The Mid-Atlantic Koi Club (MAKC) held its first Koi Show in September 1989, during the annual Koi Festival at Lilypons Water gardens near Buckeystown, Maryland. Ed Gillenwater was the first Show Chairman and was the driving force behind the effort to hold the show. The premiere show was a very major undertaking for a new club, as we had to do it all ourselves, with no other club anywhere around to lend tanks, equipment, or advice. Almost no one beside Ed had even seen a Koi Show, but under his leadership and planning the show was a great success, teaching us and many new members and potential members much about the beauty and appreciation of our lovely jewels of the pond. A major learning step for club members before having that show was having fish auctions in June of 1988 and 1989. The auctions gave us experience in transporting Koi from their home ponds and in preparing their temporary home-away-from-home. Our first Judges, Tsuyoshi Kimura and Vergil Hettick, traveled from California for the judging. They provided much knowledge about Koi and greatly advanced our appreciation of them. They also judged our fifth show and have agreed to return and judge our tenth show in October 1998.

Joe Zuritsky, was Show Chairman for our second show, held at Longwood Gardens, in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. The lovely gardens, the former summer home of the DuPont family, has many hundreds of acres of flowers, trees and water features, with three acres under glass in its conservatories. There are thousands of visitors every day to enjoy its beauty and our Koi shows are afforded a unique opportunity to introduce many garden lovers to the beauty and appreciation of Koi. Joe's Sanke was judged Grand Champion for the second year, our only repeat champion. Our judges were Yoshihiko Adachi & Takemi Adachi. Takemi is well known in this country as the owner/operator of California Koi Farms in Fallbrook, California. His father, Yoshihiko, is also well known to the beginning cadre of Koi keepers in this country. He has an extensive Koi business in his home town of Yonago, Japan and brought the "Adachi System" of pond and filter design to this country. We were honored to have them as our judges, as we have been honored by all of our distinguished judges. A listing of all of our judges, show chairmen, and winners is found in the table below.

Year	Location	Show Chairman	Judge(s)	Grand Champion	Owner	Koi Entered
1989	Lilypons	Ed Gillenwater	Tsuyoshi Kimura Vergil Hettick	Sanke, over 18"	Joe Zuritsky	85
1990	Longwood	Joe Zuritsky	Yoshihiko Adachi	Sanke, over 18"	Joe Zuritsky
1991	Longwood	John File	Bob & Joan Finnegan	Shusui, 14-18"	Jim Reilly	176
1992	Longwood	Wayne Orchard	Tsuyoshi Kimura Vergil Hettick	Kohaku, over 22"	Art Lembke	175
1993	Longwood	Art Lembke	Jimmy Inouye George Takeda Galen Hansen	Utsurimono, over 20"	Art Lembke	164
1994	Longwood	Donna Marie Saites	Grant Fujita	Utsurimono, over 20"	Jim Reilly	192
1995	Longwood	Allan Hobron	Bob Spindola Galen Hansen	Sanke, over 25"	Bob Bransfield	159
1996	Longwood	David Hester	Alan Rogers Kate McGill	Utsurimono, over 24"	Art Lembke	197
1997	Longwood	Bill Fogle Debby Hester Nicole Lembke	Masao Kato Dr. Mao Lin Tsai Wil Thimister	Kohaku, over 24"	Gene & Viola Ewy	181

After our second show, a committee was formed to recommend a site for the third show. Longwood Gardens was chosen, not only for its beautiful surroundings, large numbers of visitors, but also for its central location in the club's Mid-Atlantic region. Longwood Gardens has been the site for all of our following shows.

The third show, like the two previous shows was held English style, that is each owner was assigned a show tank (or two) and all of the owner's Koi were placed in that tank (the British call them vats). This method keeps all of an owner's Koi together but separates Koi of a like size and variety. This required our judges, Bob and Joan Finnegan (Joan is the current Chairman of the Associated Koi Clubs of America) from California, to make repeated trips back and forth across our show site in Longwood's Rose Arbor in comparing Koi of a similar size and variety.

