Illinois 06-07

[harpersferry]

Auburn Frosh-Soph Results

1. Rockford Auburn
2. Moline
3. Loyola A
4. Rockord Boylan B
5. Maine South A
6. Sterling
7/8. Boylan A, Byron

There was an all-tournament team named for the morning, but I don't have those names handy.

This is the first year we have tried to write exclusively pyrimids for our tournment (except math comp). We ran a bit late probably because of the longer TUs, with 4 morning rounds of 22TU/20B, plus a team worksheet before half time (another new element). We hope to contribute to a high standard of question quality at all levels of play, including F/S, but this is new for us. Any comments are helpful.

[Trevkeeper]

The questions were interesting. I don't think I've ever heard that many questions about biological classifcations.

[MJG]

WWSouth was 5th, Sterling 6th, not sure about the other two. And as for the questions: I was NOT a fan of the superwhatevertheheck bonuses, but I suppose that's just personal bias against nonacademic topics. And the whole day seemed extremely math and science heavy. Not bad questions overall though, I think we played as well as we have all year on them.

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

Did Kaneland run a 16 team playoff bracket? I seem to remember that they did last year. (They didn't advance the losers of that first round last year.)

[MJG]

yep...... Boylan and Moline were two of the teams that lost that first round.

[rjaguar3]

Well I guess professional bowlers now join pasta shapes and flame tests as bonuses no team wants to get in a close match.
I guess I was spoiled a bit since this is the first tournament this year whose questions were not written by Aegis.

The questions, for being what they were (short, simple, 1-clue questions), were pretty good, despite there being some "out-there" questions and a couple factual errors (the Presidential election of 1850, and the amendment bonus). Additionally, I actually liked the Super Happy bonus question (since I happen to know the minutia of games, like how many points each letter is worth in Scrabble). Unfortunately, I am not a fan of 1-clue questions because each question invariably becomes a buzzer race, and when it is nigh impossible to take an advantage in tossups, the outcome of the game tends to rest on who gets polyatomic ions and who gets Channel Islands. (Incidentally, we would have lost against WW South had I been a split second slower on "prometheum".)

In summary, the questions were not my cup of tea, but they were still very enjoyable to play on.

[MJG]

The questions surely weren't pyramidal, but I'd hesitate to classify them all as "one clue". Most of them contained more than one piece of information. The buzzer races were there, but most of them that I encountered were the result of neither team knowing the information that came before the "give-away" part, which is really no different than pyramidal, except that of course there would have been more info before the give-away.

[rjaguar3]

Point taken, even though the first clues were abnormally hard.

[friarup]

I liked the fact that the questions at Kaneland had variety. It's nice to hear literature questions about autors you don't hear about all the time. Also, the super happy funtime bonuses were a nice touch. It adds a nice uniqueness to the tournament.

Overall the questions were good. I can't think of any complaints (although there were a few errors in the answers, but those were cleared up). Kaneland does a nice job with that tournament.

My congratulations to Wheaton North for taking home first place. You guys got it done today.

I just wish we didn't have to travel so far to get to Kaneland. The ride there and back takes a lot out of you...

[mlaird]

Re the Auburn tournament:

I'm not one to air my dirty laundry, especially in a forum where I'm not sure the persons it's regarding are frequenting. So I'm forwarding this to Ms. Greene as well as posting here, since I want responses.

Something I've noticed, not just at Auburn, but elsewheres as well: Rules shouldn't be just for teams, coaches and individual players to follow. Every tournament needs to realize that there are certain things that they should be obligated to mention/make certain of before the tournament.

One of these is a new rule governing when Misc. questions can show up within the scope of the match. This effectively rules out the seperation of bonuses from tossups in Illinois. You simply can't have them on seperate pages anymore. NAQT might do it, but they don't have categories, so they can get away with it.

In the same vein, replacement questions are simply a must. I don't care where they come from, as long as they're there. A moderator shouldn't have to reject protests on the grounds that he doesn't have anything to replace it with.

The last, more serious and pressing issue is that of 'A' and 'B' team strength. By the simple act of my posting this, I'm unavoidably pointing a finger, but don't take it as an accusation. The definition of a 'B' Team is something that, according to IHSA rules, needs to be set out by a local TD, since IHSA rules aren't made with 'B' teams in mind.

5-D-1j. The role of "B" teams. An "A" team should always include your better players.

What does this rule mean? it is included under the heading:

5-D-1. Typical changes that are often made include, but are not limited to, the following:

Does this mean that the 'A' team should always have the strongest players no matter what? or does it mean that it can be any combination that the person picking the teams sees fit, so long as the TD doesn't say anything about it?

What I have traditionally believed is that you place on your 'A' team the players who are most likely to give that team the chance to win. This doesn't mean that your best players go on the 'A' team, it has more to do with combinations than tossup totals. If one has two extrodinary math players, one is not likely to play them both on one team, given that they will overlap a great deal and waste a chair that could be filled by a specialist of another category.

Is another misconception that teams cannot mix grade levels? I know I covered this one to some extent in my "F/S on Varsity" point/counterpoint in the last IHSSBCA newsletter, but there should be no misconceptions about F/S level. Just because someone is a sophomore doesn't mean they must be on the 'A' team and the same goes for freshmen. They do not necessarily have to be on the 'B' team.

Is this something that is actually feasible to get into the rule book and/or case manual in a more fleshed out form, given that the IHSA doesn't really need to govern 'B' teams for the State Series?

My long, tangential rant aside, the tournament ran smoothly and had some pretty good questions, but they could have used a little tweaking. I get the feeling that they weren't looked at again after they were made into rounds. They also could have done away with quite a bit of Misc: having 4/2 in a 22/20 round is sort of over the top.

[Matt Weiner]

I'm having some trouble parsing your post. Can you elaborate on what exactly the role of the TD is supposed to be in dispelling these misconceptions about who should go on what team, and what the below passage refers to?

One of these is a new rule governing when Misc. questions can show up within the scope of the match. This effectively rules out the seperation of bonuses from tossups in Illinois. You simply can't have them on seperate pages anymore. NAQT might do it, but they don't have categories, so they can get away with it.

Are you saying that there were questions on questionably academic topics too late in the game, or what?

[Stained Diviner]

To answer Mr. Weiner, a new rule in Illinois states: "The last three (3) toss up questions and the last three (3) bonus questions in each match may not be from the miscellaneous category." (This comes after a statement that a 30/30 match should have 6/6 math, 6/6 science, 6/6 social studies, 6/6 literature/language arts, 4/4 fine arts, and 2/2 miscellaneous.) One of the inspirations for the rule was a match that determined who played in the Championship vs who played in the 3rd Place Match last year that effectively ended on a tossup about the Chicken Dance. That question was labelled as Fine Arts, which was a separate issue that led to some other rule changes.

