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Illinois 06-07

Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 1:45 am
by Stained Diviner
Here it is--the much anticipated first post of a thousand.

Carlo has redesigned the IHSSBCA website. You might have to Refresh or CTRL F5 the first time you try it. NO MORE FRAMES!

With an assist from Nick, the New Trier Question Index now includes questions from the 2005 Scobol Solo.

Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 7:17 pm
by Siverus Snape
91 views; 0 replies. That ends now.

Edit: to reflect wording SIVster wanted ~ TS

Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 7:26 pm
by sabine01
SiVster: Editing has been disabled per Matt's announcement here. I've taken care of the wording and sent the double-post off.

Tricia

Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 11:08 pm
by Trevkeeper
So, any new devlopments on the horizon in the realm of Illinois quizbowl?

Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 12:13 am
by Siverus Snape
Thank you, sabine01.

Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 1:26 pm
by David Riley
A list of Illinois tournaments is at

http://www.ihssbca.org


Dates in caps are confirmed dates; lower case are tentative.

Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 12:59 am
by Trevkeeper
According to posts in the old thread, it appears the consensus is: Maine East, Maine South, Bloomingtown, Carbondale, New Trier, Auburn, Oak Park-River Forest and Wheaton North will all be good (Did I forget any teams? I'm simply taking these from other posts).

Teams that are typically good but are bringing in mostly fresh faces: Fremd, Loyola, Fenwick

Good teams that haven't been mentioned much: Deerfield...any others?

Also is the tournament listed for January 20th as "Maine South VJV" the PACE mirror? I thought Mr. Egan mentioned he was hosting one.

Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:40 am
by Tegan
Trevkeeper wrote:
Also is the tournament listed for January 20th as "Maine South VJV" the PACE mirror? I thought Mr. Egan mentioned he was hosting one.
That's still in the negotiating phase. It would be nice, because then Maine South would be eligible to attend BloodBath IV at Fenwick.

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 9:49 pm
by potato0328
Since I'm no longer a participant, I'm no longer in a position where I have to back up what I say with results. That being said, I feel like this is a mostly unbiased ranking.

1. Bloomington
I have a feeling they weren't satisfied with their performance at state last year, which, combined with their returning talent, should push them to the next level. Plus, Kristina pretty much destroyed me at Team Illinois tryouts, so I'll feel validated if she can win a title with her team this year. Plus, their uniforms are purple. That's just cool.

2. New Trier
Pretty similar to Bloomington... both teams are returning Team Illinois members, and both teams are absolutely committed to constantly improving.

3. Wheaton North
I think this will be an interesting year for Greg. He'll either start living up to big brother Paul and carry his team to a state title, or he'll continue to be just a really, really good math specialist (but don't get me wrong, that was still good enough for 4th in state last year).

4. Maine East/Maine South
I didn't get to play either of these teams last year at full strength, so I don't feel qualified to say who's better... but they'll both be real good.

5. Auburn
Auburn is like the Duke of Illinois scholastic bowl, except better. You don't need to be Miss Cleo to put them in your top 5 every year.

But Don't Count Out...

OP-RF - LOTS of talent, but can you win a state title while playing in less than 40 matches a year? I guess we'll find out.

Deerfield - See OP-RF.

Loyola, Stevenson, Fenwick - Hardly rebuilding with good frosh-soph players coming in.

Fremd - All the starters are gone, and there's no Alex Beata to build on this year. However, I'm hoping a new commitment to winning should help them make some noise.

Carbondale - They DID get to the state final last year.

Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2006 11:30 am
by Tegan
potato0328 wrote:Since I'm no longer a participant, I'm no longer in a position where I have to back up what I say with results. That being said, I feel like this is a mostly unbiased ranking.


4. Maine East/Maine South
I didn't get to play either of these teams last year at full strength, so I don't feel qualified to say who's better... but they'll both be real good.
Last year, Maine South went 0-2 against East, and they were not close matches .... as a matter of fact East and Fremd were the only teams South lost to last year without at least one "close" match at some point. East's lineup returns virtually intact, and, without offense to New Trier, I think had Maine East not lost their coach at the end of January for health reasons, East would have been in Peoria. Up to that time, they were really firing on all pistons .... I think their only losses were to Auburn, Fremd, and maybe one other really good team in there. Next year, they will have a new coach, but not one that lacks experience, so there will almost certainly be no interuption to the flow of the team's success.

