Rooftimers!

What an amazing weekend!  I am not sure if you noticed, but our local web-masters (Jeremy Rotter and Nihad Hadzic) decided to re-design our web-page, and while developing the new layout, Jeremy tabulated our cumulative total for the first 16 events - $91,118.  For the last few years, we raised around $8000 with each tournament, so we set ourselves the rather ambitious goal of $8812 for Rooftime 17 so that the overall Rooftime contributions to the Dutchess County Coalition for the Homeless would top the $100,000 mark.  That became not only our goal, but the theme for the tournament and the basis for the t-shirt design this year.

I was a bit worried that our turn-out would be lower since there were 2 other tournaments in the "local" area this weekend, and the weather had me trembling earlier in the week when the forecast called for up to a 40% chance of rain on Saturday.  Furthermore, setting this aggressive goal during a recession seemed almost foolhardy.  However, all the fears were unfounded.  The weather cooperated and we were blessed with two glorious days without any rain (though a little more cloud cover would have been nice...).  We still managed to draw 275 players over the 2 days, and even more spectacularly, we exceeded our goal for this tournament and managed to raise $10,322, bringing our cumulative total to $101,510.  (And the pick-up bucket brought in $408, so those little contributions each week helped us achieve this incredible milestone). 

Thanks!  Xie-xie!  Kiitos!  Merci!  Danke!  Grazie!  Arigato!  Kamsamnida!  Спасибо!  Gracias!  Bedankt!   Bocsánat !  Hvala!  Shukran!  Obrigado!  Danki!  Mahalo!

Before we get to the "thank you" section, just one other item.  We ran out of the smaller sized t-shirts on Sunday and not everyone who wanted one was able to buy one.  Right now, I still have a few XXL and XL shirts.  If you would like a smaller shirt (or one of these larger ones I still have), just let me know the size and assuming we get enough to justify the extra printing, we'll make arrangements for the exchange.

As usual, there are tons of people to thank.  First of all, to all the players who travel from both near and far, thanks for participating in this event.  Without you, there would be no tournament.  If there was every a "people's tournament", this is definitely it.  Someone asked me on Friday if I was getting nervous about the upcoming weekend, and I could honestly reply, "No."  So many people help out and perform the various tasks necessary to run the tournament - it is quite impressive.  I can't think of any other place where the winners and runners-up of a given bracket break-down their own net before heading back to their coolers for a well deserved beverage.

We are sure we will fail to omit someone from this list, but here are some "shout outs" to folks who helped in various capacities:    

If we failed to mention you (or a friend), please accept our apologies.  All during the day, we noticed people helping out in one way or another (cleaning up the bathrooms, gathering trash, helping with nets, ...), and we are sure we forgot to include someone.  Please accept our apologies!

Thank you to everyone who participated in this year's tournament, your support makes a big difference in the continued success of DCCH and HRH.