[Mark Padgett]

Last weekend, I worked three MS "tourney" games with a guy from across the Columbia river in Washington state. They are using the new FT mechanic there for two person games while here in Oregon, we are not. The games were in my state. Neither of us thought about discussing it prior to our first game, so when the first FT occurred, we both went to the table side (him at trail, me at lead). We then realized what had happened and kind of laughed about it. At the first timeout, we discussed it. He told me he would prefer to use the old mechanic for two reasons. First, we were in Oregon and second, he thought the new mechanic sucked.

He said he hated being that close to the benches for that amount of time with no recourse to move. His other reason had to do with working two person mostly at lower level than V games where the clock operators were not necessarily experienced and didn't know to hit the horn at the right time to indicate a sub, so he would always have his back to the subs when they wanted to check in and they would have to yell at him to come in. He said there were quite a few times subs didn't get to come in properly because of this. He said in these cases, his partner at lead couldn't see the subs from where he stood because the players along the lane were in his sight line.

When we were done with all three games, he thanked me for letting him have the opportunity to use the "old" mechanic and said he wished his assn. had never adopted the new one.

Comments?