On the other hand, South is only replacing one starter, and should be a lot better than last year .......

Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 3:22 pm
by Siverus Snape
Posted by wereplayingbasketball in DC/Metro Area 2006-07 topic:

"Why do we have so few posts in this thread? We seriously need to step it up in the nebulous prognostication department. To help stimulate this, i propose a quizbowl fantasy league."

Ditto.

Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 6:44 pm
by Maxwell Sniffingwell
That might be tricky. If we count raw number of tossups, then clear 1st-round picks would be the teams who play larger schedules. But maybe a league where you have to take, say, 2 generalists, a SS, Sci, and Lit guy, and one other of your choice for six total.

Or hmm... pick by teams?

And would we need a salary cap? (Not too many from the Park Ridge-Winnetka area, then...)

Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 6:47 pm
by Maxwell Sniffingwell
cornfused wrote:... a SS, Sci, and Lit guy...
Or "girl," of course, with all respect to Ms. Warren, Ms. Svetlichnaya, and many others...

Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 7:32 pm
by Siverus Snape
These are all very interesting and thought-provoking suggestions. However, I cannot come up with the unequivocal solutions until I commune with the fantasy league gods. Unfortunately, this may take anywhere from 2-6 weeks due to the massive overload of traffic at the Gods of Leagues of Fantasy (GOLF) offices.

Some preliminary musings: tossups scored per twenty questions and percentage correct with a floor for correct tossups determined by the commissioner's office. This will ensure that aggressive players who make a few mistakes will receive the fantasy value that they truly deserve, and people who guess wildly will be punished.

As an added twist: the roster must be set on the Friday preceding each tournament and may not be changed at any time until after the tournament. To account for this, two categories of points will be kept: morning/pool tossups per 20 questions and afternoon/playoff tossups per 20 questions. Fantasy league members will have to guess which teams will make the afternoon round and choose the players accordingly.

Safety note: If you could not tell, this is a 100% joke and I am not insane.

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2006 1:15 am
by Alejandro
cornfused wrote: a SS, Sci, and Lit guy,
Don't forget Math! I'd argue that a math specialist consistently gets more questions right in his/her subject area than any other specialist. I've rarely seen an obscure math question, especially when compared to the obscure lit and science questions I've seen.
A Fantasy League would be interesting, although I'd think it would be hard to implement a salary cap, since you can't determine how good a new player will be until they play a few games (unless you have some sort of test in mind).

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2006 12:14 pm
by Maxwell Sniffingwell
NC - I'm a math guy at heart, so I know the feeling. It's just that Illinois is one of the most math-heavy states, and I'd like to a) patent and eventually b) sell this thing, no?

Just kidding. Hey... for simplicity points: Every Friday night before a tournament, we draft the players in that tournament. Two players each, highest total # of TUs wins. It would make sense to allow self-drafting, too...

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2006 12:16 pm
by Maxwell Sniffingwell
SIVster716 wrote:Safety note: If you could not tell, this is a 100% joke and I am not insane.
I'd like to argue that A doesn't necessarily imply B.

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2006 1:33 pm
by Irreligion in Bangladesh
Why is the idea of a fantasy league so out there? It's feasible to do, and could even help grow Illinois quizbowl.

Here's an idea. We divide the schools into four regions; Northern, Chicago, Central, and Southern. Northern and Chicago are combined and Central and Southern are combined to form divisions. Each fantasy team starts four players from each division (restriction: must have a 3-1 or 2-2 distribution between regions in the divisions, so you can't start four Bloomington-ites in the Central/Southern division), plus two more players from any region, (here's where that last Bloomington-ite would go) for a total of 10 starting players.