To answer one of Mr. Laird's concerns, it is not unusual for a coach to keep kids in the same class together because they are generally friends and like playing together. Coaches are supposed to label their better team the A Team, even if that is the younger team, but this is easier said than done sometimes. I don't know the specifics in this case, but I have had a student playing for my B Team make All-Tournament who never would have made it playing for my A Team, and I have been to tournaments where Loyola B has finished ahead of Loyola A even though I know fully well that Loyola's program is run with integrity.

[Tegan]

The intent of 5-D-1j had two intents:
1. Walking in the morning of the tournament and deciding their "A" team had a tough pool, the "B" team pool was easier, and then deciding to put their best team as the "B" to increase the chances of getting through.

2. This was also designed to prevent intentional splitting of a team to increase odds of moving both teams on. For example, putting your #1 player on the B team to get the B team through, and letting the rest of the A team slug it out; especially if the A is pretty good, and has been seeded into an appropriately easy bracket. This is more difficult to detect in some occasions, though it is more than odd when a player who is voted first team All-State has substantial "B" team/ frosh-soph team playing time that year, when it is obvious to all in the know that this player is bonafide.

The idea is that an "A" team is the team that is composed of the five players which gives you the best chance of advancement. This may not mean that it is your statistically five best players, but I've seen too many times where the #1 or #2 player on a team (in some cases, players who placed high in an individual tournament; won All-State honors) were playing down. That is unacceptable, IMO.

There is perhaps only one exception that I would think of: What if a TD not only doesn't seed, but intentionally places several strong "A" teams in a bracket in order to facilitate knocking each other out, and advancing several weak teams to the playoffs? If this is not announced as some kind of a newbie tournament or such, does this become exceptable to the rule, and ethically acceptable? That's an unanswered question. Do you fight an unacceptable situation by perhaps breaching ethics to counter an accidental or intentionally poor decision by the TD.

There exists no rule that (for example, fros-soph) the "A" team must be exclusively sophomores (assuming one has five sophomores). I couldn't even see why anyone would think that? There are times when early in the season, if the coach has not yet worked out top fr-spoh players, they might simply choose to say "sophomores on the "A", and freshman on the "B". Last year at the varsity level, I was still getting a feel for my new juniors when the first tournament rolled up ..... I assigned all the juniors to the "B" team, and they advanced while the "A" did not. After that, I switched them.

We can try to tweak it a bit, and I can look it over for the IHSA Board meeting. Even the Coaches Association Board is pretty divided on this. We had an ethics proposal that got drawn up, and eventually scuttled because there was great disagreement on what constituted ethical behavior in regards to these issues.

[harpersferry]

Re Miscellaneous Questions

First, we made a conscious effort, as per the new rule, to eliminate miscellaneous questions from the "endgame." Unless I'm mistaken without having the morning rounds in front of me, I don't believe there were any tossups in not only the last three, and in many rounds we tried to move them even earlier in the round.

Second, the subcategory of Interdisciplinary took half of our miscellaneous in most rounds. In general, those questions were intended to be on solidly acdemic footing, save perhaps one trash clue near the end of the question.

Third, the problem of bonuses being in the last three is, as you point out, impossible to solve without putting all the questions on the same page. However, an effort was made to place extremely "trashy" bonuses as far to the beginning of the round as possible. I can't imagine one becoming angry because the third to last bonus was an interdisciplinary bonus covering a US president, an English novelist, another well-known figure from British history, and a famous scientist. Technically, that bonus violated the new rule, but there is nothing in that bonus which is not academic. (This issue comes back to the definition of miscellaneous, a category so broad that there can be questions of questionable use in any quiz bowl event to legitimate canon that fall within it.)

Fourth, the whole premise of the rule is weak at best. As long as there is a miscellaneous category, points will be given in a round for knowledge in that area. Whether that happens on TU three or twenty, it's still worth 10 points and control of a bonus (in a different category, hopefully, so not to reward with 30 easy points extreme knowledge in some Pop culture subcategory). The reason for this rule is to eliminate coaches becoming angry because they ostensibly lost the entire round on a Chicken Dance bonus. But if that same Chicken Dance bonus had come at question three, it would likely be forgotten. (Putting the Chicken Dance bonus at question three also tremendously increases its probability of being heard, and giving points, versus putting it at question 20.) The issue, clearly, is whether the Chicken Dance belongs in that round at all.

Re other

The rounds were mostly edited as packets, twice. Once by our team, once by another party.

One final note about replacements: we intended to have them. However, no moderator should have rejected a protest on that grounds. A replacement can be taken from a bonus part that will not be read because of dead TUs or the TD can rectify the situation another way.

[Tegan]

Fourth, the whole premise of the rule is weak at best. As long as there is a miscellaneous category, points will be given in a round for knowledge in that area. Whether that happens on TU three or twenty, it's still worth 10 points and control of a bonus (in a different category, hopefully, so not to reward with 30 easy points extreme knowledge in some Pop culture subcategory). The reason for this rule is to eliminate coaches becoming angry because they ostensibly lost the entire round on a Chicken Dance bonus. But if that same Chicken Dance bonus had come at question three, it would likely be forgotten. (Putting the Chicken Dance bonus at question three also tremendously increases its probability of being heard, and giving points, versus putting it at question 20.) The issue, clearly, is whether the Chicken Dance belongs in that round at all.

I agree, in general with this ... as long as we permit pop culture and sports and home ec and industrial arts, this will happen. It is also true that question #3 and question #30 can weigh equally in an outcome.

However,

There is something to be said about thre pressured moments of a game. If you intentionally pair the final bonus as "pasta shapes" to question 30, you are making the statement that if thisis a close match, knowledge of pasta shapes is a great question to decide the champion (obviously, if the match is beyond 20 points one question 30, it is a moot point). If TU and bonuses are not paired, then it could coincidentally come up that way (unless the TD absolutely forbids a miscellaneous question in the final three questions, no matter what!). If that question had come up earlier, it may have altered how teams play the rest of the match. Allowing it at then end is really in poor taste (IMO), if you are trying to run an academic contest.

This is one of the great philosophical debates: how to program rounds. If you pre-program a bonus to a toss-up, then you are accused of fixingthe round by putting certain bonuses with certain toss-ups to slickly fix matches in favor of a team with certain strengths weaknesses. If you don't tie the bonuses to toss-ups, you can get situations where math toss-ups run right into a math bonus (which can be huge for math strong teams), etc. The "Chicken Dance" from IHSA state was so infuriating because their TU & bonuses are tied toegether ...... that is someone made a conscious choice that this bonus would come up at that exact moment in the match.

