On the last weekend in June 25 jammers came to Milwaukee to compete in the 2002 Summerfest Open Jam-Off. This year we tried a different format and judging system and the players really stepped up with their willingness to see how things would go. In the end, there were many hot jams, lots of good food, two champion pairs and some interesting information from the new format.

Instead of having the traditional pool format, this year we had a head-to-head competition wherein one team jammed against another team in a bracket format. Teams were seeded via the FPA rankings, three wild cards were used to try and make the seeding as fair as possible then teams were placed in the bracket. Competition was single elimination.

Single elimination led to some interesting combinations and a few close results. In one early round, the team of Jake Gauthier and Jamie Chantiles, a potentially hot team, ran into the juggernaut that was the three-time FPA Women's Pairs Champions of Mary Lowry and Lisa Hunrichs Silvey. The boys went down. During the second round of Open Pairs, we had the closest jam-off of the weekend, with Toddy Brodeur and Rico Schneider, the balding pate-counter-spinning-energy-exuding team, performing, in this observer's opinion, the hottest routine of the weekend. Alas, poor players, they lost out in their jam-off to the team of Tommy Leitner and Pat Marron. No offense to the latter team, but this was one of those situations where the aura factor probably played a part on the judging sheets.

Paul Kenny Gitis at Summerfest Venue

Oh well, that's life in the human body. Perceptions are not always that accurate, especially when colored by past actions. One cool thing was that in the next round at the Summerfest Stage, Pat and Tommy went off big time, defeating the powerhouse team of Ted Oberhaus and Erwin Velasquez and proving that they did indeed deserve to be there.

The final two rounds of the jam-off took place at the Summerfest Sports Stage in the early afternoon on Sunday. It was quite hot and humid (Just ask the barefoot-playing Ted next time you see him!). This was an unfortunate combination, as we experienced the least amount of spectators at the venue since the inception of the tournament.

When it was all over, the team of Arthur Coddington and Dave Lewis again paved the way to victory in Open Pairs with their patented highly choreographed, intricately difficult co-op play and shredding individuals. In the Mixed Pairs, future 2002 FPA World Champions Cindy Kruger and Paul Kenny won with an entertaining routine set to the music of Hair.

As usual, the tournament was about more than just the competition. The action began on Friday, with a fantastic day of kind weather at Veteran's Park on the Lakefront. All had many fine jams. Then it was off to Oakland Trattoria for dinner and the player's meeting. Saturday was a full day of play, with twenty jam-off routines, a random co-op round, and much jamming. Then it was off to Gitis Central for the traditional lasagna feed and party scene. It was all very nice. One of the highlights of the weekend was the drumming circle in the living room at Gitis Central before the final player's meeting. Thanks for the vibe folks. Sunday began with the traditional breakfast feed at Gitis Central then it was off to the competition at the Sports Stage. After the competition, we returned to the lakefront where it was 10 degrees cooler and shredded some more jams. It all ended with a nice Mexican feed at La Perla on Milwaukee's near south side.

Most of the players seemed to enjoy the new format. From my perspective, the one thing missing was the energy and potential shreddability of pool play. The days when everyone in the pool got hot were not a possibility here as it was always just one team against another. I think the shred factor may have been hindered because of this. However, across the board the judges enjoyed only having to judge between two teams instead of six or eight.

As for the judging system, folks enjoyed not having to mark difficulty in the arbitrarily set 15 second time blocks. The technical merit judges were able to watch a move from beginning to end then mark their score. One aspect of the judging system that proved difficult for the some judges was factoring in the execution deductions into the over all technical merit score. For Presentation, we only used two boxes to mark scores: flow and general impression. At the player's meeting on Friday night, Lisa Hunrichs Silvey made an excellent suggestion of renaming the "flow" factor, "composition". In the future, we will most probably use that nomenclature as it more accurately reflects what we are looking for when judging presentation. The feedback from the judges was positive as they enjoyed only having two boxes instead of six to mark their scores for Presentation. Speed and ease of notation resulted.

Some thoughts for future tweaking of the system and format were to allow the technical merit judges to only mark the difficulty of the move and have one person marking the execution deductions separately. The latter would then be factored into each technical merit judge's score to come up with the final answer. The only change to Presentation would be the name change mentioned above. As for the format, my thought would be to have another jam-off next year consisting of only Open Pairs. In our sport, the women have shown that they can shred with the best of the men, and I believe that if they came as Womens Pairs and Mixed Pairs, they would be a force to be reckoned with in the bracket. Then instead of whittling down the bracket to two teams, we would stop at four, the top four teams then advancing to the Sports Stage in a "super pool" to duke it out for the top prize.

Thanks to all the players who ventured to our fair city to compete and party with us this year. We hope to see you and others next year for a massive jam-off, shred-fest, party time celebration of this activity that we love so much.

Keep on, keeping on.

Results

OPEN PAIRS
First Round

Mary Lowry/Lisa Silvey defeated Jamie Chantiles/Jake Gauthier

Paul Kenny/Cindy Kruger defeated Dave Kuettner/Tim Mackey

Jeff Kruger/Pipo Lopez defeated Mike Hughes/Brad Wendt

Toddy Brodeur/Rico Schneider defeated Alan Caplin/Steve Scannell

Second Round

Arthur Coddington/Dave Lewis defeated Mary Lowry/Lisa Hunrichs Silvey

Paul Kenny/Cindy Kruger defeated Rodney Sanchez/Randy Silvey

Ted Oberhaus/Erwin Velasquez defeated Jeff Kruger/Pipo Lopez

Tom Letiner/Pat Marron defeated Toddy Brodeur/Rico Schneider

Third Round

Dave Lewis/Arthur Coddington defeated Cindy Kruger/Paul Kenny

Pat Marron/Tommy Leitner defeated Ted Oberhaus/Erwin Velasquez

Fourth Round

Dave Lewis/Arthur Coddington defeated Pat Marron/Tommy Leitner


MIXED PAIRS
First Round

Erin Waldron/Pat Marron defeated Anne Graves/Pipo Lopez

Second Round

Cindy Kruger/Paul Kenny defeated Erin Waldron/Pat Marron

Lisa Hunrichs Silvey/Erwin Velasquez defeated Mary Lowry/Jeff Kruger

Third Round

Cindy Kruger/Paul Kenny defeated Lisa Hunrichs Silvey/Erwin Velasquez

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