original mercy rules?

[rotationslim]

The teams are from individual congregations (wards), so there is really no way to more equally distribute the teams. It is mostly demographics, the league covers 14 to 18 year olds, so when teams are on the older side they do well, and when teams are full of younger boys they stink.. so it is cyclical.

We could dump all boys into one pool, then assign for more even teams.. but they like representing their congregation, we have discussed it many times with the boys, and that is how they prefer it.

They would rather lose with their team-mates then be tossed into a more equitable distribution system. Maybe the quality of basketball competition suffers just a bit.. but I kind of like that they would rather represent their "tribe" and lose, then be assigned randomly with a better chance of winning. Even when a team is getting blown out at halftime and we offer to call the game, and re-set teams to a more equitable arrangement, they prefer to take the licking with their buddies. I kind of think their loyalty is refreshing. I am just looking for ways to keep the pain down during the thrashings. In the end we have a little "outcome based" scorekeeping.. and typically we don't post any points past a 20 point lead on the scoreboard. It may offend some of the "Inspector Javert"s on this board, but it is right for our program