Palmetto Patriot's Classic 2024 Part 1

Okay so I arrived Wednesday evening after I brought the kids to Soccer (Luke) and Dance (Addi). It is a bout a four and half hour drive and I arrived around 9:30. I had a room at the Embassy Sweets which is basically connected to the North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center. We were set to begin setting up for the competition by 9:00am on Thursday. So, in preparation, I wore my blue light glasses for the last hour or so of the drive. I wanted to make sure I got a good night's sleep as the next day would be a challenge. We were going to set up a full boy's competition set (High bar, pommel horse/mushroom, ring tower, parallel bars, vault, and floor). As well as three full sets of girl's equipment, (4 vault tables, 4 uneven bars, 4 beams, and 3 additional floors. All of this equipment came in essentially three full sized 50ft trailers. We had probably about 30 volunteers there to assist us in the set up process. This competition is one of the best ones for getting volunteers to help with both the set up and the tear down process. Come to find out, the parents from the host gym, Gymnastics Academy of Charleston, would be charged $250 if they chose not to volunteer. So, there was certainly a monetary reason why most of them were there, but nonetheless most of them were happy and helpful. You always have a few who are overenthusiastic and will just start trying to do too much or move too quickly. While we also always have a few who stand off to the side hoping not to be asked to do much of anything. So, I believe there were two different ideas about how this process was going to go. We had two separate locations to set up as you can see from the pictures above. We had the boys and one set of girl's equipment in the Ballroom and the other two sets of girl's equipment (as well as Trampoline and Tumbling) in the event space. For this competition, my boss Tori Lewis, myself, and another technician Holly would be in charge of the set-up. I have done set-up by myself a few times and it can be quite stressful. Knowing that all of us would be there for set-up, I had confidence that the process should go rather smoothly. Especially because there were lot of staff members of G.A.C. there to assist us who have done this plenty of times before. It was a lot of work, which was to be expected, but it wasn't nearly as smooth (at least from my POV) as it could/should have been.

How was set-up?

Organized Chaos

The first things off the truck are usually the bars and the vault tables. Well vault tables are pretty easy, you put them on small rectangular rolling carts. They get rolled into the competition and usually tucked away in some corner to worry about later. The bars need to be installed right away. As the technician, you are in charge of setting them up and you can either do it yourself or use a single volunteer to help. The installation and dismantling of the bar system is not overly complicated once you know how to do it but it absolutely is not something you can just figure out. You have two flexible flat bars (we call them straps) that lay down next to each other underneath the middle of the bar set. These straps get bolted into the bar uprights (the metal frame of the bar set) and they basically connect the two uprights together. Then there are these long metal bars that also bolt into those straps and they jut out like an X. At the end of these (we call them hockey sticks) is a flat plate that will eventually have six - 75lb buckets on top of them (450lbs for each plate, 4 plates for the 4 girl's bars, men's high bar, and ring tower). That is a total of 144 - 75lb buckets!!! Glad we had plenty of help carrying those things in...

When I first started working for Elite Gymnastics Supply, I would often have my bar uprights facing the wrong direction, have my hockey sticks upside down, or some other unforeseen mistakes. I actually really like installing the bars, but like I said it can be complicated. The problem is while you are doing that, you also have to be monitoring everything else that is coming out of the truck (or trucks in our case). There are spring boards, bar rails, safety zones, chalk buckets, plastic totes with tape, velcro, tools, extra chalk, and other stuff. Then there are landing mats. A LOT of landing mats. Each bar has 7 landing mats, each beam 12, vault 5, rings 8, high bar 8, pommel horse 5. In total, we had about 125 landing mats to be distributed throughout the competition. This does not include our 8 inch or 4 inch cushion mats (in which each event was given at least one of each of these). Once those mats start coming in, you had better know exactly where they are going or you'll end up moving them more than once. Crazier still is building a floor. It takes 64 springs boards (4x8) and 64 top boards (that connect the floor all together with velcro to the bottom spring boards). The floor is usually the most time consuming part and if it is done incorrectly, it is a major PITA to have to redo. We had four of these bad boys to install and so while Holly began building bars, I put the bar parts down where they would need to be and started on one floor while Tori started another one.

