Balancing Teams

[High Dependency Unit]

What are the arguments for and against balancing the strength of teams? Obviously not balancing the strength of teams would give you a much better A team, but what about arguments for balancing teams?

[Masked Canadian History Bandit]

If you balance teams, you have a higher chance of qualifying more than one team for nationals. Of course this also reduces the chance of qualifying a single team for nationals, but if that's the case, you probably shouldn't be splitting your best players to try and qualify more teams.

[Dirty Water]

It really depends on the teams' goals and structures. Obviously, if you want to win a tournament, a "stacked" team would do much better than splitting up the best players. But if you have a single, confident, dominant player(hi Michael), and if you're aiming to qualify many teams for Nationals, then it may be beneficial to split the best people up. This would be easy to do in such qualification standards as History Bowl, where getting a winning record guarantees a Nationals spot.

[High Dependency Unit]

It really depends on the teams' goals and structures. Obviously, if you want to win a tournament, a "stacked" team would do much better than splitting up the best players. But if you have a single, confident, dominant player(hi Michael), and if you're aiming to qualify many teams for Nationals, then it may be beneficial to split the best people up. This would be easy to do in such qualification standards as History Bowl, where getting a winning record guarantees a Nationals spot.

(Hi David) Are there any benefits besides qualifying more teams for nationals?

[Stained Diviner]

Depending on the team, there can be social benefits, because it can mean that students are playing with their friends. It also gives the A Team a chance to mentor the B Team when they spend the day as teammates. It also allows the #2 or #3 player on the team a chance to be the #1 for a day.

I think the default position for teams should be making the A Team as strong as possible and giving the A Team experience working together. That being said, it's a long season sometimes, and as long as you tell the TD, a little variety can be a good thing for some teams.

[Santa Claus]

Our team situation is fairly different from most, since occasionally we send seven teams of four to a tournament, but the team balance has always been split into two groups:

One group consists of the teams which are aiming for nationals, and has the best players for a given subject on A team, the next best on B team, and so on.

The second group is for those whose goal is to have fun, and in those teams balancing is practically nonexistent, with people playing with their friends or three art players going on a single team.

I think it's pretty important to ensure that no team is crippled by the loss of a player to the point they can't win anymore. But if one of your teams can survive having the second best history player, its good to help a lower team out, especially if they have a reasonable chance for nationals.