You'll have to push and shove now

bunnyhugger had spent the night before the tournament worrying that she would do terribly. She'd gotten almost no sleep, between anxiety about Sunshine and worry about bombing out the first round and our AirBnB bed being far too soft and small for her liking. I'm a dynamic sleeper so I can't swear that I didn't toss her out of bed in my turnings, but she likely would have been rested better if she'd had her sleeping bag and stayed on the floor. She made up for that with a good bit of coffee. She blamed that mix of sleep deprivation and stimulants for her shaky play, particularly dropping the ball on The Walking Dead. Perhaps so.

Her being knocked out of contention didn't mean she was done playing. The International Flipper Pinball Association gives the state tournament director the discretion to 'break ties' --- figure out how to rank people knocked out in a round --- as they like (or not break them at all). So, as was done in the open state finals, the losers went on to a series of best-of-three matches. So rather than try the hopeless task of consoling my bride I could start a scorecard and send her to play, I think it was, SEB. (I could dig out the score sheets, but would we be happier for that?) bunnyhugger won that match, and I started to think she could at least take the top of the first-round losers. No luck; she lost the next round, I think against JEN, consigning her to either 11th or 12th place. The final match she won, beating out REE and finishing, well, on top of the lower quarter.

And around all that? I settled in to the business of doing the tournament paperwork, really. Taking scoresheets, preparing new ones, updating scores for the Matchplay.Events tournament so people could follow online. I often fall into administrative roles at pinball events bunnyhugger runs --- there's a part of me that's born to direct traffic --- but this was the rare contest where I was never in competition. I could just run things from the side, and that was oddly comfortable. Since I'm probably not going to be in serious competition anymore --- is there a state championship for the best B player? --- maye I could move into tournament-administrating instead.

After knocking bunnyhugger out CY didn't even have the decency to win the championship. She lost in the next round, to a player who it happens shares bunnyhugger's first name.

We had a surprise when LEX left, midway through the tournament. We were stunned: driving the two hours from Lansing to get here, playing two rounds, and heading home? She was in a foul mood and we worried that bunnyhugger's buttons were part of it. Remember that one of them came out a bit bad and there wasn't anything to do to fix it. bunnyhugger gave her the 'bum button', with the promise (ultimately kept) to exchange it when they saw one another next, but we worried she was angry at getting a temporary bad button. No, and of course not. LEX was just feeling rotten: after beating KEC in the first game of their match, she lost four straight. And then two straight in the second round. And, after that much frustration, she decided she wasn't having enough fun to stick it out (and, remember, she couldn't play any of the tournament games once she bottomed out of the tournament). So going home was maybe the better move for her mental health.

As mentioned, CY got beaten about by HLC. And then HLC beat top-seed MLS, in only the second match to have gone to seven games. (KEC lost to AES in the other seven-game match.) And, in the end, the finals match between HLC and JLL. With bunnyhugger knocked out, and all the people with a Lansing connection out, who did I have to root for but the person sharing my dear bride's name? Well, she lost, four games to one, and so JLL's name will go up on one of those banners like the open championships have, even though her name doesn't start with an 'A'. Well, bunnyhugger's first name will, too, since the banners have had the top finisher and the runner-up on them.

And, happy to say, there weren't any disasters, besides bunnyhugger's loss. No fiascos, no chaos. The women who were still around congratulated bunnyhugger and reiterated how much they appreciated her work. And it was well-appreciated by more people too. Quite a few of the men who'd been there for the open state championship had dropped in, figuring they might watch for a while before heading home. A good fraction of them stuck around, glad to see the tournament, glad to see the play, glad to not be watching JRA tearing up Led Zeppelin for an hour every round.

As we got stuff cleaned up and packed away, bunnyhugger talked with AJH and PH about how well it all went, and how grateful she was for their support. And just how wonderfully smoothly everything went, this first state championship since the beginning of the pandemic. And, you know, a little talk about next year's state championship, and where might be a good venue for it, and the challenges finding one that would be good for both the open and the women's tournaments. (There is no requirement they be at the same venue, but it makes life easier if they are.) But all that is, of course, a very long while away.

bunnyhugger is currently fourth-ranked in the women's-only tournaments for next year's women's championship. Of course, there is a lot of time left in the year.

Trivia: In 1337 England's King Edward III conferred the Duchy of Cornwall on his eldest son, creating the second Duke in England. (The King, in his position as Duke of Aquitaine, was the first.) Source: Shakespeare's Kings: The Great Plays and the History of England in the Middle Ages: 1337 - 1485, John Julius Norwich.

Currently Reading: Popeye The Sailor: The 1960s TV Cartoons, Fred M Grandinetti.