The real problem, as I see it is the quantity of pop culture/sports, etc. For example, there was a complaint about the Kaneland Super Happy Fun bonuses (which I kind of like), but I can see the issue if you have each team getting a guaranteed 25 point pop culture bonus in the middle of a match, and the rest of the round still has sports and pop culture questions. That slides too big a percentage of the points to non-academic areas. If there had been fewer pop culture stuff in the actual rounds, then I would think the arguements against this don't hold as much water.

Since most questions are written "in-house", this is something that the question writing companies have to start dealing with. Most, I would guess, will not change because they (for the most part) tend to be very resistant to change.

[Maxwell Sniffingwell]

My main issue with the questions at Kaneland were answer repeats. Ariadne (wife of Dionysus) came up in the question after a bonus mentioning Strauss's "Ariadne on Naxos," for example.

During the last match, we were very aware of the repeats - Carnegie, for one, came up twice (though in two different rounds) on basically the same set of clues.

Other than that, the questions were solid. I've played many worse, I've played many better... Thanks to the folks at Kaneland for a fun tourney.

[JohnAndSlation]

One thing I noticed was the abundance of repeated information. At times, both teams would look at each other after a bonus part was read, thinking "Well, that sounds REALLY familiar." Not so cool. I don't want to be in a championship match and hear a question we all specifically remember (sometimes word-for-word) from the morning. It takes away from the challenge and fun of the game.

[MJG]

Friarup, is that a joke about the distance?

And as for this whole A team/B team discussion, I'm not sure what went on, but I remember being mad at some other teams sophomore year because we would beat an A team in the morning, then lose to them in the afternoon when they combined their team in to one. I'm not sure how unethical it is, but when it clearly makes your team better overall, it just made me wonder why they weren't playing that group of 5 as the A team to begin with.

[Captain Sinico]

I really don't understand the reason for this continued complaining about the letter designation of teams. Any rule trying to force the best team to be designated as the A team is clearly unenforcible for the reasons that are always brought-up when this happens. It moreover seems that no such rule even exists, guidelines from the IHSA rulebook (which doesn't seem to govern the event in question) aside. Is there any applicable rule that says this is even wrong?
Also, I fail to see why this should ever matter. To win, you eventually have to win the games no matter what and, as quizbowl isn't physically exhausting, there isn't a huge advantage to having an easier route to the championship (indeed, I find it advantageous to play meaningful games en route to a tough match as compared to beating cupcakes or even not playing.) Furthermore, in any sensibly bracketed tournament, there is, on average, a disincentive to hide a team's strength and any tournament that intentionally puts all the best teams in a single bracket or pulls similar shenanigans deserves what it gets. Can anyone motivate for me why this is a bad practice for a tournament to allow, perceived dishonesty aside?

MaS

[mlaird]

Third, the problem of bonuses being in the last three is, as you point out, impossible to solve without putting all the questions on the same page. However, an effort was made to place extremely "trashy" bonuses as far to the beginning of the round as possible. I can't imagine one becoming angry because the third to last bonus was an interdisciplinary bonus covering a US president, an English novelist, another well-known figure from British history, and a famous scientist. Technically, that bonus violated the new rule, but there is nothing in that bonus which is not academic. (This issue comes back to the definition of miscellaneous, a category so broad that there can be questions of questionable use in any quiz bowl event to legitimate canon that fall within it.)

Looking at one of the morning rounds, the last two PLEASE MAKE FUN OF ME BECAUSE I SPEAK NEITHER LATIN NOR ENGLISH in a certain packet are in Misc. - Agriculture and Misc. - State Quarters with boats on them. These are what decided one of our matches.

Fourth, the whole premise of the rule is weak at best. As long as there is a miscellaneous category, points will be given in a round for knowledge in that area. Whether that happens on TU three or twenty, it's still worth 10 points and control of a bonus (in a different category, hopefully, so not to reward with 30 easy points extreme knowledge in some Pop culture subcategory). The reason for this rule is to eliminate coaches becoming angry because they ostensibly lost the entire round on a Chicken Dance bonus. But if that same Chicken Dance bonus had come at question three, it would likely be forgotten. (Putting the Chicken Dance bonus at question three also tremendously increases its probability of being heard, and giving points, versus putting it at question 20.) The issue, clearly, is whether the Chicken Dance belongs in that round at all.

Most coaches who aren't grading papers during matches are usually keeping track of scores, who got what tossup and what categories have been heard. If the coach knows that one of the last two questions is going to be Misc., they can pull one of their starters who doesn't watch TV a whole lot and put in their kid who knows everything about pop culture. Normally a coach wouldn't play said kid for an entire round in order to hear a Misc. question, but when one knows what is coming up, you can do this. (The same can be said for any category, really, and so this is only really a big deal because most players and coaches don't like seeing the outcome of the match placed on a kid who only gets excited when sports comes up as a category.)

[leapfrog314]

Ariadne (wife of Dionysus) came up in the question after a bonus mentioning Strauss's "Ariadne on Naxos," for example. During the last match, we were very aware of the repeats - Carnegie, for one, came up twice (though in two different rounds) on basically the same set of clues.

To add to the list, twice during the day we had bonuses with the lead-in "Give the physical quantity equivalent to the following expressions." BOTH bonuses had "Mass times velocity" and "sin theta 1 over sin theta 2". The second time, incidentally, was during the final match. Repeating two bonus parts verbatim is bad enough, let alone doing so in the final match; luckily it didn't affect the outcome of our match.

Besides exact repeats, many things kept coming up again and again. There were tons of spelling and vocabulary (name these words that start with the letter __) bonuses, and we kept getting laborious math questions that required you to know things like 8^5 = 32768. Then there were the science questions where your answers had to be to two significant digits, so you had to figure out the approximate value of things like 32/77.

I was alright with the inclusion of super-happy-whatchamacallit bonuses, except that some were completely ridiculous, especially the numerical Monopoly one. (What's the price of landing on Boardwalk if it has two houses and two hotels, but one of the hotels is mortgaged? Umm...)

And coming from a team who lost a match on a sports tiebreaker tossup (asking for the fourth-place team in the NL Central in 2004), I'd like to add one thing to Laird's comment about the inclusion of replacement questions. The replacement questions should all be questions that you would feel comfortable letting decide a match!

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

My comments on the recent discussions:

First off, Chicken Dance (my avatar, incidentally) was the 29th tossup of that round at State, not a bonus. This makes it infinitely more damaging (as compared to a bonus) because there is no uncertainty as to whether it will be encountered. Of course, that's (apparently/thankfully, depending on IHSA's enforcement in March) a relic of history.