A possible addition to the rules: Of the ten, you must start one Math, one Science, one Literature, and one Social Studies player - each player will be given a "position" and multiple positions are possible (Think how Albert Pujols was MLB's greatest 3B for a year when he had qualified for it by playing about 10 games the previous year). There are no restrictions on what region or division each subject must come from.

There is a "bench" of three players so that if you play, for instance, Carlo and Nick from New Trier, you're not screwed when their Varsity tournament comes around.

There is a draft before the season starts, where the pool of possible players is determined. Each fantasy team drafts 13 players in a snake draft format without a salary cap. It is not automatically assumed that you own yourself; you must draft yourself if you want to play yourself: besides, it'd give a disadvantage to us alumni who want in on this!

The "free agent" pool would consist of all non-drafted players. All players are considered to be on waivers. Claims must be made prior to Thursday night/Friday morning. The worst team gets first dibs on a claim if multiple claims are made on the same player. Waivers are executed Friday at some point for Saturday's tournaments.

An idea that hasn't yet been brought up is conference play. These games should be included as well, methinks.

There is a scoring system with 7 stats, 4 cumulative and 3 averaged. Wins, Losses, TU, and Blurt Faults are cumulative, and TU/20, TU% (tossups over total buzzes, both interrupt and post-question), and % of Team's tossups are averaged. Tossups heard, total buzzes, and teammates' tossups would be kept as a stat to simplify the task of keeping up the averages, but they would not count for fantasy scoring. We would need cooperation from all coaches that have players in the league, but we've been striving to acheive that anyway. Why not put some pressure on them with this?

This could be either a rotisserie or a head-to-head fantasy league. It works both ways.

What we'll need is a list of the players known to be on varsity teams next year. I've come up with a preliminary list of teams that would definitely need to be represented in the draft.

Auburn, WN, Loyola, New Trier, Fremd, Stevenson, Deerfield, Maines South and East, IMSA, Carbondale, Decatur MacArthur, Bloomington, Morton, Streator, Moline, Fenwick, St. Ignatius, Marist, Sterling, Boylan, Winnebago, Latin, Byron, Peoria Heights, IVC, Eureka, Decatur Lutheran.

If this gets going, we'll obviously need to add teams to that list and get rosters for the teams. We'll also have to decide whether or not to allow B-team stats.

Given that there are an average of 4 'draftable' players per team in most cases, and the final count of schools will be around 30 or more, 12 fantasy teams might be stretching the limit. 10 would almost definitely be acceptable.

I'd say this sounds like a lot of fun, a chance to teach Illinois schools how to really keep stats to help out the Sectional Seeding meetings, and generally the nerdiest idea ever conceived by man. Who would be interested?

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2006 2:11 pm
by leapfrog314
Oh, Brad.

However, if enough people are interested, and no demi-god of scobol shoots down the idea for some other reason, I've offered to get a website and infrastructure running. I'm not worried about being insane. (Keep in mind that I know nothing about sports, so you'd have to keep a close eye on me while I design it.)

The question is, if it was set up, would you use it? Would someone else use it? And would you only use it in the dead of night, hastily changing the screen if anyone walked by?

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2006 3:21 pm
by Siverus Snape
I have "created" a monster. Pretty soon I'll meet it in the Alps and it will make me create a mate for it. Heck, we'll probably end up chasing each other to the freakin' North Pole or something.

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2006 3:31 pm
by harpersferry
Siva, what have you done?

Wouldn't this make Illinois MORE of a quiz bowl anomoly and prove to the rest of the country what they already believe?

Does anyone really think that Illinois needs help with pronostication? Our thread last year was 26 pages.

Can we concentrate on REAL quiz bowl? With REAL teams? It just seems that fantasy sports is made for people who aren't able to do the real thing. Since most people on this board already do, what's the point?

I don't want to sound like a party-pooper, but shouldn't the efforts of the people who care about quiz bowl in this state be directed towards improving the game? We already have a list of needed improvements a mile long, I think we should focus on those instead.

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2006 3:52 pm
by Trevkeeper
I must admit, if such a game were created I'd play it.

All the same, I'm highly amused.

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2006 4:51 pm
by Siverus Snape
Blame Brad, not me.

