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Post by bealzabubba on Jan 9, 2020 12:20:47 GMT -5
The draw for the second bid tournament is up: results.tm2sign.com/event/671/event_divisionsThe Open divisions look look a bit sad from a competition perspective. 14O, 16O, 17O, and 180 all have 1 bid, and 6 teams (note: flow down goes to 2nd, per the bid manual, which impacts 16s heavily - three teams have open bids already). 15O is a bit better, with 2 bids and 12 teams (flow down to 5, but only one team with a bid already, so that likely won't be a factor). All the action in is the USA divisions. Hopefully one or more of our NorCal brethren (sistren?) can report back on play. ETA ("Edited to Add"): Division Teams Bids
13 ND 6 N/A
14 Boys USA 15 3
16 Boys USA 29 4
17 Boys USA 15 3
18 Boys USA 28 4
14 Boys Open 6 1
15 Boys Open 12 2
16 Boys Open 6 1
17 Boys Open 6 1
18 Boys Open 6 1
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Post by theballneverlies on Jan 9, 2020 12:59:23 GMT -5
As a NorCal parent, I am bewildered by NCVA's approach to Far Westerns. In my opinion, we do not have enough participation to warrant having both an Open and a USA division. NCVA should either ditch the USA division, ensure that Far Westerns is consistently on a different weekend than JBI, and encourage teams from other regions (esp SoCal) to come and compete in Open and Club (adding USA back in if/when the tournament has sufficient participation), or just bite the bullet and stop offering an Open division. The competitive NorCal teams already travel to SoCal and Chicago, and I suspect would rather add a third travel tournament in order to play competitive teams from other regions rather than playing each other in a cozy Far Westerns (we see each other plenty during Power League).
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Post by wilbur on Jan 9, 2020 14:21:12 GMT -5
if a NorCal team wants to earn a USA bid, they have to travel then? I figure most teams that are interested in a USA bid don't want to travel to get it so it appears that this is the best way to do it and demand is creating this breakout. People that are upset are the open division teams but I think the USA teams have to be happy with this since the best teams have done a good job of staying in open and out of the way of the true USA type teams.
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Post by bealzabubba on Jan 9, 2020 15:29:57 GMT -5
I wasn't bemoaning or complaining about the open fields, really, just noting they were tiny.
We almost went, but taking a look at previous years, the open divisions simply didn't look attractive either from a "fun" or a bid perspective. These fields confirm that evaluation.
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Post by wilbur on Jan 9, 2020 15:59:55 GMT -5
I wasn't bemoaning or complaining about the open fields, really, just noting they were tiny. We almost went, but taking a look at previous years, the open divisions simply didn't look attractive either from a "fun" or a bid perspective. These fields confirm that evaluation. appreciate your post and comments and facts. I was responding to other poster who suggested NCVA ditch the USA divisions and giving the other point of view about supporting USA bids which seem to be attractive to a lot of teams |
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Post by bealzabubba on Jan 9, 2020 16:33:08 GMT -5
I wasn't bemoaning or complaining about the open fields, really, just noting they were tiny. We almost went, but taking a look at previous years, the open divisions simply didn't look attractive either from a "fun" or a bid perspective. These fields confirm that evaluation. appreciate your post and comments and facts. I was responding to other poster who suggested NCVA ditch the USA divisions and giving the other point of view about supporting USA bids which seem to be attractive to a lot of teams Honestly, I think NCVA should ditch Open, and keep USA. If you have aspirations of being an open class team, come to JBI or Chicago. The big three already do - the "other" NCVA teams should have a good idea where they're at based upon Power League, and can adjust as appropriate. My reservation with that, however, is that may encourage open class teams to claim USA bids that really should go to the next tier down. Again, from my personal perspective, if you're middle tier in open (good enough to win some, but not a bid), you shouldn't be in USA, as the system is currently. If you're open class, it should be "open or bust." Others may take issue with my perspective (some people I see a couple times a week do). |
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Post by theballneverlies on Jan 9, 2020 16:36:15 GMT -5
wilbur - As I said in my previous post, NCVA should either ditch USA or ditch Open. You make a good case for the latter, and certainly having a USA Division is good for the growth of the sport (which we all support!). In any event, that is certainly the direction that NCVA seems to be heading (an attractive tournament for USA bids, but not appealing for Open teams).
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Post by wilbur on Jan 9, 2020 17:33:50 GMT -5
if they ditch open do you really think B2B and MVVC teams are going to sit out one of the biggest tourneys in their back yard? Need the open division for them to play in, as small as it is ending up being, I don't see a viable alternative.
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Post by theballneverlies on Jan 9, 2020 18:33:41 GMT -5
If NCVA offers an Open division, the NorCal teams will play in it - provided there isn't an alternative. It's when Far Westerns and JBI are the same weekend that you might see B2B, MVVC, or PacRim opting to travel south to play against a larger field of Open teams. Really, my whole point is that I would like to see Far Westerns become a larger tournament that would attract non-NorCal teams. It's fun for the boys to compete against players from other parts of the country. At this point in time, NCVA may be attracting USA competition at the expense of Open, which as stated previously is probably a good thing from the perspective of teams that are looking to be competitive, but aren't quite able to be competitive in the Open division, but isn't a great experience for the Open teams.
I would add, that there seems to be a similar dynamic going on in SCVA as well. In 17 Open there were only 6 bids this time, as opposed to 9 in previous years because teams opted to play in USA instead.