As to the difference between a trashy question on tossup 2 and tossup 20, it does make a difference because there is such a thing as an "endgame" to Scholastic Bowl. There are different strategies coaches might emphasize at different times. In the beginning of the game, you don't generally think in terms of strategy - you play to get tossups and convert on PLEASE MAKE FUN OF ME BECAUSE I SPEAK NEITHER LATIN NOR ENGLISH , so the strategies generally aren't much better than "no stupid negs". As the game nears, you may have to tell everyone who isn't your math wizard to put the buzzers down on a math question. As Laird said, good teams track categories to figure out what's remaining on the crucial last few questions and substitute specialists in accordingly. Yes, trash is currently a part of Illinois QB, but most self-respecting teams would feel sick if pop culture to settled a match that was otherwise entirely academic.

One last note as to why it should be early rather than late - if a groaner trash question comes up in question 5, the team that didn't get it can still rebound from the stomach punch that a trash question can deal out. If it's question 29 and/or it clinches the game, there is no recovery.

Also, I fail to see why this should ever matter. To win, you eventually have to win the games no matter what and, as quizbowl isn't physically exhausting, there isn't a huge advantage to having an easier route to the championship (indeed, I find it advantageous to play meaningful games en route to a tough match as compared to beating cupcakes or even not playing.) Furthermore, in any sensibly bracketed tournament, there is, on average, a disincentive to hide a team's strength and any tournament that intentionally puts all the best teams in a single bracket or pulls similar shenanigans deserves what it gets. Can anyone motivate for me why this is a bad practice for a tournament to allow, perceived dishonesty aside?

Sorice - In college bowl (and well structured high school tournaments), you are absolutely correct. However, much to my disgust, many, many high school tournaments cause a problem - only eight teams make the playoffs, out of possibly 40 or 50. If a tournament has 6 or 7 pools, this creates only one or two wild card slots, and the criteria for earning a wild card berth can be impossible to achieve if a B-team starts averaging 250-300 ppg. If a B-team plays like or better than its A-Team when it's not expected**, the wild-card hopeful has an additional hard game. That additional hard game keeps them from scoring some additional points, possibly enough to drop them from the one and only wild card spot.

Good teams can overcome really good B-teams, but they can't always overcome a crappily formatted tournament.

**If it's a powerhouse school, their B-Team may well be a top caliber team, possibly even second or third best in a 6 team pool. I'm talking B-teams from schools that bring a B-Team simply for playing time purposes, the B-Teams that act as doormats.

[Captain Sinico]

Except that, if there are wildcard spots, the team's either making it or not on average whatever pool they're in, as long as the pools are reasonably balanced. If you're not making it out of one pool because there's a strong team there that's going to outscore you, then they should outscore you anyway if they were sent to another pool (or else the pools aren't fair.)
Now, you might say, well, but they were supposed to win the pool the TD wanted them in and that they're trying to save for their B team, so now we're getting screwed. I say, well, then they should win the pool they're now in, so they're not competing with you for a wildcard spot, or else there are other, stronger teams in that pool and their switch didn't make sense. Either way, it's not their switch that got you screwed.
My point is this: this switching team letters nonsense only makes sense if the initial pools are unbalanced. In a tournament with balanced pools, it should hurt a good team's chances to switch team letters. If the brackets aren't balanced then, well... you should take that up with the TD. But, in any event, a team switching letters shouldn't ever screw another team (that just doesn't seem to make sense to me because you can't change the overall strength of the field by moving teams around and wildcards are awarded on the basis of a team's performance against the field) and, assuming that coaches are rational actors, is only happening in response to poorly balanced initial pools.
Therefore, even if rules enforcing which team had which letter were enforcible somehow, I don't think they're useful or desirable. It seems to me like they exist to protect a TD's ability to foil strong teams by sticking a bunch of them in a single pool and saying "you have to play each other all day and only one of you gets out." That can be fine if that's what you want your tournament to be, but you should say so. Does anyone see some actual purpose other than that that such purposive rules would serve?

MaS

[Tegan]

In a tournament with balanced pools, it should hurt a good team's chances to switch team letters. If the brackets aren't balanced then, well... you should take that up with the TD. But, in any event, a team switching letters shouldn't ever screw another team (that just doesn't seem to make sense to me because you can't change the overall strength of the field by moving teams around and wildcards are awarded on the basis of a team's performance against the field)

Hypothetical situation (which isn't that hypothetical): Team A is the best team in the field, and has four very solid players, including one player who is bonafide "best ten in state". They are given a relatively weak pool because they earned that right in a well balanced tournament. Their "B" team is in a tougher pool. Team A's statistically best player is assigned to the "B" team, and befitting his rank as one of the ten best in the state, virtually single handedly takes his team through the pool, knocking out a team that was maybe the 6th or 7th best in the tournament.

In the afternoon, the "B" team gets knocked out early by a really good team, but no problem, because "Top 10" gets to join the "A" team and lead them to victory (as a starter, no less!)

Now in the grand scheme of things, gee whiz, the #6 team ot knocked out, but I think that shows a lack of ethics. I have run into these situations before, and they generate the #1 complaint that I get e-mailed to me on an annual basis for the last three years.

Therefore, even if rules enforcing which team had which letter were enforcible somehow, I don't think they're useful or desirable. It seems to me like they exist to protect a TD's ability to foil strong teams by sticking a bunch of them in a single pool and saying "you have to play each other all day and only one of you gets out." That can be fine if that's what you want your tournament to be, but you should say so. Does anyone see some actual purpose other than that that such purposive rules would serve?

I've been to tournaments like this, and coaches know what they are typically getting into (we know the 3-4 tournaments where TD's screw over the top teams, or at lesat put them in serious check with each other). Overall, this is not the case. There is no way for IHSA to involve themselves in this, and the IHSSBCA has no enforcement mechanism, and likely never will. Individual TD's, IMO, have the right to say "the "A" team has to be your best five players", and I think if they were being honest and judicious, have the right to insist that a team play up a player if this appears to be in violation. I agree that, at the very least, you enter into a grey area when the tournament pools are intentionally unbalanced, but if there is real intent to seperate top teams, I think it is a bit much to play down your #1 player in an attempt to get two teams through.

This is also the ungoing debate about varsity players playing fr-soph touranments. If a freshman or a sophomore is a legit varsity player (in some cases being touted as "All-State varsity"), is it ethical to have them play in what is essentially a development tournament open strictly to frosh-soph team only? This is another of the top "complaints" I field from around the state on an annual basis. As you mentioned, unless the coaches of the state simply decide en mass to stop patronizzing tournaments that permit this, it will go on (unless the TDs also put a stop to it, which I think will be extremely unlikely). As a result, it will likely go on for some time, though I see nothing positive coming out of this practice.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

I know lots of places if you begin the day on the B team you have to stay on the B team all day. I'm surprised they don't have a rule to stop kids from moving back and forth at a tournament.

