National Qualifier Gets Four Berths?
 

This weekend I worked an 18 Gold territorial qualifier that ended up with four berths for the National tourney in OKC. It started with 23 or so teams on Saturday. Since the rule changed for 18 Gold where we couldn't use a time limit, we played every game to full completion. It made for a long Saturday.

The way the brackets were set up, Sunday had six teams remaining. I worked the bases for one of the two 8:00 am games (both games were winners' bracket games with undefeated teams). The losers of those games then had to play two other losers' bracket teams at 10:00 am, while the winners earned a berth. At noon, the winners of the two 10:00 am games were to play each other in a losers' bracket final, and the undefeated winners of the 8:00 am game were to square off as well. Then at 2:00 pm, the remaining one-loss teams were to play each other, and the remaining undefeated team was to play that game's winner at 4:00 pm, with an If game scheduled at 6:00 pm.

I was supposed to do the plate for one of the noon games. The problem was that all four teams remaining for noon time games would have earned berths for the National. So that made the two 10:00 am games the real do-or-die games of the qualifier. Our TD kept all eight of us umpires at the game site just in case, because nobody was sure if any qualifiying teams would stick around.

As it turned out, the two 10:00 am games ended the tourney. The undefeated winners of the 8:00 am games left the park right after their games ended without telling anyone if they would be back. And once the winners of the 10:00 am games also qualified, they said they didn't want to play each other. So, four (and possibly five) games never got played. A few of us umpires could have left early, but we had to stick around just in case.

How does a tourney get so many berths? Are there fewer qualifiers across the country this summer? I understand that there is one more 18 Gold qualifier up in Pennsylvania this weekend, and it also has four berths. What gives?

Same thing happened at our recent 16U GOLD Quaifier. Three berths to award, once the tournament was down to three teams, nobody else wanted to play, two of the teams that qualified had driven approx 18 hours to get to the tournament, so they wanted to get back on the road as early as possible.

TD was upset, as he wanted to see the tournament through to completion.

For those of you familiar with Premier Girls Softball, the organization that all of the JO teams are infatuated with now, they are the ones that started this trend. When they have qualifiers with multiple berths available, they only schedule the tournament out until the number of teams left match the number of berths to be awarded.

I certainly hope the umpires that were scheduled for all of the games that were not played got paid for those games.

Sounds as if your TD could have been much more proactive talking to these teams as they qualified to see what their intentions were

And if you mention playing double elimination for a championship, you would think you just asked for their first born.

Don't know if you were there, but this was discussed at a recent council meeting where some people wanted to penalize the teams that walked away from a tournament.

The game has been changed by the carrot chasers. The priority is no longer to see who is the best, but to see who can get seen the most. IMO, it has really ****ed-up the game and the manner in which it is being approached.

Your TD must be a rookie at this. I've done a number of qualifiers where only the top two teams earn berths, and we never play the final. The losers' bracket final turns out to be the last game played. It seems to be the norm around here.

All eight of us got paid for two games on Sunday, even though we only worked one game apiece. Six of us were going to work three-man for the noon-time games, but the TD said we would all get paid.

Oh, our TD was asking, but the coaches did not want to answer. Perhaps they felt they would jinx themselves if they talked about sticking around before even winning a berth.

Do you find out who is the best at a qualifier or at the actual tournament that you're qualifying for?

I would like to think both. Did you ever go to a qualifier to not win, but just play well enough which is sort of my point.

It used to be the qualifiers were for a specific tournament championship or trophy. First you won your division, then state, then region, then....well you get the idea. Even today you will find teams posting banners at tournaments of being the (enter name here) champions. But the geographical designations have almost faded away for a few reasons, but IMO the largest is the money, spent and made.