On stepping up and helping with the CoCo mission

A couple of years back, we conducted an informal survey of all CoCo directors. We wanted to take their pulse with respect to a certain key question - why do they do it? What motivates them to direct Scrabble tournaments?

We got a lot of answers back from people. If you want, you can go back and read them all in full - we touched on these survey answers in a blog we published here back in late 2022. But today, I want to zoom in on one key element that showed up in those answers time and time again. See if you can spot it in these little snippets:

"People should come and enjoy Scrabble in Austin."

"I would like to see the D.C. CoCo scene grow, and for that to happen, there needs to be a steady supply of local tournaments."

"You'd think that the Northeast would be a natural place for Collins tournament play to thrive. I'd like to help make that happen."

"I'm probably the most experienced director in Southern California, so if we want to have tournaments here, I need to step up."

OK, so the common thread here is perhaps a bit obvious - people want more opportunities to play Scrabble in their local areas. Whether it's down in Texas, out in California, on the East Coast, or wherever else, people are itching to play - and quite a few of them are so motivated that they're willing to take action and make it happen. The mindset here, in the words of that fourth and final speaker above (and I don't know why I'm anonymizing him here, I can just tell you that it's David Whitley) is: "I need to step up."

And I love this. At its core, the CoCo is all about people stepping up. That's what has fueled this whole thing all along.

I think just about everyone on our team is someone who, at one point or another, realized it was time to step up. I certainly don't view myself as someone who was destined for this. I don't look at many of our board members or our directors as people whose mindset has ever been, "I was born to lead a Scrabble organization." For a lot of us, it's never been about any sort of personal ambition - no, it was just a matter of filling a need. We kept an ear to the Scrabble community, we listened, we realized we could play a role, and... we stepped up and did the thing.

The goal for us now, organization-wide, is to identify more stepper-uppers. That's especially true when it comes to tournament directors. (If you've ever had a conversation with me about this stuff, you've probably heard me say it at least once: The No. 1 goal of any Scrabble organization is to run Scrabble tournaments. This sounds obvious, but sometimes it goes overlooked amid all the other administrative busywork that piles up.)

So, certainly, if you know of a place in North America that needs more Collins Scrabble tournaments, and you're willing to direct in that place, hit us up. But directors aren't everything! We have board elections coming up in a couple of months. If you're interested in a leadership position, it's almost time to step up. And there are plenty of other roles within our team, too. We're always looking for good programmers and web designers and fundraisers and just, you know, generally helpful people willing to do any number of tasks. We're grateful for every little bit of volunteer help we get.

We're all one big Scrabble community, and we're all in this together, working to make our tournament scene bigger and better. So if you care about us achieving that collective goal, step up! Do what you can to help. All of Scrabbledom will be thankful that you did.