[Tegan]

Not that I am trying to accuse anyone here of mirroring this attitude (because no one is), but the "We are only concerned that the best team win" is the nearly word-for-word philosophy of the IHSA, which with full intent, makes no attempt to seperate top teams giving highly lopsided sectionals and regionals.

The very saddest state of affairs came this year:

Two years ago, we started using an additional layer of seperation; the subsectional. You get assigned to a sectional, then a subsectional which is roughly half of the sectional teams (all based on geography). Last year, on subsectional had New Trier, Deerfield, Maine East, Oak Park-River Forest, Loyola, and Maine South. I will say without bragging or exaggeration that there was no SECTIONAL that had a tougher six teams, let alone subsectional. I do not want to say that our best team was better than any other team, because the IHSA state Finals proved that wasns't true, but I would put our six against any other 6 from a sectional in the state anyday, anytime, anywhere.

The subsectional has one purpose: to reduce travel time. This makes sense for the three sectionals outside of the Chicago area in Class AA, and some of the Class A sectionals. It makes no sense in the Chicago area.

In Octoer, 2006, the IHSA legislated the subsectional out of existence in the Chicago area..... for sports only! The rule does not apply to scholastic bowl (which is the only non sport which it affects). Its greatly sad that the IHSA has made it a philosophy to sponsor competitions, and make it a cornerstone of their philosophy to not even attempt the simplest changes which could reward hard work without reuiring undue extra travel.

[Captain Sinico]

Yeah, it sounds like the problem is with letting people switch teams during the tournament, which shouldn't be allowed and which, I thought, wasn't. However, even with this practice allowed, the ostensible A team can face elimination while what you're saying should be their best player is stuck with the B team for one match, so this strategy doesn't make much sense to me. Also, if this dude is so good, why would the B team lose in the playoffs, unless on purpose? I guess the attributed motives in this whole scenario don't make sense to me.
Furthermore, even in your situation, if the team you're calling the #6 team is worthy of its playoff spot, then it should get in as a wildcard on the basis of being the next-best team. Furthermore, unless you're at a tournament with six pools, the #6 team shouldn't be the best team in a pool anyway.
So, again, the problem I see is with other rules and practices that make switching team letters profitable. Until these are fixed, people will tune their teams as they see fit to maximize their chances at victory, which I think is right, fair, and inevitable. Rules attempting to require them to do otherwise are not only unenforceable, but obfuscatory of the the real issue, namely the unfair rules and practices that some tournaments use. In short, if you want the practice of moving good players to ostensibly lower teams to stop, work to remove the idiosyncratic rules and bracketing practices that make it profitable. Fixing the rules will not only make team letterings correspond better to what you might expect, but also make the game more fair for everyone.

MaS

[Tegan]

I know lots of places if you begin the day on the B team you have to stay on the B team all day. I'm surprised they don't have a rule to stop kids from moving back and forth at a tournament.

There are some tournaments that do this, and I wish it were more, because that alone prevents this from happening.

I know one team that got caught on this once when they tried bumping up one of their very best players from the "B" team, but neglected to check the rules, and as such had one of their two best players forced out late in the playoffs because one coach, aware of the rule, called it ......as was told to me at the dramatic last moment before the first TU was to be read ......

[First Chairman]

Why don't more teams subscribe to the fixed roster rule? Shouldn't there be a square table with IHSSCBA members surrounding it saying, "Scobowl law"?

Semiseriously, I think the only reason why a coach would do this is for "feel good" purposes. Their B team is doing better than the A team in terms of number of victories. But still, this is ridiculous. Of course, the question I have is whether the current way Scholastic Bowl games are played whether roster switching can be documented and enforced (i.e., do you keep individual stats).

I'll admit sometimes the alias thing that TJHS in Virginia does is amusing but they don't do roster switching. On the other hand, there is a reason why we do prefer having "real names" alongside with aliases, and that is the enforcement of such rules. As Mike has already mentioned, remove the loopholes that encourage such inethical behavior, or else enforce a professional code of ethics.

I'll have to read more carefully this thread, but a tournament format should also be carefully structured so that roster switching is actually more punitive. There's a reason why we "penalize" B and C team fixture schedules: anyone trying to do a roster switch actually makes an entire bracket more difficult and thus penalize the entire division. Not a good thing to be on the bad side of 5 coaches.

If any TD has an intended design to create "tougher" pools, it should be stated clearly in the tournament announcement. One really good competition in Ohio does this with teams that "already qualify for the state championship" and they are trying to prepare for nationals. That's reasonable, and that's declared ahead of time without any intention of deception or secrecy. Is the practice of intentionally creating unfair divisions a reflection of this "some sectionals are tougher than others, so too bad" attitude?

I fear there are too many people willing to follow procedures without questioning philosophies. No wonder many of Chip Beall's seeding procedures with playoff-qualifying teams at his event are too easily accepted as being "fair."

[Tegan]

Not a good thing to be on the bad side of 5 coaches.

Unless you don't care. There are plenty of coaches out there who simply don't. As I understand it, the issue prompting the latest broo-haha is from an experienced coach who should have known better, but in fact may not have, or just exploited what they thought was a loophole.

If any TD has an intended design to create "tougher" pools, it should be stated clearly in the tournament announcement. One really good competition in Ohio does this with teams that "already qualify for the state championship" and they are trying to prepare for nationals. That's reasonable, and that's declared ahead of time without any intention of deception or secrecy. Is the practice of intentionally creating unfair divisions a reflection of this "some sectionals are tougher than others, so too bad" attitude?

Your first sentence was a part of an ethics proposal that I came up with about a year ago. It more or less died over an idea that would have prevented established varsity players who are freshmen or sophomores from playing down at a frosh-soph only tournament.

In most cases, tournaments which create imbalanced brackets do so for purposes of feeling bad for poor teams, or to give poor teams incentives to show up. The most common answer is "if we didnt do this, most of the teams wouldn't show up" You and I may disagree with that sentiment, but if it is broadcast in advance, then good teams enter at their own risk.

I fear there are too many people willing to follow procedures without questioning philosophies. No wonder many of Chip Beall's seeding procedures with playoff-qualifying teams at his event are too easily accepted as being "fair."

While I'm not wholly familiar with those ideas, I can see that a mediochre team thinks its "fair" when they finally get by because a better team got knocked out with a tougher schedule. This is similar in mentality to what happened in the big Academic Decathlon cheating scandal. One coach convinced the team that it was "unfair" that another team worked hard and won all the time, and that cheating simply was a corrective measure to years of "unfairness".

