| During the past
two seasons, members of the CHRVA Board of Directors have been contacted
by various adult players about the inequity of the number of teams in the
various divisions. Some divisions, like Women’s A, Women’s BB, and
Men’s BB have either grown in numbers or at least stayed at a healthy level,
while Men’s A, Men’s B, and Women’s B have shown a steady decline over
the past few seasons. In fact, the B divisions have almost ceased
to exist. The AA divisions have never been huge, but apparently that
is fairly normal in other Regions of USA Volleyball. Basically what
has happened over the past few seasons is that some divisions are not large
enough to support tournaments on their own without participation from other
divisions and/or teams from outside of this Region. Some divisions
have become diluted while some teams play up and other teams play down
in order to go to National Championships at what is probably an appropriate
level of play for their team.
This past spring, the Board included a survey
in the Digs newsletter which addressed this issue. Although the response
was not huge, it was almost unanimous among those who did respond that
the Board needed to make this issue a priority. The Region may not
be able to register enough teams to support four divisions per gender,
so coming up with a solution proved difficult. It seemed that we
would either have to go out and find several new teams to register or eliminate
a division. Obviously we would all like to see the downward trend
reverse itself, but that will not happen quickly. We plan to work
on that issue, but, in the meantime, we were hesitant to eliminate one
or more divisions. A task force of Board members was assembled to
discuss this issue and debate various solutions. A plan was submitted,
and the Board agreed to launch the new playing model in the coming season.
When registering your team this season, you
should choose the level of play that you believe is right for your team.
From the official start of the regular season through the first full weekend
in February (this season February 7-8), all tournaments will be sanctioned
as either BB/B or AA/A. If you registered your team as B or BB, you
will participate in the BB/B pool. If you registered as AA or A,
you will participate in the AA/A pool. No single-division tournaments
will be sanctioned during that time, and no A/BB tournaments will be allowed.
Within one week of the first full weekend in
February, the Adult Results Coordinator, Wanda Hsiung, will compute each
team’s average points per tournament, and each team will be assigned to
B, BB, A, or AA. In the event of ties, the total win-loss ratio will
be used to determine if a team will play up or down. Approximately
half the teams in AA/A will be designated to play AA and the rest to play
A, and the same will apply within BB/B. Teams registering after the
February 7-8 weekend will play in the division in which they register.
After the February 7-8 weekend, tournaments
can be sanctioned as single-division or multi-division, and hosts can once
again run an A/BB event if they so desire. Your team will now be
required to play only in tournaments sanctioned for your newly designated
level of play. As always, if a tournament is not multi-divisional,
your team may always play up. However, no matter what level your
team originally registered, you cannot play down.
Please note that your assignment will be for
Regional playing purposes only. If your team registered as A, and
you are told that you will now be participating in AA, you are still registered
as A. If your team plans to play at Nationals, you will still be
able to register for and participate in Nationals as an A team. Similarly,
if you registered as BB, and the Adult Results Coordinator assigns you
to the B level, you are still officially registered as a BB team.
Therefore, if your team wishes to go to Nationals as a B team, you will
be required to submit a request to the Eligibility Chair for a voluntary
movement down. If you don’t do that, you can only participate at
Nationals in BB.
Finally, any points that your team has earned
toward Regionals will stay with your team in their entirety. Regionals
will also be structured differently. As long as your team qualifies
for Regionals by playing in at least 35% of the tournaments offered, and
you have earned enough points, your team will receive an invitation to
the Regionals for the division in which you were assigned. You should
not assume that the same number of teams will be offered slots in Regionals
as has been in the past.
This playing model puts your team’s destiny
in the hands of its players. If your team plays well, your team will
stay in the division in which it was originally registered or perhaps even
move up. The hope is that eventually the divisions will even themselves
out, and there will be a reasonable number of playing opportunities for
all the teams whether they want to play a little or a lot.
If you have any questions regarding this new
program, please contact the Adult Results Coordinator, Wanda Hsiung, at
wanda.hsiung@chrva.org
or any other Board member. You can see a complete listing of the
CHRVA Board members online at www.chrva.org/board.html.
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