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Post by spiker on Jan 23, 2013 10:53:25 GMT -5
1 question spiker: What clubs and what age-groups are you referring to that you believe are "strong" but not playing in the region? Just curious. I know for sure of one club that practically never plays within the region except for Quest and MAPL. That's who I was thinking of, the other team I thought was in NC isn't a CR team.
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Post by mizunoman on Jan 31, 2013 0:48:44 GMT -5
So apparently less than a handful of clubs have gotten together and decided to rally some support to make "suggestions" to the Region regarding the remaining Open tournaments. Some topics the "group" has brought up are...
1-HOW the tournament should be organized 2-How many TEAMS should be in it 3-WHO should run it 4-WHERE it should be
(Uuuumm...so you pretty much want to change the whole thing. Got it.)
Sorry, folks! The last ship on all of this has sailed. Next one pulls out this May at the end of the CR Advisory Board meeting. Better catch that one. Coaches and clubs had an opportunity to give our input last spring. Though some folks refuse to buy into it, this CR is a democracy. Unfortunately, the many are only represented by a few as I would say barely even 5% of the Region constituency even bothers to try to go have their voice heard at the annual meeting. So the few are forced to decide for the many.
I do concur with the "self-appointed" committee that the 4-team pools are definitely the way to go for the open division (with 8-team pods), and from what I heard, that was the original plan for the division. However, with the numbers that got invited into the Open division after the seeding tournament, the 8-team pods weren't practical - because, yes, teams were accepted not in multiples of 4 or 8; the CR site lists 19 teams each in the Hi and Lo divisions. Obviously, there was some sort of break down or caving-in throughout the process of selecting teams for open. (Still not sure who had the final say there.). Nonetheless, it was the Region's first attempt at this Open idea, and I am sure that the newly appointed Region Tournament Director will receive lots of feedback to improve the process and format for next year.
I feel compelled to address a couple more issues mentioned by the "committee."
A - Even bad 18s teams do not want to play a bad 15s team - so, no, the Hi and Lo should not be combined. The issue of "better competition" can be remedied next season by having more exclusivity in the Open Division invitation to play.
B - Multiple sites rather defeats some of the purpose. It should be great to have several of the top NC teams at the upper age-groups in the same gym - especially for clubs with multiple teams to be able to support each other in region events and for NC college coaches to be able to come watch some of the best up-and-coming talent in the region. College coaches could not attend the last two CR Open events due to a quiet period and a dead period, but several college coaches (at the D1, D2 and D3 levels) said they see these new tournaments as an opportunity to get eyes on more of our local talent (even if it is just to eval a local kid who sent a letter). Plus, the coaches can keep tabs on any of their incoming local players. For college coaches it is another opportunity - that is close-by for most of them - to make it a day or half-day proffitable recruiting outing. If the whole division were spread out among several facilities, coaches would be less likely to bother. Less bang for their buck, so to speak.
In the end, let's face it - there are only two or three more tournaments in the 2013 CR season for the teams in that Open division anyway - and these tourneys will neither make nor break your team as most of these teams are playing a mostly out-of-region schedule anyway...SO complainers need to suck it up, jot your ideas down, save them and go to the Advisory Board meeting this spring! Hope to see you there, and I genuinely look forward to hearing everyone's input.
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Post by spiker on Jan 31, 2013 11:49:20 GMT -5
Agreed, there are lower level teams playing in the Open Division that don't play the "mostly out-of-region" schedule the top teams do and don't really belong in Open given their level of competitiveness. For these teams, instead of playing 6 1-day "Gold" tournaments against their peers, they are now playing 4 1-day tournaments where they are not all that competitive. These teams don't belong in the Open Division, and based on the results of the seeding tournament, probably should not have been invited. So I agree with the sentiment above that the Open Division should be more selective, and should limit the numbers to multiples of 4. And there are only 2 more Open Division tournaments this season, right (2/9 and 3/23)? Any idea when the seedings/schedule will be posted for those? Could a few of the lower teams opt out at this point and play the rest of the season in the Gold division to even out the numbers to multiples of 4 in Open? So many questions...so little time.