It will be interesting to watch the Club+USA+Open dynamic over the next few years. I imagine (like on the girls side) that you will have Open-caliber teams that opt to play USA so they can increase their chances of medalling, and you'll have teams that go the "Open or Bust" route no matter what.
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Post by bealzabubba on Jan 9, 2020 19:14:22 GMT -5
It will be interesting to watch the Club+USA+Open dynamic over the next few years. I imagine (like on the girls side) that you will have Open-caliber teams that opt to play USA so they can increase their chances of medalling, and you'll have teams that go the "Open or Bust" route no matter what. I had a longer response earlier, that I deleted, since I hoped this would be about the tourney play, not tourneys generally. But since fandad's thread's got the actual tourney covered now: I think that you, wilbur, and I all agree we want the same end result: better tourneys, encouraging more out of area teams to come, and having a higher overall level of play in Open. JBI did that this year, IMO. I keep using the same word to describe it - brutal - but it fits. It also "hurt" SoCal teams (particularly in 16s) from a bid perspective. (So what?) We considered FW, and chose not to go. It didn't have value, being a short tourney and low #'s of bids, even for a team (like ours) that's really not going to be open at Nationals. This year, there was simply no appeal. Both are chicken/egg situations - how do you attract more teams, to get more bids, without having more bids to attract more teams? Plus, because of the schedule (this year, anyway), we've now seen the best the NCVA has (and in 16s: they're very, very good), so Chicago really looked like a more intriguing experience (and it wasn't that much more). I struggle conceptually with USA - I'd prefer an intermediate division that encourages open quality teams to play open, and I'm not sure that medal / bid hunting in USA does that, although I appreciate I'm fairly hard line on this issue (at this time, anyway. I reserve the right to change my mind if things play out well as I observe USA closely over the next couple of years.) I'm just not sure our side of the sport is big enough for an "invitational" level for open class teams that can't quite get a bid. |
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Post by flamingpheonix1 on Jan 9, 2020 20:44:25 GMT -5
Just an addition I would think far westerns might attract more teams if they were to move it before jbi, that way no team has a bid and they will come up to get one early
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Post by fandad on Jan 9, 2020 22:32:28 GMT -5
Just an addition I would think far westerns might attract more teams if they were to move it before jbi, that way no team has a bid and they will come up to get one early As recently as 2017 FW did precede JBI, with at least a couple weeks in between. But while it did attract a few more teams from Southern CA, it wasn't that many more. I recall Wave and Rockstar being there in full force, anyway. Other than that, there were a couple Canadian teams and one or two teams from regions outside of California. So while it was a little more diverse, it wasn't much bigger than this year. The one positive from that year: it was the year before they added the USA divisions, so all the teams competed in one division in each age group. So it was a little bit of a help building a resume to be considered for an at-large bid if a team didn't earn one outright. |
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Post by vbnorcal on Jan 10, 2020 11:45:40 GMT -5
The issue with "Open or Bust" is that it puts teams that slightly miss out on Open in a tough spot, falling all the way to club. I think the better solution (that would have to start at the USAV level) would be to appropriate USA bids through Power Leagues as well as qualifiers, similar to the American Division on the girls side. You could still have a USA division at Bid tournaments to accommodate the non-Open level teams and award a bid, but more "semi-competitive" Open teams would make the leap to play Open at qualifiers knowing they had the Power League USA bids to fall back on.
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Post by teamjess on Jan 10, 2020 12:07:20 GMT -5
Just an addition I would think far westerns might attract more teams if they were to move it before jbi, that way no team has a bid and they will come up to get one early As recently as 2017 FW did precede JBI, with at least a couple weeks in between. But while it did attract a few more teams from Southern CA, it wasn't that many more. I recall Wave and Rockstar being there in full force, anyway. Other than that, there were a couple Canadian teams and one or two teams from regions outside of California. So while it was a little more diverse, it wasn't much bigger than this year. The one positive from that year: it was the year before they added the USA divisions, so all the teams competed in one division in each age group. So it was a little bit of a help building a resume to be considered for an at-large bid if a team didn't earn one outright. That year JBI was after both FW and Chicago. There were so many teams competing at JBI that already had a bid. It seemed like FW had quite a few more teams but maybe that was just because there was no USA division yet. |
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Post by bealzabubba on Jan 10, 2020 12:54:37 GMT -5
The issue with "Open or Bust" is that it puts teams that slightly miss out on Open in a tough spot, falling all the way to club. I think the better solution (that would have to start at the USAV level) would be to appropriate USA bids through Power Leagues as well as qualifiers, similar to the American Division on the girls side. You could still have a USA division at Bid tournaments to accommodate the non-Open level teams and award a bid, but more "semi-competitive" Open teams would make the leap to play Open at qualifiers knowing they had the Power League USA bids to fall back on. I like that idea. Expanding USA from 36 to 48 would accomplish that goal, if USAV reserved them as "earnable" at-larges. Last year, 16 USA was 32, but 16 Club had 74 teams. Moving 12 teams out of Club would have been perfect for those fields. Example: There are at least 8 are "open quality" teams in SCVA 16s without bids (Div 1A/1B teams). I think 3 will earn a bid travelling to Chi/FL, but all played Open at HC/JBI - none of those teams should be playing USA to my mind. If you assume 2 get open at large (possible), that puts the other 3 in Club, currently, and I'd argue that those 3 teams are better than (at the least highly competitive with) the 7 USA bid winners we saw at JBI. I'm sure other regions will have the same issue. |
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