Announcing 4 more in-person Scrabble tournaments
To say the least, reopening a continent-wide Scrabble organization in the wake of a global pandemic is no small task.
There are a million moving pieces we've got to keep an eye on. We're listening carefully to the public health experts and assessing the best strategies for moving forward safely. We're keeping a finger on the pulse of the player community, listening to people and responding to their demands. And we're networking with directors all over the place. At the end of the day, the job of a Scrabble organization is to run Scrabble tournaments, and that means you need good people who can step up and direct events.
Our team has been working on all of this. And slowly but surely, we're making progress. There have been challenges here and there, for reasons you can probably imagine - there's the uncertainty of the pandemic, as well as the very strange place we're in right now in terms of Scrabble governance. But, through it all, we're pressing forward.
Today, we're very pleased to announce four new in-person Scrabble tournaments. Without further ado, let's run down the four events:
Seattle, WA
Dates: Dec. 11-12, 2021
Directors: Jennifer and Evans Clinchy
Jennifer and I are really excited for this one - the venue is our house. We became homeowners for the first time last fall, and this is our first chance to have everyone over for a weekend-long Scrabble tournament. We've got plenty of space (and a kitchen that will be teeming with delicious food and drink), so we're ready to host a sizable gathering.
San Diego, CA
Dates: March 12-13, 2022
Directors: Puneet Sharma and David Whitley
Puneet works in the Del Mar area, which is a luxurious and beautiful (seriously - check out the pictures) part of San Diego. He's found us a great venue for a 2-day tournament, and David has kindly agreed to direct. This should be an awesome event in an awesome city, and with two awesome people running the show. You won't want to miss it.
Boston, MA
Dates: April 23-24, 2022
Director: Evans Clinchy
Well, a little outside of Boston, anyway. I spent my college years at Tufts, which is located in the Medford/Somerville area, just on the fringes of the city. I've got an on-campus venue lined up for the weekend, and I'm excited to host everyone back at my alma mater. I hope you'll join me.
Madison, WI
Dates: June 4-5, 2022
Director: Peter Armstrong
Pete is a native of the Madison area, and he's excited to return home and host an event for the Midwestern contingent of CoCo players. The plan is to have the tournament at a scenic lake house on Lake Mendota, pandemic-permitting. Madison is a great college town with awesome food and culture - should be an excellent spot for a tournament.
On behalf of our whole team, I'll say: I hope you're all excited to play these events! These are four really fun cities that we think players everywhere will find appealing. We're optimistic about drawing big, competitive, diverse fields to all of them.
Having said that, we also know this list still leaves a lot to be desired. The CoCo is growing quickly, but there are still a handful of major U.S. cities where we've still yet to announce our first tournament. There's also an entire country - it's called Canada, maybe you've heard of it - where we supposedly exist but have yet to launch live tournaments.
Trust us, we're aware of all of this, and we're working on it. It's a slow process, getting live tournaments off the ground again, but it's a process we're committed to. We'll keep working at it. We originally hoped to have a solid six or seven events in today's announcement; a handful of COVID-related obstacles forced us to whittle the list down to four. We'll try to come back with an even bigger and better wave of new tournaments next time.
In the meantime, enjoy these four. I'm hyped for all of them - late 2021 and early 2022 are shaping up to be exciting times for tournament Scrabble. As of today, all of these events are now open for registration, so hop to it!