In accordance with the adage that anything worth doing is worth doing late, I bring you the recap of the Ethan Reynolds Memorial Pinball Tournament. The tournament was held on April 1 at The Avenue Cafe in Lansing and used a group strikes format. I chose the format because I thought that group play was most suited to Ethan’s gregarious temperament. The charity beneficiary was the Capital Area Humane Society. Although they are already the most frequent beneficiary of the Lansing Pinball League’s charity tournaments, in this case they were chosen by Ethan’s family as a charity that was important to him. Twenty-eight people played in the tournament, which is one of the highest turnouts I have had for a charity tournament. Attendees included both league regulars and some of Ethan’s friends who were new to playing pinball tournaments. There was a wonderful spirit of joy and fun in the crowd despite the sad event that had brought everyone together.
I did not want my usual $10 entry fee for charity tournaments to be a barrier to anyone who wanted to celebrate Ethan with us, so I made the entry fee “pay what you wish” and did not even have to collect $1 for the IFPA because an anonymous donor covered our fees. Despite this, I was overwhelmed by the generosity of attendees and received many large donations, including a big roll of bills from Pinball Pete’s and a Foo Fighters translite that Mike Stewart raffled off to bring in even more money. I had an anonymous donor pledging to match any donations dollar-for-dollar and at the end of the night I was a little nervous to present them with what was frankly a higher bill than they expected. (“I hope you’re sitting down,” I texted.) Not only did they cheerfully make good on it, they later went on to secure a matching donation of $1,000 from their employer. I received $1,226 in donations from players and other donors and another $1,226 from the anonymous matching donor, allowing me to present a check for $2,452 to the Capital Area Humane Society in Ethan’s name. They were rather startled (in a good way) when I read the amount to them. With the matching donor also garnering their own matching donation of $1,000, that brings the total amount raised by this tournament to $3,452!
The tournament itself was also a success, though I may be rather biased in saying so, for more than one reason. I was originally going to run a seven strikes “fair strikes” format, but I began to worry at the very large number of people who had marked themselves “interested” on Facebook. In the past we have been able to finish a seven strikes tournament by about midnight, but that was with a relatively small group. I cautiously decided to have a sliding number of strikes based on how many people attended. For 25 or more I announced that it would be six strikes, so that is what we ended up doing. We got done around 11 pm, which I consider optimal for a tournament, although there was some luck involved in things ending quite as early as they did.
The tournament came to a dramatic conclusion and one that I most certainly was not expecting. I was playing remarkably well all night and had not taken last in any round, so with four people left standing, I went into finals with four strikes, against Tim with four, Danny with five, and Joseph with five. The final game drawn was Dungeons and Dragons, which was still quite new to all of us. When the game ended, I had won it, so I knew I was going to finish high in the tournament, but I didn’t realize just how high until Danny said, “She’s knocked us all out.” I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen this happen in a group strikes tournament: a three-way tie for second. Joseph and Danny each took one strike and Tim took two, leaving everyone but me with six strikes. It was my first major tournament win in a long while and broke me out of a slump.
I had previously announced that any tiebreakers would be ceremonial only, so the official results have the three-way tie intact. I offered for the other three to play off to decide who got which trophy, and they agreed to do that, playing one more random game, though I forget which one. I think my head was still spinning too much from the excitement of winning. Tim got second and Danny got third. Sadly for Joseph, I had only made three trophies, and he ended up in fourth.
Let me express my gratitude one more time to our wonderful matching donor, to Pinball Pete’s, and to all the players and spectators who gave so generously. This was an amazing tournament both for contributing so much to charity and for being a lot of fun. The only thing that would have made this tournament better is if Ethan had been able to attend it himself.