Oh?... Well, he had several people backing him up on that. It'd seem odd to mishear it. Perhaps I should create a topic on the Sakura Con forums to find out.
As for the tournaments: well, I wasn't there for anything but the SC2 tournament, but I know what you're talking about with regards to that at least. The person running the tournament had never played the game before. He was filling in for a no-show of some sort.
However, in a room full of experienced SC2 players, it seems ridiculous that none of them were recruited to run it. If it looks like this is going to happen at a future Sakura Con, and I know at least a week beforehand, I might just step up and volunteer to run it. After all, I'm not quite good enough to contend for a win, anyway, but I know how official tournaments are run for the most part, and there are probably enough Kumori Con people on the console gaming staff to vouch for me.
By the way... what are your feelings on Lizardman? I know that normally, only the arcade-playable SC2 characters are allowed, plus Sophitia and Seung Mina. However, I made the suggestion at the tournament of allowing "only characters playable in the arcade version, or from the original Soul Calibur." This technically includes Lizardman, even though I believe he is usually not tournament-legal.
Should he be included? The biggest difference is that unlike Sophitia and Seung Mina, Lizardman is not playable in the Japanese home console edition. This does actually matter to me, because I own the import, but not the domestic version. So, I haven't had any practice against Lizardman since SC1.
It'd be nice if non-tournament-legal characters were labelled right in the game from the get-go...that'd resolve a lot of arguments.