Dazed and Confused

Every time I set up for a competition I am guaranteed to hear two things from people during set up. The first one is, "Wow I had no idea how much went into hosting a competition." Yeah, not many people recognize how much effort goes into setting up for a competition. And if they knew how much effort it took to ORGANIZE and OPERATE one, they might think twice about complaining about every little gripe they may have. Especially considering the Palmetto Classic charges ZERO for your entry fee, you'd think people would be ecstatic and grateful, but I'm sure you are not surprised to hear that people still complained. The other phrase I always hear is, "Close enough for government work." Which is a reference I'm not sure I understand but my assumption is it is an excuse for someone to stop trying to get it just right and instead saying it is good enough. I do not like this saying and it makes me cringe each time. However, when set up was almost concluded, I hadn't heard it yet so I had to say it myself to Holly as we were connecting velcro between two landing mats. My strip of velcro was slightly crooked and after uttering that awful phrase, I laughed at myself and fixed the velcro.
Prior to that jovial moment however, I struggled to put together the floor. The problem was, we used a new type of floor design that I had not experienced yet. Basically, I didn't know we had a new floor system and when I set out to build the floor as usual, I failed because there were now 16 additional 4x2 spring boards and 16 4x2 top boards. Where did these things come from and what am I supposed to do with them? I like to think I can figure most things out before having to go bother the boss with these type of questions. But, I had no idea how many I was suppose to have and if some of them belonged to the second floor that was being brought in at the same time. I was confused. So, I asked Holly. She sorta gave me some kind of answer that in that moment, made absolutely no sense to me. She apologized and essentially said, "I'm not really sure either." Set-up is stressful even when you know exactly what needs to happen. You are in charge of directing a whole bunch of strangers who typically don't want to be there in the first place, and they certainly want to finish as quickly as possible. So, NOT knowing what you are doing and trying to keep things going smoothly was to blame for my spike in blood pressure and annoyance level. I love my boss, he's an incredible dude but a little heads up on the new floor design would have been really helpful. It also didn't help that we would need 16 per floor but we only had 14 per floor. So, one floor could not be completed until Tori drove back to the shop outside of Columbia (a 2-hour drive). So, we moved onto things that we could actually finish and once we abandoned the catastrophe that was floor, things moved much quicker. We put together all of the boy's equipment, staged the events, taped the vault runways down, had volunteers wiping, moping, and vacuuming the mats and all the carpet bonded foam. The major elements of the set-up were finished somewhere between 2:00 - 3:00. So, it took about five hours or so to install 4 complete sets (minus the one floor that was left incomplete). All in all, I'm sure from a parent's perspective, we did really well and kept things moving right along without too much drama or difficulty.

Finishing Touches

Tori took off for the shop to collect the few missing spring boards and a few other odds and ends that he could work on during the competition (he brought foam and covers back so he could make a few sting mats to sell). While he made his 4 hour journey to the shop and back, Holly and I continued to work on the set-up. Although we'd let the parents leave. We still had hours worth of work to do. We had to tape down the vault runways, line the floor with the out of bounds white tape, tighten all of the quick links on the bars sets, oh and move the entire ring tower forward about 6 feet. Which means we had to unload all of the buckets and then shimmy this large, heavy, and towering monstrosity about 4-5 inches at a time. One side, then the other... Back and forth for a good thirty minutes or so. As much as we wanted to move on, the floor was still an issue. The foam that sits on top of the baltic birch boards (top boards) was all taped together and stretched across the floor. But, no matter how much shifting and maneuvering of the foam we tried, we could not get it to stretch across the floor in a way that it covered the wood. It was probably about 8:00 at this point and it was Holly, myself, Randy Parish and his wife Rebecca (Becky) in the space. The Parish's were working on behind-the-scene stuff while Holly and I solemnly wandered around putting things away or doing small but important tasks. We were dead tired and realized that we still had a lot to do but no energy to do it. So, we agreed to begin anew the next morning. At 6:00, in order to be ready for the competition that was set to begin at 8:00am.

I got back to the hotel, called my wife to ask her about her day, and then journaled for a minute before I hit the pillow like a rock.