Alright let me tell you how this whole thing went down. I got my hands on the official Sangamon County Tournament rulebook last week, nearly choked seeing how thick it was. Seriously, you’d think they were writing laws for the UN instead of a hoops tournament.
Step 1: Dealing With The Beast
First I printed the whole damn thing – 58 pages! Took forever and wasted half my ink cartridge. Spread all the pages across my kitchen table like some detective solving a murder case. My cat kept sitting on Section 5: Player Eligibility, which was actually helpful cause nobody needs to read that mess twice.
Step 2: Highlighting The Important Bits
Grabbed four highlighters like my life depended on it. Pink for game stuff (timeouts, overtime rules), yellow for player crap (uniforms, subbing), green for technicals, blue for registration deadlines. Took three coffees to get through it all. Found so much lawyer-speak like “heretofore” and “therein” I started yelling at the papers.
Step 3: Cutting The Fat
Made two piles: MUST know and DON’T care. The DON’T care pile grew real fast. Who needs 8 paragraphs about “spectator code of conduct”? If people act like idiots, throw ’em out. Done. Reduced 58 pages to 5 main things regular folks actually need:
- Game length & overtime (changed from quarters to halves because why not)
- Timeouts that make sense (3 per game, period)
- Mercy rule (stop the slaughter after 30 points difference)
- Player cards & rosters (deadlines that won’t make you cry)
- Tech fouls (2 and you’re ejected, no exceptions)
Step 4: Plain English Test Run
Read my simplified rules to my 14-year-old nephew playing in the tournament. When he actually understood everything first try, I knew we were golden. Changed “participants must adhere to uniform guidelines” to “no jersey, no play – period” because real humans talk like that.
Epic Fail Moment
Tried making a fancy chart comparing old rules vs new. Wasted two hours before realizing it looked like tax paperwork. Trashed it and wrote bullet points on a diner napkin instead. Perfect.
Now we’ve got rules you can read while eating breakfast instead of needing a law degree. If you’re playing in Sangamon next month, do yourself a favor – read the short version so you don’t get screwed by some rule you never knew existed.