18u A ASA Nationals

[Dakota]

Originally posted by Bandit
Question: Of the fellow umpires on this site that have had a chance to do a tournament of National levels or maybe multiple tournaments of National level how has the scheduling of games been done. Especially tournaments that typically start play on Monday or Tuesday and continue till the chamionship game on the following Sunday. Not mentioning weather, family concerns, or umpire health problems how many changes normally take place to an umpires game schedule during a national tournament?

I was given the first day's schedule on check-in and the following days' schedules in the evening / late afternoon of the prior day. Rarely were there changes after that.

Regarding uniform issues, my biggest pet peeve is umpires who do not wear the proper uniform, or who don't take care of it to keep it looking professional.

At a national tournament this year, one of the top umpires in our area wore one of the mesh style hats with the "ASA" letters yellow with sweat stain. He would literally spit-shine his shoes (actual military spit-shine... and I know what that is!) but he wore this abysmal hat.

While it is true with ASA hats that have been used more than a few times you have to choose between yellow or blue letters, I went to the extra expense of buying 2 new hats for the national so the letters would be white. To say I was disappointed in this umpire is an understatement. Made me wonder why I bothered to buy new hats.