Also, huge congrats to my teammates Nathan for breaking, and Kaushik for getting your first of many bids

Congrats to Bobby for clearing and a special thanks for being such a good and supportive teammate.

Congrats to Dylan for a well-deserved and overdue qual, and huge congrats to Varun and Shawn for the wins.

Lastly, huge thanks to Menick and the Hen Hudders for an outstandingly run tournament (not to mention the equally fantastic hospitality).

Congrats on doubles Charles, GBN will be better.

Last but not least, congrats Paul on clearing to novice quarter, it’s your third tournament in three weekends and you’ve worked hard for it.

Congrats to Varun and Shawn for winning. Also, congrats to Mike, Shelli, Jared, Susanna, Karlyn, Kaushik, Dan, Neil, Dani, and Sammi.

Also big thanks to Menick, Struver, Sophie and the rest of the Hen Hud squad for hosting one of the most efficient, fun, and well-run tournaments in the country.

The Adler family officially has multiple debaters.

And speaking of our coaching staff, many thanks to the ludicrously hard work put in by Douglas Jeffers, Matt Dunay, and Andrew Waks; this work, I am sure, will pay dividends throughout this topic and the year. Many thanks as well to special guest star Jason Sun, who helped out on the novice side of things this weekend. We appreciated it!

For the record, this year’s Jon Cruz Award was the cobweb-covered, grime-encrusted, long-since-retired Joseph Strawbridge Coaches Award — which had been residing in Menick’s basement since ‘95 — and an outsized box of crappy, steamy romantic novels. This adds to my collection, which includes a past NFL district traveling trophy, a set of obsolete Bump policy acrylic awards, and an ever-growing collection of embarrassingly awful books.

The award was appreciated, but not as much as the tournament itself. I prize our ability to participate in competition at Bump each and every year. This is the only tournament in our busy regular-season schedule that all of our LD coaches come to together. We do this because of the excellent competition from across our region (and beyond!), awesome hospitality, delightfully consistent judging, and the great balance between neat acrylic awards and ridiculous crappy prizes. And we do it to hear some off-the-cuff, live wisecracks from the wittiest man in debate, my good friend Jim Menick.

Bump is tucked between two large octafinals bids tournaments — the Minneapple and the Glenbrooks — and that makes it tough, of course, for some to come up to the Hudson Valley in November. But I think those who come almost always find it well worth the trip. Very few tournaments provide a judging pool that promote a fairly consistent debating style — and thus make it easy and enjoyable to prep for the tournament. This is one of the reasons I love Bump.

As an aside, my apologies to Varun for calling him “Naveen” on here. I am surprised that it’s been so long since I made the sibling switch on VBD. I chalk that up to an exhausting weekend of holding down the fort in novice tab, and enduring the eventful bus ride home. We often have unexplainable transportation mishaps at Bronx Science, and this year, I jinxed us by commenting on our luck this weekend in avoiding disaster. Only minutes later, our dear novice finalist turned our bus into the Vomit Comet.

Lastly, congratulations to Cruz/Jeffers KNDI ‘08 alum Madhu Ramankutty for winning the storied Bump Traveling Fruit Cup this year!

Anyways congrats Shawn(met you a week ago, pretty cool guy)

good job kaushick on pulling off what you saw as unlikely
Good job devin, on one of the best rounds I had at this tourney
Nice job New Jersey! Hassin/Susanna/Varun, if I missed anybody just correct me

And good job Dan, gotta break that curse bro…
Good job team abdul!Byram/University

Also congrats to Salman Syed on a well deserved clear and Carlos on the bid round.

Also, great job to Marshall for the bid round, Alex for breaking, and the 3 Whitman PF teams in quarters!

Also- to Devin, Dylan and Susanna for a super showing in out-rounds. And also- Zach for being so close to clearing.

On a side note, congrats to Devin on the break – you’ll do better next time, congrats to andrew on octas, and to dylan for completing the qual.

Oh, the delightfully nonsensical traditions that make Bump wonderful. It was a great tournament, and I can’t wait to return next year– mainly to help defend the team’s most important title: The Jon Cruz Award. Also, there’s no such thing as a sufficient amount of crappy prizes. The team always needs new reading material.

I did’t know Naveen came back to the activity ;)

Also, congrats to all the Whitman kids who broke in LD and PF this weekend; you might not have gone as far as you wanted to, but you should be proud of how far you went.

Huge congrats to everyone for breaking, the list is definitely too long to type! Awesome job.

And to karlyn for a tough semis matchup

And to my wonderful team! I am proud of all you novii! Congrats!

But most of all congrats to my bros, metaphorical and literal, Salman and Shawn for their performances. Salman, a year off hasnt taken you out of the game and the NE better be on the look out when they hit the second beast to take the Niskayuna SS moniker. Shawn, what can I say? You came (late). Saw. Conquered.

congrats to dylan and karlyn for completing their quals, this is very well deserved

congrats also to carlos, susanna, and esp. kevin and varun for repping the great state of new jersey

charles chy is the way2go

nice bid round strat. andrew!!!

major congratulations to ilana on being first seed and winning her first away tournament! very impressive. congrats to rachel for breaking as well.

also, HUGE congratulations to isabel and kaushik on the bids – i told you guys you would do well this weekend! congrats to carlos and andy on the bid round; you were super close. also, congrats to sammi and dani on breaking!

Hannah

Clearing in novice…
Bronx Science AH
Bronx Science DK
Bronx Science TM

Varsity doubles is starting now; all three novices won their novice doubles rounds and are debating octas.

I am directing novice tab, which is in the adjacent elementary school, and so I will have the varsity pairings up the moment they come to me.