Tournaments

Number of People: 2

Budget: $0

The Tournaments are an excellent vehicle for opening doors to and encouraging friendships at Star. Consider submitting a brief and welcoming description of what occurs through the Dockside Post so everyone, especially the New Shoalers, will be aware and encouraged to join in the fun. The organizers should be vaguely familiar with the games and sports involved, should make up sign-up sheets for those interested, and schedule the tournament times for the more competitive events like bridge or tennis. Tournaments that have run in the past include:

Some equipment such as horseshoes, cornhole boards and beanbags, and salt and pepper shakers are available from the hotel. Check at the front desk as to what games are available. But the interested parties import most games from the mainland. You may want to write post cards to people reminding them to bring decks of cards, Scrabble, backgammon, chess, etc.

Before coming to the Island, you may want to contact the previous tournament master to see what games were played and with what success. You can feel free to offer a different slate of tournaments – just make sure that each game can be finished in a reasonable amount of time so they can be finished by breakfast on the in time for Friday lunch.

The tournament organizer should prepare sign up sheets (three poster boards, or several sheets of regular paper) on the mainland so they can be posted on the porch wall immediately upon arrival. Please announce at breakfast and/or lunch on Monday that persons wishing to participate need to sign up as soon as possible so that brackets can be produced on Tuesday morning.

• Signup sheets posted Sunday afternoon after dinner

• Signups completed by Monday night (at dinner?)

• Brackets posted Tuesday morning

If you can arrange such prompt sign-ups, it will give more time to get all the tournaments completed by Saturday breakfast, so you can hand out awards at lunch.

Single-elimination brackets work best for most games/sports. Round robin is good for tennis, bridge, and games with only three entrants. You might want to do some research in advance to figure out what those brackets or round-robin games will look like, and bring pre-drawn templates with you to make it easier to draw the brackets on Tuesday morning.

You can write suggested "when to play" times under each round of games to encourage progress. Avoid making announcements encouraging people to play their games; there are too many announcements as it is. You may adopt a "default" policy as an incentive for players to meet commitments.

Tournaments are mainly for the adults and older children (mid teens and up), although there is traditionally a hotly contested junior division in salt & pepper bocce. You may want to think about creating age ranges for different tournaments. Once the brackets have completed, fill out certificates for the winners and make time to announce them at lunchtime Saturday. Find two runners to help you deliver certificates and ask the audience to hold the applause until all the winners have been announced.

Be aware that players may ask you to adjudicate rules about how to play certain games, so it's good to familiarize yourself with at least the basic rules of every game or sport, and be willing to make a judgement on the spot if needed. As an example, should ping pong be played as one game to 21, or best of three games to 15? More often than not there is no "correct" answer, but players will need you to pick one for them.

Equipment needed:

• 25-30 Certificates (preprinted before coming to Star so that just the name of winners and tournament title need to be put in)

• Two Sharpies to draw out the brackets

• Sign-up sheets for each tournament you want to run. Consider printing some "fill in the blank" sheets so people can tell you what games they want to play.

• Poster board on which to put the tournament schedules, or pre-printed brackets that are easy to fill in

Last updated: Matt Ronn and Ben Cordes, July 2025