 Every
year, questions arise concerning how teams are assigned to pool positions
in a tournament. Contrary to popular belief, there has never been
a policy or rule that dictates how these positions are filled.
To fully understand the prior comment, we must go back in time to the
early 1970s when the Region was quite large—from the New York border to
the North Carolina border, encompassing the eastern half of Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and Virginia and the state of Delaware. At that time, the
Tournament Host did all the work on a tournament, sending out invitations,
accepting/rejecting teams, and setting up pools. To assist the Tournament
Host, the Region published guidelines to aid the Host in running a successful
tournament. A part of those guidelines were tips on pool seeding.
These tips were never Region rules or policy but simply an aid to
the Host.
I no longer have the documents from those early years; but, as a host,
I remember the general wording. The tips went something like this:
-
The host team should be assigned the Team #3 position since they may
need the extra time to get the tournament up and running on time.
-
The teams with the longest travel distance should be assigned the Team
#5 position.
-
The teams with the best record and with the best chance of coming out
of pool should be assigned the Team #2 and Team #4 positions.
Please notice the word “should” and not “shall” was used in the tips.
These tips were included in the first USVBA Region 3 Handbook and continued
to be included in the CHRVA Handbook until a few years ago. But,
at no time were these tips ever written as a rule or a policy, just recommendations.
With the break-up of USVBA Region 3 into three separate Regions—Chesapeake,
Keystone, and Commonwealth—the tips somehow started to be perceived as
mandatory requirements. Funny how the mind starts to play tricks
on you. Many teams remember Tip #1 and Tip #2 but seemed to have
forgotten about Tip #3. It appears nobody wanted to have a great
win-loss record and be Team #2 in a 5-team pool week after week!
If you look at the current CHRVA Handbook section concerning seedings
for pool positions, you will notice the tips have vanished completely.
And for a good reason. They are no longer needed because both the
Region and times have changed. The Division Coordinators still generally
follow Tip #1 because it makes some sense. Tip #2 has little relevance
today because, with few exceptions, teams travel little in terms of distance
in our playing area. True, a team from Fairfax traveling to Baltimore
should get consideration over teams living in Laurel and Columbia, and
the Division Coordinators usually give this consideration. Tip #3
never really made any sense and is best forgotten.
And one final comment. Using the address of the Team Representative
to determine how far a team has to travel is disingenuous, and everyone
knows it. Many teams chose a Team Representative as far away as possible
to get around the “who works the playoff match” rule! We can live
with this as far as working playoff matches are concerned, but circumnavigation
of the intent of the playoff rule has no place in the determination of
pool seedings being made by your Division Coordinator. So let us
put this “bad boy” of who gets what pool position in a tournament to rest
once and for all.
FACT—There has never been, and there is not now, a rule or policy
that dictates where a team must be placed in a pool. MYTH—The
host team must always be Team #3, and Team #5 must always be the team with
the greatest travel distance. LEGEND—A legend is hard to destroy.
Twenty years from now someone will adamantly declare that the host team
is always Team #3, and the team with a long drive must always be Team #5.
But now you have the facts, and like Paul Harvey always says “Now you have
the rest of the story.”
— Ron Sommer
|