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2006 9:50 pm
by Sympathy300021
That would be the most awesome thing ever. I'd play. I'd even offer space on my existing site if need be.

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2006 9:51 pm
by Tegan
I don't even know how to respond to this .......FANTASY SCHOLASTIC BOWL?

But just as a "What if?" ...... if I were to find out ummm (just hypothetically) that one of my players has (surreal hypothetical) Tyler Kerr on his/her team that week ..... and we play Mr. Kerr's team .... and said player rolls over (which many people would anyway because, let's face it, Tyler could do that to you), AND THEN said player is found braggin how great his team did over the weekend because Tyler Kerr racked up 47 gazillion toss-ups......

.....I know as a coach I would bring in the noise, da funk, and rain down fire, Chipotle hot sauce, and just about any other form of pain that I could conjur.

I'm not speaking for anyone else here ...... I'm just saying ......

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2006 10:43 pm
by Siverus Snape
Come on, Mr. Egan. Who would actually throw a real-life match for the purpose of a fantasy league game? I mean, Illinois Scholastic Bowl isn't exactly Serie A or anything....

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2006 11:55 pm
by dtaylor4
pasedpawn wrote:I don't want to sound like a party-pooper, but shouldn't the efforts of the people who care about quiz bowl in this state be directed towards improving the game? We already have a list of needed improvements a mile long, I think we should focus on those instead.
Dude, calm down. I highly doubt that coaches would participate in this, assuming it was created. Yes Illinois qb does need improvements. Please note that there are people out there who have been pushing for these improvements for a LONG time, since I belive the mid-90s. The recently-approved recommendations will probably help a lot, but even then there is still much to do. Some of the people in this part of the state are as stubborn when it comes to qb as those who support NAC questions. The only way this part of the state is going to change is if we actually start HOSTING TOURNAMENTS (besides those at the U of I). I took a quick peek at the schedule for next year. The only tournaments in this part of the state (other than conference and state series) are the Kickoffs, Turnabouts, Earlybird, and Solo. THAT'S IT.

Posted: Sun Jul 16, 2006 12:19 am
by Trevkeeper
Before I forget: Naperville Central was underrated last year, and I don't know who they lost from that team.

Posted: Sun Jul 16, 2006 12:53 am
by Tegan
Trevkeeper wrote:Before I forget: Naperville Central was underrated last year, and I don't know who they lost from that team.
I agree .... both of the Napervilles have started showing very well at the local tournaments ...... We've played them both close last year. I hope that NC and NN are both regular additions in future seasons to the tournament circuit.

Posted: Sun Jul 16, 2006 8:02 pm
by Maxwell Sniffingwell
Gotta say... this proves that Illinois is indeed the KING of all states in SchoBowl overanalysis.

Coach Egan - anyone who cares enough to play imaginary quizbowl is probably going to draft themselves. And if not... that's their problem.

However, as the guy who originally took Siva's monster and pulled the switch that brought it to life... it's time we kill it.

Er... speaking of horror movie allusions, does that make me Igor?

Posted: Sun Jul 16, 2006 8:09 pm
by Maxwell Sniffingwell
And one last post before I head to Paris for two weeks...

Did you guys notice what happened after the DC Metro-Area post about fantasy leagues? Nothing. They ignored it. As a joke. Which it was.

That being said, I believe that means Brad and I deserve to die. Sad...

Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 1:37 am
by leapfrog314
Okay, so fantasy quiz bowl isn't the best idea.

But do we want some sort of cumulative individual and team scoring database for Illinois? I mean, something that keeps track of tossups gotten, tossups heard, etc. for each person and team. We could contact each TD and ask them if they would keep the stats and send them to the database admin.

Only tournaments that kept and submitted individual stats would be included, of course. Likewise, only teams and players who went to one or more of those tournaments would be in the database. This would still be a lot better than nothing, and could facilitate some All-Sectional decisions. (Tossups heard would be crucial to keep track of, because this obviously wouldn't cover all teams equally, or even all games of any single team.) Eh?

Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 7:19 am
by First Chairman
That assumes that TD's want to buy in to having such a database in the first place. Many TD's think that compiling individual stats is a big hassle.

You also have to note that not every tournament will run the same format (Illinois vs. NAQT vs. whatever). If we are restricting to Illinois format, I'm more surprised nothing like this had ever been attempted, seeing as there are records for the state tournament.

Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 8:40 am
by David Riley
Several coaches wanted to start something similar in Illinois a little while ago, but it never quite took off....I THINK because some coaches did not want the online world to know that they were ranked 200th out of 200 teams.

Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 9:08 am
by First Chairman
That makes some sense. Of course, I guess that's why you have the coaches polls. We can see the makings of a BCS-type ranking system now... :wink:

Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 12:11 pm
by Stained Diviner
It takes a shocking amount of effort to find out who the top four teams were at each tournament and how many teams there were. IHSSBCA eventually got good team data last year by getting copies of the team records with each match listed from the Seeding Meetings. However, that data is collected exactly once each year. We also get good data on individuals nominated for All-Sectional and Team Illinois, but there are a lot of good students who get nominated for neither and that data also only gets submitted once per year. Additionally, there is no mention on those forms stating that the data can be published.

There are some tournaments that would happily give you all the data you want. They are in the minority. For conferences, despite a little effort, we have never been able to find out half of the conference champions, much less individual statistical breakdowns.

Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 5:42 pm
by Tegan
ReinsteinD wrote:IHSSBCA eventually got good team data last year by getting copies of the team records with each match listed from the Seeding Meetings.
While I collected this data to get a feel for the state of Scholastic Bowl in Illinois, there were two big issues with using this data to "rank" teams.

1. It was incomplete. Three subsectionals never returned anything.

2. Because there is such a vast difference in the quality of play, I interpreted the data as being useless in determining the best overall team.

There exists vast disagreement in terms of what constitutes good teams. Some coaches use only "the one" criterion (such as winning percentage or overall wins). IMO, that's wrong! 8-2 sounds good, but if you only have one win against a team with a winning record, that's not as good as a team that is 30-18, where a large precentage of the wins were against winning teams, and a irtually all of the losses were to elite teams. I had one coach tell me "that's your tough luck for scheduling difficult teams". The approach is you need to look at a variety of factors when it comes to ranking ..... a strict W/L record, IMO, does not give enough information.

This is part of the reason as to why I have requested a minimum match rule in Illinois for some time. I think the teams that are not willing to put in "the minimum effort" need to look elsewhere. The usual complaint is "that deprives kids of their opportunity". My response is: opportunity for what? ..... to go 1-3 and then get drilled 385-20 in the Regionals? That's no opportunity! That's holding everyone else up so that you can write something on your college transcript while providing the minimum of effort. If four matches is your cup of tea, start an intramural league and don't hold up the rest of the state.

There I go on a rant again .... sorry folks.

Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 8:35 pm
by leapfrog314
It also says something about the state's sectional distributions that the Class AA teams at State last year had played: (pulls out booklet from State)

92, 68, 16 (!), 60, 62, 87, 83, and 90 matches during their seasons, respectively.

But now, Coach Egan, you don't think people have solved this ranking problem before? You just need a recursive algorithm that ranks entities based on the rankings of other entities that defer to them. You'll make billions.

Extracurricular activities

Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 7:33 pm
by TeachMe
It would be interesting to know what each school's enrollment is, how many extracurricular activities are offered, and if the students are restricted in any way in their participation. Do schools limit the number of extracurricular activities in which a single student can participate? I know one of the problems we have in doing tournaments is that our students are involved in many different activities and sports.

Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 10:25 pm
by JohnAndSlation
Maine South has an enrollment of about 2500, with a sophomore class of around 925. I don't know yet what the incoming freshman class looks like.
We have quite a few extracurriculars. If I had to venture a guess, I'd say...150? We are not at all limited in club participation, unless it's individual club requirements.

Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2006 10:46 am
by Irreligion in Bangladesh
Winnebago's enrollment is around 550, and we have the "bare basics"; football, basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball, soccer, wrestling, track, and cross country (anything BUT a bare basic here, of course). A bowling team was started a few years ago due to one family's HUGE interest in bowling (that family's son and daughter are both perenial local all-stars, the son's on a full bowling college scholarship, and the daughter won the individual state championship as a sophomore)

For academics, we have Scobowl, WYSE, Math Team (we do ICTM), and a new robotics team. The music program could also be considered here, but it almost never conflicts with anything (because scobowl does a good job of avoiding the IHSA music dates, the only exception being last year's Solo and Ensemble with Masonic state, not that we went).

In my four years, I've only seen one player be reprimanded for constantly missing practice in order to go to a sport's practice - he was a freshman who wasn't that into quizbowl as it was. The robotics club is the only activity we have that takes players away from quizbowl, probably because two of the main student founders of the club (and, with two exceptions, the only members on robotics who were interested in quizbowl) got turned off to quizbowl when they realized that the main robotic season (that requires 6 hour nights on school nights and 30 hour weekends) conflicts with the Jan/Feb tournament and conference schedule.

Last year's seven player varsity had three bowlers, two robotics members, seven members of symphonic band, five members of WYSE team, and four members of math team.

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 1:31 pm
by Irreligion in Bangladesh
I want to respond to Mr. Riley's post in the latest PACE discussion, but I don't want to threadjack and I really only want the Illinois viewpoint. So, the discussion goes here instead of Misc HSQB.

About B-Teams: Mr. Riley mentioned that it is entrenched into Illinois that the A-Team should be top players and the B-Team should not. Now, while I understand the concept that switching out A and B teams would undermine the tournament, with coaches thinking they're playing a weak team when it is not the case, what is the feeling about balancing the teams a little bit?

For instance, at 'Bago's tournament 2 years ago, we had to reschedule due to the weather and the tournament was played on the same day as Streator Rotary. Of course, this hurt our turnout, and we needed to field a B-team for the first time in a while to finish off the field. While we had several fresh-soph players who were able to play, they needed a fifth for a full team, and preferably someone with experience: none of them had played at the varsity level, and only one of them had a full year's experience. So, as we were preparing for the start of the first match, the A-team learns of this news, and we decide that we should send a player, preferably one who usually sits on the bench, to captain the B-team. The player that did played the entire time (much more than usual), captained (only time he did), and was able to answer tossups that he otherwise would not have been able to. The B-team made the playoffs and placed eighth, and was probably the highlight of the player's career.

Was that player the weakest player we had? No...in fact, he was one of my preferences to fill out the starting 5 during State Series (we had 8 total varsity players that year). Did he decimate the field by playing on the B-Team? Not so much as anyone else would have.

So, with a more balanced team this year than we've usually had, we are looking into fielding a B-team at some tournaments to ensure that everyone gets playing time, and more importantly, experience. We are kind of leery about starting our top 5 on A team and next 5 and B team, because it doesn't give the experience to the 2 weaker players on the A team. What if the teams, instead of being 1 2 3 4 5 and 6 7 8 9 10 (in ranked ability) were something like 1 2 4 5 7 and 3 6 8 9 10? It gives the players who need experience the ability to grow confidence and buzzer speed on the B-team, and it gives lesser players the confidence from playing on the A-team for a tournament, to see how to play at the top level of competition.

In Bago's situation, the A-team would soundly beat a B-team forged like this 95 times out of 100. Would coaches object to such an idea?

[Disclaimer: I am not the coach of the Winnebago QB team, but during our summer analysis of the team, the captain realized this situation and we've been curious.]

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 3:11 pm
by Tegan
styxman wrote: About B-Teams: Mr. Riley mentioned that it is entrenched into Illinois that the A-Team should be top players and the B-Team should not. Now, while I understand the concept that switching out A and B teams would undermine the tournament, with coaches thinking they're playing a weak team when it is not the case, what is the feeling about balancing the teams a little bit?
I hate to disagree with my far older and wiser colleague from the gold coast, but I disagree. In fact there is general disagreement on this matter: Some people strongly believe that the "A" team should be the best players 1-5, and some say the best TEAM (thus your top three players may be Lit specilists, but one goes to the "B" team while you bring up a couple of math science people to create a better team, for example).