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Post by volleylion on Jan 31, 2013 13:22:11 GMT -5
I agree. Also, spiker, actually one of my friends' teams sent a petition to be able to do just what you suggested - drop out of open and into club for the remaining CR tournaments - and the petition was denied. The thing is, the teams that were invited into Open and decided to accept that offer were told that they would not be allowed to drop down into club during this season, and every team in Open accepted those terms. I mean, it is the first year for the Open Division concept, and the Region will get feedback and make improvements for next year. I think the teams that participated this year will have lots of great feedback to consider, and the Open teams should feel proud to be a part of that group who will be instrumental in developing this concept within our Region even further for next season.
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Post by raleighparent on Feb 6, 2013 9:10:25 GMT -5
I have to say that I'm pretty disappointed with the Open Division so far. A few specifics:
1) Seeding Tournament: Initially I was hoping that the seeding tournament would actually "weed out" teams that should not be in Open. This didn't happen, and it has caused the format to be bad due to the odd number of teams. Whoever decided to allow every team that registered into Open made a bad mistake. The divisions should have been capped at 16 teams even if that meant 3 teams had to be told that they should not be playing in Open.
2) Level of Play: Splitting Hi and Lo and not allowing movement between the Hi and Lo pods has effectively lowered the level of play for the top 16's teams to less than it was last year in Platinum (I'm sure that's also true for the 18's teams although I doubt there's much that can be done about that). There should be movement allowed for the top couple teams in each pod to move up and the bottom couple teams to move down, even between the top "Lo" pod and the bottom "Hi" pod. The point of an Open division should be to have teams playing other teams at a similar level, which is not possible with the current restrictions. Why shouldn't the top 16's teams be playing against 17's or even 18's teams if they are at the same level?
3) Determining a Champion: This looked like it was going to be an issue with the first tournament, but at the last second the format was changed so that a champion would be decided for each division. Frankly I didn't much care about this, but the kids certainly do. Parents don't see this as important in most cases, but in talking to several of the kids they certainly do. Those cheap medals don't seem like much to us as adults, but they are like gold to the kids, so I like that they have a championship match.
4) Dropping Out: It appears that Triangle has decided to drop out of the Open division after the first tournament. Clearly they don't see Open as being worth their time or effort. This means that the format is again being churned and Hi now has 16 teams and Lo has 14 teams. This also means that Open has become even less competitive and less relevant. Interestingly one 16's team has moved up to the "Hi" division of Open with this change, so why not open this up for the next 2 tournaments such that top 16's teams can move up and the lowest 17's teams can move down?
Thinking about next year (I'm essentially writing off the rest of this year from a regional perspective) I have to agree with a previous poster that the region should either re-instate the Platinum division and leave it as a state-wide division, which would at least pool all the top age group teams together, or they should enforce size limits on the Open division pods and allow complete freedom to move between pods. There should be no artificial boundary between "Hi" and "Lo".
Comments?
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Post by spiker on Feb 6, 2013 11:17:05 GMT -5
I agree that it's ridiculous that the top 15/16's teams couldn't move up to the Hi division. Every team playing in Open should have the same opportunity to move up/down after each tournament. It's ok to start out with the 17/18's at the top of the pecking order (and if the Region was more selective in who was invited it would probably stay that way naturally), but after that teams need to woman-up to retain their placement, or be moved down.
This weekend's tournament will have playoffs and a final champion decided on the court in a true championship match, which is good. There's also a loser's bracket playoff, so teams in the 8-team pools will be guaranteed to play 4 or 5 matches, and teams in the 6-team pool will be guaranteed to play 3 or 4 matches.
I think it's clear that the Open division should have been limited to some increment of 4-team pools (32 teams total would be optimal). I'm guessing if that was the case, and complete freedom to move between pods was allowed, that Triangle would still be participating.
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Post by coach4life on Feb 7, 2013 0:41:16 GMT -5
4) Dropping Out: It appears that Triangle has decided to drop out of the Open division after the first tournament. Clearly they don't see Open as being worth their time or effort. This means that the format is again being churned and Hi now has 16 teams and Lo has 14 teams. This also means that Open has become even less competitive and less relevant. Interestingly one 16's team has moved up to the "Hi" division of Open with this change, so why not open this up for the next 2 tournaments such that top 16's teams can move up and the lowest 17's teams can move down? Are we sure that Triangle has pulled out of open or is that just a rumor...? If what volleylion said above is true - that a team did try to petition their way out of open but got denied - then I would think that there would have to be some kind of fine or sanctioning involved for an entire club if they just decided to "drop out." Anyone else have any info on this? Triangle coaches, got any info?
