All-Star Concern About Small Limited & Small All Girl At Worlds

[UBettaWerkSnap]

I'm upset that MD Weathergirls and Reign are competing at the same time on Saturday. I'm not Lord Voldemort...I can't split myself :(

This sadden me as well!

 

[Knowcheering]

@Knowcheering your entire "sense of fairness" seems to be centered around whether nor not the same amount of teams get to day 2. Using the 70 teams that are in both these divisions (I know I am rounding) 35 teams would be done after one performance and not make it to day 2.

This way, 25 are done after prelims which means 10 more teams than the old system get to perform twice and fight for the chance to make finals. I think the 10 more teams that will get to compete twice will love this system.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that allowing more teams to compete twice is a great thing. The Prelim/Semi rounds solves last year's problem in the divisions with a large number of teams. My question is strictly about decreasing the % of Finalists in these two divisions only. You can give more teams a chance to compete twice by having Semis without drastically compromising the % of teams that get to Finals. The competition is not ending late on Sun- it wraps up quite early, relatively speaking, especially in the Milkhouse (and this is Worlds, the one competition where some people wouldn't mind it ending a half hour later)... There isn't usually going to be a huge dropoff in ability between roughly place 25 and 35 in divisions of approximately 70 (I am looking at some Prelim scores from last year and the difference between 25th and 35th place is in the single digits)... It is very possible to judge 30 teams against each other.. The teams in these divisions cannot help that their divisions have so many entrants...

I still see no great argument why not even close to 50% of teams will have nothing to do on Sunday in these two divisions only. I think it is harsh to leave so many teams in these divisions out of Sunday's competition, especially when MORE than half advanced last year. It really is quite a change.

It also provides for more manageable division sizes in each of the Prelims, Semi-finals, and Finals competitions for the judges to fairly score. I think that most of us will take any system that will provide more even scoring across the board.

I too support more manageable division sizes, and I believe this system has done that by having fewer than 50 teams competing at once in Prelims and Semis. However, this does not explain why the Finals schedule must be so tiny, relatively speaking. If 40-50 teams are being judged against each other in each of the first two rounds, 30 or so teams would be plenty manageable for Day 2.

I hope you can open your mind to this and see there are no perfect solutions. This one seems to me to be a pretty good one.

Oh don't get me wrong, I know there are no perfect solutions. I didn't even know there was a problem last year with the number of Finalists. :confused: (Decreasing it from 60% to 50% would have made sense though.) Last year's Prelims problem seems to be solved, which is great. At this point, I wish there could be a compromise-- maybe 45 or even 40% of teams in Finals? Maybe any teams that score very close to the top 25 should also be allowed in? I guess we'll have to see how exactly they are going to go about doing this. Cheerleading, sigh. lol.

 

[SharkDad]

Again it seems that your main point is to have more divisions in the finals.

It looks to me like this method allows more teams to compete twice, more manageable numbers of teams for the judging panels than last year, and a fair system of arriving at a more elite group of teams in the in the finals.

I respect why you are arguing your point, but I personally agree with what they came up with. I think we should see how it goes and then provide inputs to improve the process further if there are any.

 

[Knowcheering]

I love reading everyone's opinion and I'm wondering for those who like this idea, Do you think it should happen in all divisions? Have the at-large teams have prelims, then go to semis regardless of how many are in the div? Would this help Int Coed and the issues of how many go to finals. It sounds good to me, but you guys know more about the implications than I. Is there an easy way to make a mock schedule to see how this would change things?

I think it would be excessive to have Prelims/Semis for divisions that already have so few teams. However, it would give a few more teams a chance to compete twice. As long as not too many teams got cut in the end, I would be fine Prelims/Semis in every division. But it does seem like it would be too much.

I could be wrong, of course, but I see the Intl divisions remaining unchanged in the near future. It has been mentioned here before that the main goal of the Intl divisions is to allow other countries to be highly competitive at Worlds. The only way it seems possible for them to do that is if the Finalists are almost all foreign teams. While other countries have improved, there is still a long way to go for most of them to catch up skill wise. I realize the U.S. teams are mainly using the Intl divisions to allow aged-out athletes to still have a chance to compete and that they want to have as much of a shot at Finals as anyone else, but these divisions may not even have formed (especially not at Worlds) if it wasn't for the foreign interest in our sport.

 

[Knowcheering]

Again it seems that your main point is to have more divisions in the finals.

It looks to me like this method allows more teams to compete twice, more manageable numbers of teams for the judging panels than last year, and a fair system of arriving at a more elite group of teams in the in the finals.

I respect why you are arguing your point, but I personally agree with what they came up with. I think we should see how it goes and then provide inputs to improve the process further if there are any.

I really hope I didn't come across as wanting everyone to make Finals. I only wish that all divisions could remain close in line with each other in terms of percentages (50% isn't really a lot if you think about it). Some people have this idea that because the small divisions are so big, most of the teams must be weak. It's really not like that. There isn't always a huge difference between 25th and 35th place, whereas in a division with far fewer teams, there may be an enormous difference between, say, 5th and 10th. I feel like the small divisions get the shaft sometimes. Again, I too am in favor of manageable numbers of teams for judging panels, but if this sport can't judge even 30 teams against each other, how much of a competitive sport is it? Obviously, the fact that 45 teams are competing in the previous rounds supports the idea that it is possible to judge far more than 25 teams against each other. The Worlds scoring system is complex and seems to work well. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this issue of Finalists, but I do agree the Prelim/Semi thing is a good idea.

 

[SharkDad]

That sounds good. But you are comparing percentages for divisions of very different sizes. This year's method still makes the number of teams going to finals in these two divisions much larger than any of the others.

Another "across the board" suggestion would be just 10 teams from each division make finals. That would obviously be a vary different percentage depending on the division but many would argue that it would make for a much more exciting finals day.

There is no standard for 50% to make finals just to make it fair. 50% making the next round seems pretty fair and across the board already. I see a big improvement from last year.

 

[FlipForThis]

I think the way they are doing the much larger divisions this year is great! Think about it, I'm competiting in semi coed, we have only 14 teams in our division and only taking 7 teams to finals so if my team isn't on our game on day one and have one to many mistakes and finish 8th we are out of finals! If your an up and coming team competiting in small senior or small limited you have a better chance to make it to finals and leave your mark at worlds to where if your in semi coed and your an up and coming team but isn't the best in the division the chances of making it to finals isn't great! Now to me that isn't fair!!!