My interpretation has always been the best team. Last year, we got questioned on it when I played a math player down to bring up a social studies player, as that had been a weaker subject for us. The TD questioned me, and I claimed that my "A" team was my best TEAM (easily seen by comparing my high scoring "A" team playing tough competition to my lower scoring "B" team vs. weaker competition. I'm not sure that the TD agreed with my interpretation, but nothing more was said.



Because of problems like these, and several others, I was asked to draw up an "ethics" protocol. One of the topics covered is "A & B Teams". My thought is: set the best "Team" as the default, with TD's able to change that , as long as they let you know in the initial mailing.

One of hte boggest problems is that there is so much disagreement, that one TD thinks you are cheating just because you interpret something a little different. I think if we get everyone on the same page for starts, things will run a lot smoother.

This likely will not be generally availble next year. We are going to get some coaches to look at it and give some opinions, and shoot for "general implementation" (not that it will be implemented, per se) in 07-08.

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 3:37 pm
by Stained Diviner
I agree. We don't use a B Team all that often, but when we do I put friends/classmates together and separate specialists, which I think is just common sense. My goal going into any tournament is to have my A Team win it (which actually happens about five percent of the time), so I don't do anything that would seriously jeopardize that. Any player who is obviously in my top five goes on the A Team, but any player who is marginally in my top five gets placed based on a few factors.

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 6:28 pm
by DigitalRosh
Tegan wrote:East's lineup returns virtually intact
Actually, 3 of East's starters have graduated. Only Erin Li and Alex Zhukovitskiy remain.

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 6:38 pm
by Trevkeeper
DigitalRosh wrote:
Tegan wrote:East's lineup returns virtually intact
Actually, 3 of East's starters have graduated. Only Erin Li and Alex Zhukovitskiy remain.
Which means they are still extremely formidable.

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 7:04 pm
by DigitalRosh
Heh, yes. True :smile: .

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 11:03 pm
by David Riley
Of course, an easy way to do this (assuming no unscrupulous coaches, which is a BIG assumption) is to let lesser teams be B teams, and if you want to have two equal teams, use school colors. Let the TD know when you register, and when everyone receives the pools at checkin they would know which is which.

But this is probably wishful thinking.

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 11:22 pm
by Siverus Snape
At Auburn this past season, we definitely went the route of five best players on the varsity A team (which fortunately also turned out to be the best team). However, when we entered tournaments with two teams, I am fairly sure we used Red and Black instead of A and B. This is for purposes of not subconciously affecting the people on the B team by calling them the B team. Not sure whether it made any difference. Anyway, this probably just goes to show that Mr. Riley's wishful thinking will probably remain wishful thinking.

Despite all that, for our frosh-soph teams, we had one guy (probably 4th or 5th best overall) captain the B team the entire year. I'm pretty sure our coach did that because were he playing on the A team, the results would probably be nearly identical to the results if he were not. Presumably, in the eyes of our coach, he simply would not have been able to get in there and beat out the rest of our A team enough to make a contribution or develop as a player. In relatively rare situations like this, where a pretty good player would be cramped on the A team and barely affect the team's success, I'm finding it rather reasonable to put that player on the B team and give them a fighting chance.

Of course, none of this takes into account the possible psychological effects of being placed on the B team when it's pretty apparent you're an A team talent....(I don't really know how that worked out in our situation.)

Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 1:42 am
by Irreligion in Bangladesh
SIVster716 wrote:In relatively rare situations like this, where a pretty good player would be cramped on the A team and barely affect the team's success, I'm finding it rather reasonable to put that player on the B team and give them a fighting chance.
This isn't that rare, as we're looking at it so far at Bago this coming year. We're hoping to explain it in a good way, because the players we'll be doing this to don't have a lot of experience play QB.

Of course, we'll also be rotating the B-teamer between 2-3, maybe 4 different people, so that will get rid of most of the possible hit to the confidence level of the player.

The school color idea is a good one as well, I'll talk to our coach about it.