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Post by spiker on Feb 7, 2013 7:46:12 GMT -5
The schedule for this weekend has been released and Triangle is not on it.
If a team/club doesn't want to participate, there's no reason to penalize them. The petition situation was different in that the team in question wanted to play in the Gold division, which the Region denied. They could have also simply withdrawn from the Open tournaments if they wanted to.
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Post by raleighparent on Feb 7, 2013 10:43:16 GMT -5
Again, I'm just a parent, so I'm not privy to the details of any agreements that were made between the region and clubs regarding how Open would function; however, I had "heard" early on that teams that wanted to be in Open would be required to attend all three tournaments since they didn't want to have the Pods have varying sizes at each tournament (and since there would only be 3 tournaments rather than 6). Maybe there was no "sanction/penalty" specified, but perhaps there should have been. From what I've heard Triangle is not intending to try to play in the Gold-East division instead, they have simply decided to not participate in region events for those teams that were in Open.
Would this have some impact on their ability to play in the regional championships and bid tournament? I thought that there was a minimum requirement of playing in 3 regional events to qualify for the championships and bid tournament.
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Post by rtpvolleyparent on Feb 7, 2013 11:48:19 GMT -5
I agree and posted elsewhere that the Open division should have been more restrictive and should have just included 16-18s teams for parity. The current set up created a situation where one pod was almost completely made up of teams from the same club which totally defeats the purpose. This was in part due to the fact that the top western teams chose to play in Gold instead of Open.
I do believe the initial set up for Open required teams to agree to participate in all the tournaments but of course I can't find that in writing now. Regardless it is nice to have the four team pools for the upper division this weekend and hopefully this will lead to more input from the clubs next year to come up with a solution.
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Post by raleighparent on Feb 7, 2013 13:25:38 GMT -5
When you mentioned that you couldn't find anything in writing it reminded me where I had "heard" this information - it was actually from a document on the region web page. Here's the link to the document that explains how Open will work: carolinaregionvb.org/admin/modules/page_editor/uploads/2013JuniorGirlsTournamentStructure.pdfNote that the explicitly state in the document that: If a team is accepted into the OPEN Division, they must commit to play in every CR OPEN tournament offered (3 tournaments). and... After each tournament, the top two finishing teams will move to the next higher POD (except for POD 1) and the bottom two teams will move to the next lowest POD (except for lowest POD). Based on this I would have not expected the strict division between the Hi and Lo brackets and that clubs could be sanctioned if they dropped out of tournaments. I just hope that this works better in the 2013/2014 season.
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Post by volleynerd on Feb 9, 2013 22:43:10 GMT -5
I had not checked out this weekend's tournament format yet, but that is fantastic that the Region took the feedback from their survey and listened to what the majority wanted to do and made it happen. They didn't have to do that, but I'm sure they wanted to do the best they could to serve the majority preference of the participating Open teams. Actually, raleighparent, to clarify...the upward & downward movement was only to be from pod to pod - not from level to level. So only the two or so pods of the Hi Open division (17/18s) would have traded back and forth, and then only the two or so pods of the Lo Open division (15/16s) would have traded. It was never intended for teams to move between the divisions/age-groups. The original plan was set up to keep the 15s/16s separate from the 17s/18s
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Post by spiker on Feb 10, 2013 21:01:26 GMT -5
Actually, raleighparent, to clarify...the upward & downward movement was only to be from pod to pod - not from level to level. So only the two or so pods of the Hi Open division (17/18s) would have traded back and forth, and then only the two or so pods of the Lo Open division (15/16s) would have traded. It was never intended for teams to move between the divisions/age-groups. The original plan was set up to keep the 15s/16s separate from the 17s/18s I thought the pdf file linked above was pretty clear that there was to be free movement between pods regardless of age - "Teams will not be limited to their age group, so 18’s and 17’s (or lower) teams may be combined into a grouping of 8 based on competitive levels." Maybe the Region changed the ground rules later? I believe the one 16's team that moved up today to the 17's/18's division to help balance the pods finished in 1st place in their 1st 4-team pool, not sure how they ended up.
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Post by rtpvolleyparent on Feb 11, 2013 13:31:30 GMT -5
The 16s team that moved up won their pool and then won the playoff in three. They lost in the finals to a team they defeated in pool play.
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Post by volleynerd on Feb 12, 2013 20:24:41 GMT -5
spiker: maybe I am just crazy then because I am sure that was entirely the original intention of the league - to keep the groups separate....
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