Unique Tourney Format--feedback wanted

[rotationslim]

Am running a tournament for church league this Saturday. Have 4 teams, High School age boys. They have been playing each other all year, now it is time for a tournament. We play a first round round robin where everyone plays everyone else, then seed into a 4 team bracket to determine champion.

Times are pretty set and quick, as we only have about 2 and a half hours to do the whole thing. It has been done in years past, and is fun because it is fast paced, and everyone gets a piece of everyone. Am looking to make this year the best organized ever.

Below is the framework for each round, I wanted feedback, anyone see any glaring problems? suggestions?

Round Robin Round
Games: Single 8:00 Period
Clock: Does not stop, unless on a foul by leading (or tied) team in final minute of game.
Timeouts: One per team per game
Fouls: Player leaves game on 3rd personal foul, team bonus on 4th, Double bonus on 6th foul.
Ties: Stand

Semi-Final
(seeded from round robin results)
Games: Two 8:00 Halves.
Clock: Stops on whistle in final minute of game.
Timeouts: Two per team per game
Fouls: Player leaves game on 4th personal foul, team bonus on 4th per half, Double bonus on 7th foul.
Ties: 60 second OT periods until decided, start all w/ jump ball, no extra timeouts, clock stops on whistles.

Championship Game
Games: Two 12:00 Halves.
Clock: Stops on whistle in final two minutes of game.
Timeouts: one in first half, Two in second half
Fouls: Player leaves game on 4th personal foul, team bonus on 6th per half, Double bonus on 8th foul.
Ties: 60 second OT periods until decided, start all w/ jump ball, no extra timeouts, clock stops on whistles.

Jack Johansson
stakesports(at)hotmail.com
http://www.bhstake.org

[Back In The Saddle]

Jack,

Looks good to me. It honestly sounds like a lot of fun. I tried to talk my stake into doing a one day, single elimination tourney as a pre-season thing so I'd have a place to train officials. I couldn't get them to do it. However, I think I'll run this by them for next year. I like how compact the schedule is. It could be done in a morning. And it would still be a good format to train officials. Plus it would get everybody excited about the upcoming season and give me a chance to see who the better teams will be which would help with scheduling officials. Hey, the more I think about it, the more I like it!

I'm just curious, did you come up with format to reduce travel?

We've got a valley-wide (all within about 15 miles) four stake tourney starting this week. Classic single eliminiation format with regular length games. It'll take us four days (spread over two weeks) to do it all.

[rotationslim]

Tourney format not orginal to me, I inherited it, I am trying to keep making it better each year. Travel time is not really an issue, as all wards (teams) are within half hour of of the Stake Center (gym). The really nice thing about it is everybody gets to play everybody, no one sits around too long between games, and with short games, they are often close and you get all sorts of exciting finishes, there is a lot of energy in and excitement in the gym for the event.

We will start Saturday Morning at 8am with a skills (dribble, shoot, pass) competition, then 3-point shooting competition. At 9am we start this and plan to be done by 11:15am.

As for training officials, we make one player from each team stay to ref the game after theirs, (2nd games does before and after) in adult play. We don't have "called" refs, which is fine by me, why institutionalize pain on people, this way is kind of "pay to play" if you want to continue playing, you (or someone on your team) has to take a shift reffing. For young men games, I just line up adults who know how to do it.

We did official training, a single, one hour session a friday night before the season started. We did it 10pm to 11pm, as we didn't want to take people away from their kids, this way they could put them to bed, then come out. We had a major carrot, in order for a team to be eligible for post-season play they had to send at least one person to be trained. 8 of nine teams sent people. Next year we'll do it again, and hopefully get a second person on each team trained, the goal being to slowly up the quality. Obviosly in an hour you can just hit the basics, simple mechanics, commonly misunderstood rules, and house rules, but it cut down a lot on "Hey, a technical foul is only one shot" stuff.

Another nice pre-season tourney that you may want to consider is a 3-on-3 event . We have done that 2 years in a row now, traditionally the day after Christmas. We bring in a driveway type portable hoop, put it up at half court, and have 3 games going at once, we do 1 hours blocks, youth first, then crossover (family, and 1 adult & 2 kids) and adults. It is a lot of fun, and good to get out and get some exercise that time of year (we live in often snowy Michigan)

I love the thought of that traditional tourney that you got going there, that's pretty neat. Geography (and an ugly history) prevents us from doing that, ours is just within our own stake.

[Adam]

Stake?

[Camron Rust]

Originally posted by Snaqwells
Stake?

It a church term for a level of organization of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Each congregation is a "Ward" or "Branch". Approximately 7-10 of those are organizationally (and geographically) grouped together in "Stakes" which are in turn grouped into "Areas".

Often each congregation/ward has a team that plays in a Stake-wide league. Sometimes, multiple Stakes have a tourney between the best from each Stake.

[Camron Rust]

Originally posted by rotationslim

As for training officials, we make one player from each team stay to ref the game after theirs, (2nd games does before and after) in adult play. We don't have "called" refs, which is fine by me, why institutionalize pain on people, this way is kind of "pay to play" if you want to continue playing, you (or someone on your team) has to take a shift reffing. For young men games, I just line up adults who know how to do it.

This is pretty much how I do it. For adults, we only have two games per night. First game provides refs for 2nd and 2nd provides for first.

Originally posted by rotationslim

We did official training, a single, one hour session a friday night before the season started. ... We had a major carrot, in order for a team to be eligible for post-season play they had to send at least one person to be trained. 8 of nine teams sent people. Next year we'll do it again, and hopefully get a second person on each team trained, the goal being to slowly up the quality. Obviosly in an hour you can just hit the basics, simple mechanics, commonly misunderstood rules, and house rules, but it cut down a lot on "Hey, a technical foul is only one shot" stuff.

I hold a 2 hour training class prior to the season. I encourage each ward to send at least two people and as many more as they want. Some send 6 or 7.

My carrot is that standings are determined by a point system that considers wins and losses as well as covering the referee assignments:

Win=2
Loss=1
Forfeit=0 (usually because of insufficient number of players...rarely occurs)

Trained Ref=2 (I grant waivers for some referees that didn't attend the class based on ability)
Other Ref=1
No Ref=0

So, for a 8 game season, each team can have a maximum of 32 points. They can get 16 points, just for having the refs show up.

I've experimented with different systems over the years of making sure each team gets a ref present.

My current system seems to have the best results. However, I still had one team this year that had no ref for over 50% of their games. They happened ot be at the bottom of the league anyway and the points were irrelevant. Next year, I plan to address this by, at mid-season, eliminating any team that has no ref show up more than 2 times.

When there is a post season tourney, the ref points have changed seeding and sometimes who actually makes it in the tourney.

I do the same thing for the Women's league...although it's often husbands that actually do the reffing.

[NICK]

We have had a few tournaments like this and we had a rule that whoever scored the first basket would win the game if the game was tied.

[rotationslim]

I like that tie breaker idea, we'll use it Saturday.