Here are the July 2018 judge anniversaries!
15 years
Oliver BeaumontBrett Wright
Victor Martinez Gonzalez
10 years
Niko SkartvedtJorge Requesens
Peter Florijn
Chris Lee
Julian Palermo
Jeffrey Vandenberg
Matthew Klein
Adam Howard
Juha Ihonen
Jorge Almeida
Kenneth Mullinix
Viachaslav Kuhtuyk
Tatsuro Iwakura
Michael Hall
Daniel Schoenbach
Michael Mills
5 years
Sal CortezIan Marcellana
Robert Gray
Donovan Gilbert
Adrià Diago
Arthur Cohen
Daniel Ross
Shawn Wilson
Pavel Borisenko
Morgan Kisamore
Tanner wells
David Spencer
Myles Aderhold
Brian Spurlock
Keith Boyle
Clay Westman
Dylan Jones
Cody Leech
Joseph Eckert
John Papadakis
Robin Runesson
Matthew Michael
Benjamin Tash
Pete Correa
Madalyn Young
Xingchen Zhang
Jacob Roush
Jen Rockwell
Walter Hoekstra
Yongjia Xuan
David Pope
Alejandro Gerez
Dani Sorribas garcia
George Kallergis
Daiki Ito
Timofey Urbanovich
Gunnar Olai Sivertsen
William Earley
Lucas Buccafusca
Andrew Marion
Erick Carlsted
Curro Rodriguez
Brendan Weiskotten
Sean Rosberg
Tawnee Chipps
Mark Kogan
James Marino
Krešimir Štefanić
Simon Davidsson
Melanie Flores
Parth Joshi
Stéphane Grenier-pontbriand
David Groves
Danesh Surendran
Richard Vo
Nattadate Watcharasiri
Sébastien Wilmotte
Logan Creen
Leo Niehorster-Cook
Keith Cooper
Joe Stimec
Jeffrey Bennett
Bryan Chan
Fabian Prasch
Simson Lo
Ralf Heersma
Jean-François DURMONT
Billy Gilmore
Henry Gross
Ricardo Gonzalez
Graeme Hart
Anton Abramov
Masato Ando
Ian Fox
Mateusz Kniżewski
Matthew Canada
Jacob Richards
Vladimir Trajcevski
Jarrod Feight
Simo Li
Michael Jerrold
Jacob Albert
Glen Eggers
Gabe Skypala
Jesús Chamón
Jochen Frenster
Anders Simpson-Wolf
Andrew Gu
Jon Nauert
Jake Moldowsky
Pat Giles
Gani Sunadim
Matthew Swartz
Jarek Spears
Kris Kurniawan
Rio Ruess
Addison Swaney
David Smith
Carlos Alberto Zepeda Mendez
Talin Salway
Thomas Verhoeven
Jeremy Cannon
Brian Herbelin
Anthony Abby Swyryt
Matt Lashof-Sullivan
Jacob Guild
Ian Nelson
Congratulations, and thank you for all your hard work!
This month we are featuring 4 judges: Keith Boyle, Salvatore La Terra, Rob McKenzie, and Scott Marshall. First, we’ll celebrate Keith’s 5 years in the judge program with his RC, ScottKeith is unique in that he’s a store owner and tournament organizer who also happens to love judging. I’m sure his original motivation for L1 was to help ensure his store events would always have a judge available – but then, a funny thing happened. He did a few events and discovered he was good at it, and really enjoyed it. Since then, he’s judged at GPs, and pursued (and achieved!) L2 (with more than just a little bit of urging from other locals, myself included).
One of the things I find exceptional about Keith – even though he could, as an L2, simply “monopolize” his own events, he doesn’t – quite the opposite, in fact. Keith is heavily invested in growing new judges, including donating space in his store for judge conferences, as well as bringing in newer judges and letting them run events under his gentle guidance.
This month, we have another trio of Level 3 anniversaries. First, we recognize Salvatore La Terra for 5 years as Level 3. Italian RC, Cristiana Dionisio“Salvatore has always been our ‘rules guru’ even when he wasn’t L3. In the last 5 years though he has become more and more the reference for L1s, L2s and players for every rule and policy doubts. He takes care of giving the official answers on our local social media groups and to present the difficult rule situations on the other Italian L3s searching for consistency.
Salvatore is active and available every day for rules consultation, he helped me with the 2017 L1 and L2 renewal creating tests and making sure everybody took them on time.
In coordination with the other Italian l3, he has been leading the project ‘L3 candidates’ which helped the Italian Community to have currently 9 active L3s. I’m extremely happy and proud to have him next to me leading the Italian and Maltese Judge Community.”
Next, we’ll hear from US – Central Regional Coordinator, Steven Briggs“When I first started my work as a Regional Coordinator, one of my first Grand Prix events in the role took me to what is affectionately now known as GP: Hoth. Apart from seeing just how cold Lincoln, Nebraska can be in February, a very important introduction and a one-on-one conversation took place at that event, one that would change my life for the better.
I met Rob McKenzie, the man who would be the Riker to my Picard in the Midwest, eventually elevate to his own role as Regional Coordinator alongside me, become one of my closest friends and read at my wedding this past September. In hindsight, that Grand Prix was a very important event.
Over several years, we became close friends and partners in crime in the Judge Program. Rob had been a strong judge and a leader of sorts in his area for years, but when he was promoted to Level 3, Rob really began to broaden his horizons in terms of the scope of his work and the positive impact he could bring to the organization. I believe that a combination of working with Steve Port and Legion Events for a period of time along with working alongside me in helping manage the mega-Midwest region helped Rob sharpen his skills, explore new ideas, and realize that there are ways he uniquely can contribute to helping us do what we do better globally as a program.
An immediate symbol that comes to mind are the Exemplar tokens – a special, very Magic-like way of delivering positive feedback to individuals. That product started just within his region, growing in popularity and desirability over time, to the point where judges in many other regions also wanted to have that done for them. He researched and championed the cause, refining it over time, yet always making it open for feedback and available to anyone who wanted to play with it as well. That small, regional-centric gesture has grown into a global project and icon of excellence in performance – the manifestation of a driven leader with an idea that broadly supports what we do.
Much like the person who started the project to begin with.”
Finally, Ron Thompson“15 years as L3+ is an incredible accomplishment. In my relatively short judge career, I’ve been lucky to work alongside Scott the entire time. Scott was my first GP HJ (GP Calgary 2014!) and was one of the primary motivators for me to not only continue judging, but to level up all the way to level 3. I’ve seen Scott provide this individualized level of support to countless judges and his dedication to the growth of the program has never wavered.
Scott has head judged over 20 GPs and a couple PTs, yet he remains easily accessible to other judges and remains to be one of the best communicators in the program. In fact, Scott is consistently seen hanging out with judges of various backgrounds and levels. Seeing him make the effort to get to know all parts of the judge program proves to me that he cares about our community. This is even further realized through Scott’s temporary-and-then-permanent role as RC. He quickly stepped into the role and easily adopted all of the responsibilities. One of the most notable contributions as RC that goes publicly unrecognized is how often Scott nominates and writes features for the Judge Anniversaries project. Every month, Scott recognizes judges behind the scenes and is always willing to put pen on paper to write about his region.
Scott and I have gone out for a drink quite a few times during our judge careers; I hope the tradition continues for many years to come. 🙂 Congrats on 15 years as L3 and thanks for being such a prominent part of our community!”
Best wishes to all three of these fine judges for their years of service as Level 3 judges!
Happy anniversary to all of you! We look forward to many more years of judging from you all.