[First Chairman]

If any TD has an intended design to create "tougher" pools, it should be stated clearly in the tournament announcement. One really good competition in Ohio does this with teams that "already qualify for the state championship" and they are trying to prepare for nationals. That's reasonable, and that's declared ahead of time without any intention of deception or secrecy. Is the practice of intentionally creating unfair divisions a reflection of this "some sectionals are tougher than others, so too bad" attitude?

Your first sentence was a part of an ethics proposal that I came up with about a year ago. It more or less died over an idea that would have prevented established varsity players who are freshmen or sophomores from playing down at a frosh-soph only tournament.

In most cases, tournaments which create imbalanced brackets do so for purposes of feeling bad for poor teams, or to give poor teams incentives to show up. The most common answer is "if we didnt do this, most of the teams wouldn't show up" You and I may disagree with that sentiment, but if it is broadcast in advance, then good teams enter at their own risk.

We're members of the same choral group here, so we know this isn't directed at either of us in a harsh way.

There is the alternative that those good teams just simply refuse to attend and run their own competition at the same time. You need to demonstrate that if they did do it, then most of the good teams won't show up. Advisors and teams have choices to attend competitions, and as much as we are all beholden to "tradition" and supporting our colleagues and nearby teams, we are also bound to a sense of fairness for the teams that attend. If anything, it might be fairer to give those bad teams a 100-point handicap if they played various "national caliber teams" than it would be to deliberately try to make the playing field uneven.

[OP_Huskies]

So, my opinions on recent debate:

As to the A-team, B-team issue. My personal opinion is that a team's A-team is the five players, when played in conjunction, which give that team the best chance at victory, should constitute an A-team. If a team's two best players are both math specialists, then I find it fair that one of them be relegated to the B-team. However, if both are not only math specialists, but have good knowledge bases otherwise (so much that even if one player got all the math, the other could still be top-5 in TUs), then both should play A-team. I know how subjective this is, and will often come up to the TD's discretion.

Personally, I feel that switching between A and B teams is unacceptible. Again, a coach's A-team should be the players that give him the best chance to win. He shouldnt need to move players up.

As to the "stacking" phenomenon at certain tourneys: I feel this is unethical unless teams are forwarned. I feel like there are good alternatives to stacking. For instance, instead of just having the top-8 or top-16 go into the playoffs, make two afternoon brackets (championship & consolation) in order to give lower-ranked teams a chance to play other teams at their own level. Of course, this comes with its own set of ethical issues, including instances of throwing games, but those can be worked out.

Another possibility is to put all the good teams in a good division, but then give every team in that bracket a playoff birth, and do playoff seeding by points scored, so teams have a reason to play hard.

And, the sectional problem. First off, does anyone know how the sectionals are going to look this year? I found this (http://www.ihsa.org/activity/scb/2005-06/2site.htm) on the IHSA website, but it was only accessable via the 05-06 page and might be outdated.

IHSA has a terrible policy of doing sectionals purely by geography. In all likelyhood, this is not changing because it seems to be a philisophical decision by IHSA: they do it for cross country too (last year, one regional had 6 top-25 teams and only 5 go to sectionals. One sectional was easy enough that teams got a state bid pretty much for showing up with 5 members). Again, I think this policy is completely unfair to suburban teams ... again, 8 teams in the Maine South sectional would have gone to state in at least 2 other sectionals last year. Meanwhile, subpar teams in certain areas get through to state because they are surrounded by subpar teams. And, while teams like Auburn & Carbondale absolutely deserved to make state last year, they had really no competition until they got to Peoria. I think IHSA needs some overarching changes in their structures for all sports. For instance, before they even decided on sectional hosts, they need to look at who the good teams are and make a fair effort to balance everything. However, I simply don't see that happening.

JB

[OP_Huskies]

sorry, jsut had another good idea for making sectionals fairer.

Cut to six sectionals, but have 2 "wildcard" bids into state ... that is, the two second place team (or 2nd and third place team if they happen to be in the same regional) with the two highest point totals. Throughout sectionals. This is possible in scho bowl & not other sports because in scho-bowl the only goal is scoring points ... there is no "defense" or such that can get a team to championships.

This is not an end-all, but it is certainly better than the current system. I must add a qualifier, though -- it will never be adopted by IHSA.

JB

[STPickrell]

Attempting to factor in perceived talent will simply make the sectioning process all the longer. You must consider schools that ride the backs of a "Golden Generation" and then return to mediocrity, schools who get a dynamic new coach (I suppose some regions are such that all that's needed to win them is a desire to practice once or twice a week), etc.

[Tegan]

StPickrell & OP_Huskie, IMO, are both very correct.

The Masonic tournament in fact does a version of what OP_Huskie suggests with two wildcard births at state (but admittadly has a very odd way of determining those wildcards; basing it on a single match's performance).

Any system would need to be based on current season accomplishments to avoid the exact problems that StPickrell suggested (which used to be more aproblem in Illinois, but is becoming less and less and issue, as ar as I can see).

OP_Huskie isn't lying ..... that near west suburban area is a hotbed for XCC, and has been screwed over for years in terms of getting teams to state; though at least in XCC, not just one team advances from those sectionals.

[MJG]

I would think it unethical to not inform top teams that they would all be put in the same morning pool, but at the same time if I was a top team I would want to go to those meets. It gives experience in terms of playing good teams all morning, and not having those 4 or 5 rounds of warm-up rounds before you hit real competition. I would think that might carry at least some benefit for top teams expecting to get into sectional and state play later, which is going to be very strong from the get-go. More experience against top teams is why our coach takes us to as many Chicagoland meets as possible, even if we do hate getting creamed in a lot of matches.

And I think coaches that switch up their A and B players are missing the point of B teams. In one meet this year, IMSA didn't show up and we had ten players so we put together a B team that ended up getting more points than several A teams. They all had a blast, and they each got 5-10 tossups as opposed to their usual 0-2 due to reduced playing time and interteam competition. To put one of our much more experienced or better players on the B team for whatever reason simply ruins the fun spirit for those truly B players without much (if any) gain on the part of the whole team.
I suspect fun B team experiences are the only reason a lot of our players stay on the team, given our somewhat gruelling schedule.

Which brings me to another fun idea: How about a B team tournament? Disqualify anyone who starts for the A team or has a certain amount of tossups per match played. I remember playing a "5th quarter" in freshman football and having A and B games in middleschool basketball, why couldn't schol bowl do the same? (I suppose the Turnabouts are somewhat similar) I guess who qualifies and whether teams would actually show up are the questions.

