Mixing Up Teams

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iarehavethestupid
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Mixing Up Teams

Post by iarehavethestupid »

So, my school is hosting a "fun" tournament(No online standings, no awards, etc, just something to transition teams into the season), and being a fun tournament, we have two options. We can play A,B,C etc teams in terms of strength, or we can mix it up, with one seasoned player per team to serve as a leader for the new players. I am inclined to say make teams by strength, since a seasoned player on a team might ended up with a monstrous PPG depending on the pool and discourage newer players. At the same time though, when we did this last year, it was a bit of a mess, with the experienced players having to deal with us little 7th graders(Although playing on the D team was fun). Other schools will most likely order by strength, so I don't want one team to get smashed if go random.

Edit: We have resolved this issue, so this thread is kinda pointless now.
Last edited by iarehavethestupid on Fri Oct 26, 2018 1:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Ethan Xu
Liberty Middle School 2017-2019
James Clemens High School 2020-2023
2019 ASCA MS State Champion
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Jangar
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Re: Mixing Up Teams

Post by Jangar »

There are definitely benefits and hindrances to both formats, but I'd say keeping teams together is better for the team as a whole.

Primarily, since this is near the beginning of the season, keeping teams together similarly to how they will be at actual tournaments will help with team cohesion. A team players who are rusty in terms of playing together could probably use the experience as a warm up, but more importantly it's a good opportunity for younger players to have a preview of what their teams will be like in the upcoming year. If they were to be placed on a team with a much more experienced player for the first tournament of the year, they may come to expect to perform that well in later tournaments, even without the more experienced player on their team. Then, they may become frustrated or disappointed when they realize that they can't do nearly as well with their own properly-apportioned team, which may even cause tensions between team members.

Also, if the more experienced player is dominating the PPG for the team in a given game, the younger players may inadvertently zone out, believing that the more experienced player will get any of the questions which they might have had a chance of getting. While this may be true, by not paying attention to questions, the younger students are missing out on very valuable tournament play experience that could help them grow.
Angus Maske
Paul Laurence Dunbar HS '19
Stanford '23
bkmcavoybickford
Wakka
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Joined: Tue May 15, 2018 6:40 am

Re: Mixing Up Teams

Post by bkmcavoybickford »

The middle school I did quiz bowl at (Smith, in NC) played with unstacked teams for at least 1 tournament of the year, and sometimes more. I thought it worked alright, but then I don't really have a lot to compare it with. Another way the coach at Smith divided teams in tournaments was to make an A team, but not bother to stack teams B-D. I think we did this at Regionals, but it might have been a pre-regionals Jamboree. That let the A team play together, but avoided having to try and rank teams B-D.
Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford.
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