Whenever I feel even the least bit stressed about our team's efforts to grow the CoCo - do we have enough players? enough directors? enough tournaments? - I always try to take a step back and keep things in perspective. It's easy to forget where we came from and how far we've come in a relatively short period of time.

Five years ago, our whole organization was just me, Jennifer, our 700-square-foot apartment, and a very small handful of collaborators, putting together a very modest network of six tournaments, half of them bunched in the Pacific Northwest. We had events on the schedule in Hood River, Minneapolis, the Oregon Coast, St. Louis, Oakland, and Seattle. And of course, since those tournaments were all fatefully slated for 2020, five of the six ended up not even happening. It wasn't until late 2021 when we really hit the ground running with in-person events. So it's been three years, pretty much. And in those three years, we've done a whole heck of a lot to expand our reach.

Since reopening post-COVID in 2021, we've sanctioned at least one tournament in 17 different U.S. states. That's Colorado and Delaware, where we just broke ground in the last five weeks (thanks to organizers Dave Wiegand and Nits Chagti/Tim Weiss, respectively), plus 15 others - California, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. And in the vast majority of those states, we're not just talking about one-off tournaments, either - we've got a real, sustainable presence, with directors who are eager to keep running events time and time again.

This is quite something. It exceeds even the wildest dreams I had five years ago for where we could be by late 2024. It's a testament to the ambition, enthusiasm, and work ethic of everyone on our team, from directors to organizers to board members to the technology team running our website. And it also reflects the fact that you all, the player community, are excited to play Collins Scrabble tournaments all over the place. It's pretty awesome.

That said, it also leaves us hungry for more. How can we take all of this progress and expand on it? How can we go even farther? How can we tap into new places, nurture new directors, and establish our presence in new little pockets of the Scrabble player community?

That can be done, but it's going to take a team effort. All of that enthusiasm and that drive that's out there - we can never have too much of it. If we keep nurturing it and we keep plugging away, we can build this CoCo thing into something even bigger and stronger.

If you're a player or director in one of those purple-shaded states above, our message to you is simple - let's keep it's going. Let's take what we've built already and make it more robust, more sustainable.

If you're in one of the gray states, let's grab a paintbrush and turn it purple. Let's get some tournaments off the ground near you!

If you're anyone in Scrabble, anywhere, let's do everything we can to keep growing the game - and the Collins game, in particular. We can do this. Let's get to work.