Well the results are in and Iwould have to say the new preseason seeding tourney was an absolute waste. All it accomplished was adding even more travel to teams.

what results are you using to come to the conclusion the pre-season tourney was a waste of time?

in our division i thought it helped group teams fairly well, and my 2 cents is it worked better than if we had used the old matrix\grid of 1styr\2ndyr counts and size of program...were weaker "older teams" were in over their competitive heads...and stronger "younger teams" were competing below their playing level...

but i am open to hearing more of why you didnt think it worked, and what options you would consider to improve for next seasons placement of teams??

did some research, here are some interesting numbers:

"IF" the goal of the seeding tourney is to get teams of similar talent in the same division, then possibly a reasonable measure of success of the seeding tourney is how many teams during the season earned less than 20% of their divisions eligible points (meaning they were in over their heads) and how many teams earned more than 80% of their eligible points (meaning their division competition was too easy, not challenged enough)....

eligible points calculated as # of games X 2, so for example a 6 team division played 20 games, which equals 40 eligible points, so the 80/20 rule means who\how many teams scored more than 32 points or less than 8??

during the 2007-08 BTHl season:

*16 teams out of 85 in our league scored more than 80% of their eligible points = 18.8%

* 12 teams scored less than 20% of their eligible points (14.1%)

* 57 of the 85 teams scored between 20-80% of their eligible points (67.1%)


Using this same criteria, I looked at the 2006-07 standings and here is what I found:

* 10 teams out of 89 scored more than 80% of their eligible points (11.2%)

* another 10 teams of out 89 scored less than 20% of their eligible points (11.2%)

* 69 of 89 scored between 20-80% of their eligible points (77.5)...


this is just a 1 year comparison and not a trend over seasons, but the prior year we actually had fewer teams (as a %) who were very high or very low in points scored...and a greater proportion who were in-between 20-80% of their eligible points!!

does NOT mean the seeding tourney isnt the way to go, but perhaps more criteria should be used such as looking at prior years standings and kids who are returning, shots on goal during the pre-season games and not just the goals scored, etc, etc...

stats are just stats...how you use them to make decisions is the magic or science depending on your perspective!!

others have thoughts on this???

I can only speak for the peewee A,A1,and A2 divisions. ft.wayne,evansville,and dayton went a combined 47-2 in their league. All three won league tourney. All three had more than fifty percent of their team made up of second year players. My biggest gripe is we traveled past five teams in the A1 group to play our nearest opponent in our group (A). If you take those three teams out all the groups would have been pretty close.