USPF Results?

[Matt Pantaleoni]

Does anyone have the results from the US Piping Foundation amateur events? I saw the Professional results on the P&D web site.

Matt

[Thom Moore]

Hi, Matt.

Eric Ouellette won the amateur overall, taking first in the piobaireachd and second in the MSR. His cousin Andrew Lewis won the MSR and took second in the piobaireachd.

The UPSF this year was just phenomenal, especially in terms of the number of top pro players who attended -- Willie McCallum, Roddy MacLeod, and Chris Armstrong were all there thanks to having spent the previous week at summer schools. It was great to hear Willie play the Big Spree "live" again -- heard him play it, and win with it that time, too, at the GS McLennan competition back in October 1998. His whole style of presentation just knocks you over.

The only minor quibble I had was that the amateur events were run concurrently, to save time, so it was tough trying to run back and forth between the MSR and piobaireachd competitions. For example, I heard Andrew play his piobaireachd, but not his MSR, and totally missed Eric playing anything. Even if 3 of the players hadn't scratched, it seems like there would've been plenty of time before the 12-2 lunch break to run the events one after the other. As it was, the amateurs were done by 11, so we had a 3-hour lunch break.

Apropos of your forum moniker, Matt, I had a lovely lunch of spinach and broccoli rabe-stuffed ravioli at the Cafe Gelato in downtown Newark, finished with a fine glass of, yes, chianti (a Ruffino 2002, I think -- wet!)....

But my issue with the order of amateur events is a mere quibble. Mac Macleod and the St. Andrews Society of Baltimore are absolute heroes for running this terrific event. It was amazing to me that the audience was only maybe 10 people for the amateur events, and maybe double that for the professional ones. And I think most of them, unlike myself and maybe a couple others, had some blood relatonship to the competitors.

Ya'll missed some fantastic piping!

-Thom

[Jim Roberts]

Were the professional players pre-announced?

I don't know that I would have made the five-hour drive up, but I certainly would have been tempted.

Jim Roberts

[Thom Moore]

Jim:

As far as I can tell, the pro players weren't widely announced beforehand, so you'd have to have called Maclean Macleod or Ian Johnstone to find out exactly who was going to play.

Given all the construction around the DuPont music building and the rather nasty parking policies of the Univ of Delaware (they could've at least opened the music school parking lot, which was completely empty -- I had to keep dashing out to feed a parking meter, since violations WERE being issued -- oops, another quibble, I guess!), it was certainly nice for the few of us who attended that so few others were there....

In any case, since you can usually count on players such as Alasdair Gillies, Mike Cusack, and Mike Rogers being there, the afternoon / pro part of the day, at very least, is always worth the trip.

-Thom