>Sure there is a judge code in each of the tables. The user has the option to run the select statement and return back 1 specific judge code or if they leave the judge code blank then the user is requesting all records regardless of what the judge code is set to. It might seem convoluted but it worked !

I guess you didn't have to support somebodes code that works but imposible to figure out how. Anyway, in the second case, does it returns records where no judge is assigned? What's the field type for the judge code (char, int)?