I spent my final three semesters from Spring 2002 to Spring 2003 as the coordinator of the Gym Hockey League. As a coordinator, I feel very qualified to say that it is a rather thankless job. I routinely had to develop three or four sets of schedules, for up to 24 teams, utilizing the time that my league had the gym while trying to work around the numerous times that teams couldn’t or wouldn’t play. I distinctly remember one team could only play for one hour two nights a week! Teams like this made my job much harder than it should have been.

Maybe some Computer Science major, or better yet, Bruce should develop some kind of program that allows the coordinator to plug in the teams and times and let the computer do the rest. When you’re doing this process by hand, it takes a great deal of time. I spent entire weekends working on these schedules because I did not want to suffer the backlash of hearing teams gripe because they were scheduled a time they couldn’t play.

Bruce had the audacity to suggest the expansion of the soccer league to more than 40 teams. Given what I know about creating schedules for 24 teams, I can only imagine the chaos that would ensue with 40 teams, much less any more than that.

My question to him is: Would you show up to a test late and then complain if the professor refused to let you take it? Maybe Bruce shouldn’t have waited until the last minute to submit a roster; otherwise, he would be playing IFC/IC Soccer this semester. Do you complain about classes being full if you wait until the end of the week to register?

As for officials not showing up, I did not have the luxury of terminating an official for not showing, as I only had one. While this was never a problem when I was a coordinator, mistakes do happen. Lines of communication are crossed and people just forget in general.

My only suggestion to Bruce and Tricchinelli is: if you find the system so dysfunctional, apply to be a coordinator or a referee and do the job the way you feel it should be done.

Jeffrey Balcom