2009 Blues, Views, and Barbeque

Our return to Westport at the tail end of what seemed like a long, difficult season was not the going to be a glorious recap of the prior year's first place brisket.   In fact we spent too much time messing with it and ended up missing the brisket turn in by 9 seconds.   In KCBS contests, one second late is too late.  We ended up getting disqualified in brisket, and having our worst finish ever.

Our team was already demoralized by a series of mediocre finishes in rainly contests, and this put us over the edge.  It created some bad feelings that would take a long time to repair.  We started to have differences of opinion on the team about how often we should compete, how much we should spend, etc.  Perhaps these things were always simmering beneath the surface, and Westport brought them out. 

It took us a long time to really learn from this event.   Open, honest, and frequent communication are required for a team sport like this one.   Team members have to be able to express their opinions, and other people need to respect those opinions enough to hear them out.   These things sound simply, but are harder to execute.   Westport would linger over our 2010 season.

Almost unnoticed amonst the bad feelings at Westport: we had 2 top ten category finishes.  Despite our implosion, something was happening.

Blues, Views, and Barbeque

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