sufficient to run the 34-team tournament (untimed.) In other words, I agree with Ahmed that it is the responsibility of the tournament to adequately staff the tournament before thinking of fielding house teams. For a timed tournament, this requires a scorekeeper and a moderator in EVERY room. As Harvard fielded 3 teams with 5 players that could be used at least as scorekeepers, and knowing that the tournament was NOT adequately staffed, Harvard's decision to field house teams while the tournament was understaffed is at the least questionable. However, given the fact that Harvard deserves to have more than 1 automatic bid to Nationals, a compromise must be reached. STP
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