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| Wednesday, July 09, 2008 |
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Home at Last
By Jenny @ 10:50 AM :: 95 Views ::
1 Comments :: 
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Well the Nationals and Juniors are over for another year. Hopefully you all made it home safely.
I must be getting old. 6 days of competition, many of them lasting late, plus driving the 3:30 AM Shuttle back to the airport, I just now recovered enough to post this.
What can we say about this event? There were more than the usual number of issues at the hotel. Nearly everyone ended up with a single King size bed as opposed to the usual double beds. That took most of the evening to get straightened out. The staff of the Renaissance Marriott could work on their attitude just a bit.
It was just shy of a mile from the hotel to the venue. Transportation was supposed to be by the People Mover, a one way elevated train system, to within 4 blocks of the venue, then shuttle by 6 passenger van the rest of the way. It took about 20 minutes, what with waiting for the train, then the shuttle. Walking took about 18 minutes. Since the train only went one way, it took about 30 minutes to go back to the hotel. Most everyone elected to walk. That worked fine except on the day when it rained....
The venue was ok for us. I don't know how the competitors felt. Ford field sure had a lot of rules. No candy on the field? Thank god for the smugglers of KICKS Taekwondo. Imagine a tournament with no Chocolate! The staff was incredibly friendly. They told us they were used to dealing with drunk people, so we were extremely easy. Ron Rose's volunteers were awesome. Marco Mark, coming all the way from California to help was invaluable. As we all know, without volunteers the best planned tournament will fail.
The competition was better than ever. The competitors are what this is all about. Since they get better every year, the overall tournament can only get better too. There was some mix up in competition poomsae. Vicky Serbin had requested the software they used in Stanford, and computers to run it. That equipment didn't become available until 5 pm, so the certified poomsae referees ended up working very late into the evening.
The food...well that's always an issue. We are probably the pickiest bunch of people around, but after the forth day they had run out of ways to cook chicken and started repeating themselves. This brings us to our party.
The food for the party was very disappointing. Can you say Tacos? But afterwards...Ron Rose's band was awesome. Mass dancing. Much fun. Unfortunately we didn't learn until 8 o'clock that the venue was only rented until 9. Way too short.
In any event, we got to see great fights and great poomsae. And we got to spend time with our friends, and there is not much in life that beats time spent with friends.
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| Comments |
 By
Perfect_Streamline @
Wednesday, July 09, 2008 1:32 PM
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Great to meet all of you-I had a great time volunteering all the way from DC :) but alas I discovered that my true love is swimming for right now-spent swimming training @ the local YMCA & rushing back to watch the USA Swim Trials-Phelps & Hoff ROCK!!!
The highlight of the Nationals for me was working with a Richard or Robert Shaw, he was a riot, and of course meeting up with Leon, whom I had not seen in eons. The Referee seminar was good--so much info...
I had the fortunate privilege of meeting Valerie Long, Barbara Wakefiled and Vicky Serbin and maybe some day down the road I will meet up with all of you again.
For now in the words of Dara Torres:
"Dreams may become harder to achieve, but don't stop just because you've hit a certain age" with this said, its the 50m Free & 50m Fly to prep for USMS Colony Zones & Nationals next year.
Good Luck to you all, True Referees and hope o meet up again.......one day
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