Based on the AA/A and BB/B Division tournament results through February 8, 2004, the Adult Results Committee has determined which teams will now be assigned to AA, A, BB, and B for the remainder of the 2003-2004 season and Regionals.

These “internal” CHRVA division assignments are expected to improve the playing experience for all teams within the Chesapeake Region because they are based on each team’s performance relative to its piers.  Teams may still compete at Nationals in the division they originally specified during the USAV Team Registration process regardless of their “internal” division assignment, unless they were moved up or down based on other criteria set forth in the Region Handbook.  Division assignments are as follows: 

MEN’S AA/A SPLIT

These teams will be re-classified for the rest of the regular season and Regionals as MEN’S AA:

                        Maryland Alumni                      14.00
                        Old Time Volleyball                  10.00
                        Hip Sing                                     7.00
                        Catalyst                                      5.00
                        X-Patriots                                 4.50 

These teams will be re-classified as MEN’S A:

                        Spike Force                               2.00
                        X-Terps                                     2.00
                        Good Guys                                1.50
                        Team Chop                               1.50
                        BCV-Set to Kill                           .75
                        Angry Elvis                                  .00
                        Charlatans                                   .00
                        Head VBc                                   .00
                        Maryland Red                             .00

MEN’S BB/B SPLIT

No Drop Zone                           8.25
MR Getsome                              7.00
WACO Fire & Ice                     6.00
BCV Big Bang Theory                5.29
Omen                                         5.20
Fury                                           5.00
Ministers of Defense                   5.00
Senior Discount                          4.00
Regulators                                  3.67
Dream Team                              3.00
TSA                                           3.00
Milkshake Roofing                      2.20
Getting Higher                             2.17
Faber College                             2.00
Team Dragon                             2.00
Rehabbed                                   1.75
Kaboom                                     1.60
Big Nasty                                   1.00
Pho-U                                        1.00

These teams will be re-classified as MEN’S B:

WOMEN’S AA/A SPLIT

These teams will be re-classified for the rest of the regular season and Regionals as WOMEN’S AA:

These teams will be re-classified as WOMEN’S A:

WOMEN’S BB/B SPLIT

These teams will be re-classified for the rest of the regular season and Regionals as WOMEN’S BB:

These teams will be re-classified as WOMEN’S B:

HOW WERE THE SPLITS DETERMINED?

The number listed after each team is the total number of points earned divided by the number of tournaments in which the team played.

Each division was split differently.  If you look at the numbers of the teams that went up versus down, each division had different criteria.  We tried to split each division roughly in half (except for the Men's AA/A division that only has 14 teams and cannot support two separate divisions) and at the most sensible statistical split.  The cutoff value varied from division to division depending upon the distribution of points.

The Men's AA/A division had a significant drop in the number of teams registered this season.  Exclusive of juniors’ teams, they have only 14 teams in their bracket.  There is a huge break in the average points per tourney played, with the top five teams having from 14 - 4.5, and the rest of the teams having 2.0 or less.  Also, only the top five teams were able to earn points when all the teams participated.  Thus, we classified five teams as AA and the other 9 as A.  Most of the remaining tournaments will stay combined in order to fill, although there is a heavy out-of-region participation in our Men's AA/A tournaments.

In the Men's BB/B division, the teams who had 1.0 average point per tourney played went up to BB in order to make the brackets almost even in number.  We could have moved to BB all teams who had earned any points.  However, the points of the five lowest point-scoring teams were statistically insignificant.   In addition, it was hard to justify moving a team to BB when they had either come out of their pool only once in four tournaments or had tied for second only once in five tournaments.  There seemed to be an obvious statistical break between the top 19 teams with 1.0 or better and the rest of the teams.

In the Women's AA/A division, the teams with a 2.0 average points per tourney played went up, those with less went down.  This gave us a division with 14 AA teams, and 18 A teams.  One of the reasons we left the brackets slightly uneven was that the top point winners in the AA bracket had very uneven matches with even the middle teams in this division.  The teams averaging one point-per-tournament-played were not competitive with the top AA teams.  This was not the case in the Women's and Men's BB divisions.

If you look at the Women's BB/B division, all the teams with more than 1.0 average points per tourney played went up, the rest went down.  That leaves a split of 17 and 17, which guarantees that each division can fill a 10-team tournament every weekend with a little left over to play in a combined division.  A 1.0 average means the teams came out of pool every other tournament they played in.

Although there may be some grumbling with the breakout this first season, we hope understanding how the split was generated will help next year's teams decide if they want to re-designate the divisions of the tournaments they host.  We hope to eventually see a good mix of B or AA only tournaments.  We're also hoping that teams will be creative and come up with some suggestions to improve the system.  One thing that would have helped this season would have been a tentative potential split after January, giving teams an idea of where they would end up.  Unfortunately, an unexpected illness and subsequent surgery prevented me from being able to start computing the data as early as I would have liked.