[ay2b]

Overall, I think things went well, at least on Galileo. We kept on schedule +/- ~2 minutes all the way until the eliminations on Saturday afternoon. (Mostly it was everyone taking time-outs that threw us off schedule for the elims.) This means that generally everything was going well, from teams showing up on time, being ready to play, queuing working well, very few field problems, good calls by refs (which lead to very few team protests, which take time to resolve), etc.

At the end, I thought the way they "handed out" the game pieces went very poorly. After the final match, but before the end of the awards, they announced that anyone could take any of the inflated game pieces. The people who were on the dome floor already then immediately grabbed them, some people taking as many as 8. People in the stands rushed to the stairs, wanting to go grab some, but were prevented from doing so. Some people jumped over the railing onto the dome floor to get some. Some of the people on the floor picked up pieces and threw them into the stands. Many people were focused on trying to grab game pieces and were not paying attention to the remainder of the ceremony. I think if they were going to have a free-for-all "take any game pieces", they should have waited until the end of the awards, and THEN announced that anyone could come onto the field and take ONE game piece. (On the other hand, I personally benefited from them doing it the way they did, picking up a keeper for myself.)