Holding a Cancelled Tournament

I remember back in the middle of my senior year of high school I had decided to hold a tournament for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Given that the game had just come out, I knew there would be a lot of potential hype for a tournament, and given that this was the second tournament for the fighting game club I ran, I had a better idea of how to run it and how to promote it. On the day of the tournament, things were going smoothly and I managed to get more people signed up and more set-ups to play on. It was snowing, but I was hoping for the best. Of course, I was riding on a false hope and all after-school activities were cancelled by 11:30am. We went from this announcement into my lunch break, where I complained to my friends about it. But then it hit me; I could just hold the tournament off-school grounds, out of the school's jurisdiction. I texted my friend who lived near the school if we could use his house, and knowing the types of parties he would have, he was able to get the okay from his parents.

I went on a mad dash to contact the club about this change in plans and field any questions or concerns I could. A few people couldn't make it, expectedly, but a great deal of people actually did show up. The slight amount of commotion I caused also caught some new people's attention, and given that some people's schedules were freed up, we actually managed to get even more people than we originally thought we would. We got 14 people in total to participate, not including me and my co-leader.

Overall, it was a fun experience and felt great to run what felt like an actual tournament, with double elimination best two-out-of-three rounds and having multiple games going on at once. I felt proud to have been able to put on an event like that and was happy to talk to some of my peers that I did not get to talk to very often. That day, I learned the powerful lesson that you should not only rely on other people in order to get you through tough circumstances, but that you should not give up on what you've put in work for. You need to not give up and look for alternative routes when you hit a dead end; not only can you get to your original goals in doing so, but you can make your life more interesting as a result.