[Tegan]

but at the same time if I was a top team I would want to go to those meets. It gives experience in terms of playing good teams all morning, and not having those 4 or 5 rounds of warm-up rounds before you hit real competition. I would think that might carry at least some benefit for top teams

I agree .... though there is one serious drawback that can depend on your particular goals for a season. There are some coaches who use only one particular criteria when seeding teams in the state tournament (for example, only winning percentage). It is never a good idea to seed based solely one criteria. One coach in particular seeds like this, and at least once seeded a team with (something to the effect of) an 8-2 record (no wins vs. a team with a winning record, mind you) over a team that was 32-15, and had only one loss vs. a team with a losing record. Going to these tournaments is great practice, but down the road, if your goal os to earn a top seed and win (say) a regional, knowing you can't win a sectional in a particualr year, that completely blows your options.

Which brings me to another fun idea: How about a B team tournament?

Harlem H.S. in Machesney Park (up by Rockford) does this. It is open to any team, as long as they do not bring their (statistically) best two players. Last year, I sent my fros-soph team. They barely missed the afternoon, but got invited to stay when one of the teams went home early, and managed 4th or 5th place. We would have been back this year, but we had a conflict.

The IHSSBCA also runs a series of tournaments to which teams that win certain tournaments, place high at certain tournaments, advance to state, etc. are not invited. This doesn't solve the "A"/"B" issue necessarily, but it does permit teams who normally have zero chance of breaking through a chance to get something, generate some positive press, and build up the team.

[David Riley]

Stirring up the soup a bit. . .

Somewhat relevant to this A/B discussion, what would everyone think of advertising tournaments something like this:

A -- questions of moderate to high difficulty, targeted toward competitive teams.

B -- questions of moderate difficulty targeted toward teams that are competitive but for whatever reason don't often make the playoff rounds

C -- similar to our Turnabout tournaments


I raise this issue because I (and from recent conversations, several of my colleagues) feel, "Is it worth it to attend a tournament where we have little competition until the playoff rounds?". I also like the idea that you put ESTABLISHED (i.e., by proved cumulative team record for the season) teams in one bracket but give each of them a berth in the Round of 16 (or Round of 8).

Just a thought...comments?

[First Chairman]

There are such things as JV tournaments, but I think it would be difficult to do a "B" tournament. You have the tourn-about events which are meant to help many competitive teams who may not be state-competitive yet, which I think is a good compromise.

I do think that one should advertise tournaments regarding their question source and the intended level of difficulty. I have usually told people that. For example (hypothetical),

High school celebrity shoot is an experimental format that targets novice and experienced quiz bowl players.

The Mid-Atlantic Regional Academic Championship will feature in-house-written questions of national-caliber difficulty.

The Mason Academic Challenge will involve separate championships in which national-caliber teams can play against each other while others seeking to qualify for state play against each other. [Copley Academic Invitational (Ohio) does this for their big mega-tournament in late February. Aiken (SC) runs a tournament with a similar tournament format.]

However you do it, understand that you have a philosophy for what constitutes a quality tournament experience. I've run events where everyone plays a ton of games, and teams that go 0-12 (yes, 12) say they felt empowered and thrilled from the experience.

To respond to your colleagues, what do they all do during the tourn-about weekends? What tournaments do they attend run by say Illinois or Northwestern that should involve more competitive questions and hopefully more competitive teams? Do they want to go outside the state to play teams in Michigan or Missouri or Vanderbilt to raise their level of play? I know there are the odd travel rules, but I am curious that if there are such complaints about not getting enough of a challenge that they do not seek challenges. That's what PACE and this board facilitates.

[David Riley]

The travel rules have pretty much been lifted, but there's still the question of expense. I've been told that a number of Illinois principals, etc. will not permit their teams to go out of state when they can travel to a tournament down the road, regardless of the level of difficulty.

A number of tournament hosts are also not willing to schedule a tournament on the same day as another tournament, particularly if the latter tournament is one of long standing, but this is beginning to change.

[Tegan]

I think a big Illinois problem is that we are goingto have to start dealing with the fact that there are tournaments on the same day, and as a result, the days of 50 team tournaments need to go away (or be curtailed).

I had a conversation with Coach X a few weeks ago as she complained about how bad the questions at a particualr tournament were .... not to mention the seeding of top teams in one bracket.

I told her about the Octangulars, and told her that I might move one to that tournament's date next year.

She said that she would continue patronizing that tournament, because it was traditional.

Slavery was traditional, women wearing skirts was traditional, women not working was traditional ....... some traditions need to be broken!

[OP_Huskies]

I really like Mr. Riley's idea, but have a few suggestions. For A and C tournaments, there should be some type of qualifying factor. That is, the A tournaments, the TD should have some idea of who the "best teams" are ... obviously some teams are always very strong, and then otherwise he can look at previous tourney results and perhaps even conference results to get other ideas of who to invite. In a perfect world, he might get the top 24 or so best teams to attend, so that the competition will be strong all day through.

As for the C tournaments, they could be done very similar to turnabouts. Perhaps there should be some checking by TDs to make sure teams didnt just get strong behind their back (we weren't marked as one of the top-50 teams last year, because previous classes of OP scho bowl haven't been as strong. If we were of questionable ethics, we could have gone to a turnabout & cleaned house).

Otherwise, B tourneys could just be open to anyone. I don't think it makes a lot of sense to draw up further subdivisions.

Of course, as Mr. Egan points out, there is the seeding problem--teams might not want to go to strong tournaments and hurt their records. Perhaps IHSA could instruct coaches to carefully examine the team records & results before seeding instead of applying a numerical formula. a team that goes to the NT tourney and goes 5-3 or 4-4 should never, ever get seeded below a team that plays a weak conference and goes 7-1 (i'm using this as a hypothetical ... this situation as is will never come up at a seeding meeting). I'm not sure how the seeding works, but perhaps each team should be able to argue its case before the others 9if this is not already done). The coach in with the 32-15 record can say yes we had a <.700 winning %, but we beat such and such team, and all our losses were to such and such teams, and hopefully coaches, with gentle instruction, will take thayt into consideration.

And, regarding St. Pickrell's post, yes it would take time to arrange sectionals by stregnth, but anyone who knew the event would have looked at the Maine South sectional and said "this is wayyy too strong" and the Marist sectional and said "this is wayyy too weak" and then said hey, these two sectionals aren't that hard to rearrange because they are right next to one another. I understand the logistical problems, but IHSA's sectional arrangement is so flawed that some type of rearrangement is a must.