For our fourth show we made the big plunge and held a Japanese style show with the Koi placed in show tanks according to their size and variety. In this method, all Kohakus in size 1, for example, are placed in one tank. This makes it much easier for the judges who can see all entrants for a particular award at one time without the repeated trips around and around the ring of tanks. This makes the judging quicker and also more accurate as the judges can make finer comparisons on a side-by-side basis. On the other hand, Japanese style makes it a challenge to keep track of all the Koi and to insure that all Koi are returned to the proper owner at the end of the show. To do this, photos of all Koi are either brought to the show, or taken at time of registration, and careful record is made of each Koi brought by each owner. So far, we have never "lost" a fish.

Our list of past judges reads like a whos-who of the Koi world. In addition to those mentioned earlier, we have had Jimmy Inouye, George Takeda, and Galen Hansen in 1993, Grant Fujita in 1994, and Bob Spindola and Galen Hansen (again) in 1995 (Bob also has judged several of the South Chapter shows held at Lilypons). In 1996 we had two distinguished judges from Great Britain, Alan Rogers and Kate McGill. In 1997 we had undoubtedly the foremost Koi hobbyist in the world, Masao Kato along with Dr. Mao Lin Tsai from Tawain, and Walter Golsteijn and Wil Thimister from the Netherlands. Other Judges and assistant judges last year were Joel Burkard who also translated for Kato-san, Ron Goforth, Steve Drake, Jim Reilly and Lester Berkow.

Our most recent show, the ninth, saw the return to the English style show, prompted by concerns caused by rumors of Koi disease in Japan. The rumors appeared to be overstated, at least in their impact here, and this year's show will once again be held Japanese style.

The second show saw the beginnings of what has become one of the most important parts of our shows, the lectures that accompany the display of Koi. They were held in small meeting rooms that year, open to the public, and the rooms overflowed with club members and Longwood visitors alike. Beginning the next year, when the show venue was changed to the Rose Arbor area, it was possible to hold our lectures in the nearby Longwood auditorium. Since then, Diana Burton has enriched all of our shows with a slate of world class speakers on topics for the beginner and "old hand" alike.

Every show has featured an awards banquet, held on Saturday night after the judging where winners are recognized and judges have an opportunity to discuss their impressions. We have always held raffles which have helped to defray the cost of staging the show and have allowed us to purchase the very considerable number of show tanks and related equipment. These raffles have been made possible by donations of koi-related products from many generous dealers and vendors.

No description of our shows would be complete without prominent mention of Ed Schmidt and his Mayflower Moving and Storage Company of Mickleton, New Jersey. Ed not only stores all of our show equipment for us, at no charge, but he also sends one of his trucks to deliver it all before the show, and then he picks it up at show's end.

Many, many people wre needed to stage the show and the list of tasks is very lengthy. It includes show setup, (done in a driving rain in 1995), water quality, requiring a constant effort, coordination with Longwood Gardens and the hotel where in recent years we have held our vendor fair, arranging the banquet dinner and other meals, the show registration committees (for the Koi and for the club members) making arrangements for the judges and speakers, organizing the raffle, the list goes on and on. The final task at each show is cleanup, this requires much effort to empty, clean, dry and store the show tanks, and every year we have more and more of them as our show has grown. In recent years we have enlisted the help of the Longwood interns to assist us in this task, but it still is a big job and requires a lot of planning and effort.

We have found that the shows have introduced many people to the Koi hobby and have brought many new members to the club. The shows have also been a unifying and strengthening factor in the club as the effort needed to organize and hold the shows has drawn the members closer together as we have worked to make the shows a success. We have also renewed old acquaintances and made new friends through working on and attending the shows. The important thing about the show is that it all is FUN. We all have a good time and find satisfaction in a job well done.