JB

[mlaird]

Of course, as Mr. Egan points out, there is the seeding problem--teams might not want to go to strong tournaments and hurt their records. Perhaps IHSA could instruct coaches to carefully examine the team records & results before seeding instead of applying a numerical formula. a team that goes to the NT tourney and goes 5-3 or 4-4 should never, ever get seeded below a team that plays a weak conference and goes 7-1 (i'm using this as a hypothetical ... this situation as is will never come up at a seeding meeting). I'm not sure how the seeding works, but perhaps each team should be able to argue its case before the others 9if this is not already done). The coach in with the 32-15 record can say yes we had a <.700 winning %, but we beat such and such team, and all our losses were to such and such teams, and hopefully coaches, with gentle instruction, will take thayt into consideration.

Yeah, we tried out a modified win percentage formula but most coaches don't pay any heed to it. It was based solely on the amount of matches played, such that the teams with more matches under their belt, but with more losses, would have a higher number than a 7-1 team.

The only way in which strength of schedule comes into play is that each coach present at the meeting gets a minute or two to state his case verbally to all the coaches. This comes in addition to every coach submitting their complete records and those copies being made public to the other coaches present. Each coach can look at and scrutenize the teams played. A lot of coaches only know who is good by word of mouth (since they're only playing ~7 matches per year), and need to be told what a big deal beating New Trier and Maine South is.

[First Chairman]

I am still a bit ambivalent about having a significant proportion of events be "special field" or "closed" arrangements. Why not just have a lot of open tournaments but expand the playoffs to allow more teams an opportunity to experience elimination play (or reshuffled divisions based on record)?

I point out what many college tournaments do, and what I did for Buzzerpalooza 1995. That was my first tournament and I split every one of the 24 teams into 3 divisions of 8. Then for playoffs, I reshuffled into 4 divisions of 6, with all the first and second place division teams in group A, third and fourth in group B, etc. That way everyone gets a chance to play teams with presumably similar strengths. It also provides disincentive for a TD to weigh one division too heavily over another, but corrects for it in case there is a problem.

In my opinion, if you wanted a closed pool, I'd simply restrict that pool to tournament winning schools over the past year since that's the easiest record to confirm (if everyone posts tournament results or counts trophies).

[Tegan]

I guess for those not in the know (especially the players out there, I could give a brief on how seeding is supposed to work).

Each coach submits a document, affirmed by the principal, showing the result of each match (opponent and score) for their "A" team only. You are supposed to note if you played a "B" team. This is either sent to the sub-sectional host, or is brought in person on the day of the meeting. Failure to do either is automatic grounds for disqualification (unless there is a really good reason).

Coaches can choose to attend or submit the information by fax. Most coaches do not appear in person, and only submit a faxed report. Coaches can send a proxy representative if they choose.

At the seeding meeting, each coach in attendance gets a copy of every other team's record report. Each coach then gets about a minute to cover teh highlights of the season, and explain why their team should be seeded in a particular position. Sometimes, they will choose to not talk about their team, but instead offer backup to another coaches claims.

Coaches then take a few minutes to vote, ranking all of the teams in the sub-sectional 1-16 (or however many there are), except for their team. Ballots are public (everyone sees how eveyone else voted). There is an unusual quirk to the balloting: teams not represented appear on every ballot, while teams in attendance appear on every ballot, minus their own. The team with the lowest score is seeded highest, and so on. Ties are broken based on the number of "1" votes, "2" votes, etc.

Before last year, the highest seeded teams were then given the first chance to host Regionals. If they didn't, the chance passed to the next closest available seeds that would be a part of that Regional. This worked fine, for the most part. The last two years have seen a general chaos as the IHSA tries to preassign Regionals based on geography within the sectional. This makes perfect sense in the sectionals that cover huge geographic areas, but just ends up frustrating people otherwise. Sometimes, the IHSA gets a principal to commit to hosting, even though there are no qualified people there to run the tournament. I know one case where a rookie coach had hosting duties dropped on her by the principal, and at the last minute had to have it transfered to a school that had more experienced personel.

As soon as that part if over, a similar process is followed for All-Sectional/State selection. This process is getting more difficult now that we have to contact 32 hosts (instead of 16), many of which have no clue what to do, and end up really screwing things up. In some cases, these duties are dumped on Athletic Directors who have made it clear they want nothing to do with this, and are indignant about doing any extra work up and above of what they minimally have to do.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

I point out what many college tournaments do, and what I did for Buzzerpalooza 1995. That was my first tournament and I split every one of the 24 teams into 3 divisions of 8. Then for playoffs, I reshuffled into 4 divisions of 6, with all the first and second place division teams in group A, third and fourth in group B, etc. That way everyone gets a chance to play teams with presumably similar strengths. It also provides disincentive for a TD to weigh one division too heavily over another, but corrects for it in case there is a problem.

At Rolla's fall tournament they had 16 teams from all over the state with all different quality. They had two pools of 8 and then they reseeded and had every team play two more games with against teams from the other pool with similiar records. That was a very good idea I thought, because everyone got 9 games and were both exposed to good and bad teams.

[friarup]

Sorry to break the ongoing conversation here, but I was looking at ihsa.org today and found the sectional and regional sites. These are incomplete, as denoted by the plethora of 'TBA' sites for the regionals.

Here is the link to look at the regional and sectional sites up to today:
http://www.ihsa.org/activity/scb/2006-07/2site.htm

As for the one sectional site not announced, I was wondering if anyone knows what it is going to be. I heard through the grapevine that Marist was going to host one, but I'm not 100% sure.

I know it might be a little early to be talking about this, but the ongoing conversation about sectional and regional strength made me wonder what their make up is looking like this year.

[Stained Diviner]

The Sectionals probably will be very similar to last year. IHSA makes significant changes every three years, and they changed things last year. It looks like the TBA Sectional is the one that was won by DGS last year. Many of the TBAs are listed alphabetically--IHSA has a site in mind but is awaiting a Principal's signature. Therefore, Chicago Marist or one of the Downers Grove schools is a possibility.

The wildcard is that nobody knows for sure what will happen with Sub-Sectionals at this point.

[OP_Huskies]

Any possibility that some teams will get moved from NT (as in, Maine S last year) to the Marist? Fenwick & OP are usually in the Marist ... dunno if they had any plans to change it back in interest of *ahem* fairness. Obviously that would still leave NT overly good, but would make it less so than it is now and make the Marist better than it is now.

JB

[Stained Diviner]

If it changes, it will be because of geography. According to procedures that have been in place since its founding, IHSA does not make any effort to even out Sectionals in any sport or activity.

If OPRF and Fenwick move, it will be because the IHSA looks at a map and decides it is too far a distance from Oak Park to Winnetka. It is possible but unlikely.