Re: IM tournaments

• From: cdbarker
• Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 09:09:07 -0700
• Message-ID: <000SNBKL3.00179B71K.12170551-quizbowl_at_...>

This is gonna take a while, but I hope it helps
you Allison, and well, any one else who might be
curious.

Over the past couple of years at Michigan, we have run
what I like to think of as a "layered IM." What rthis
means is that we, through eligibility rules, seperate
the experienced players (at least, experienced at the
college level) from the inexperienced players, at least
for the opening round. This serves two purposes: 1).
It keeps inexperienced players from walking away
from the event discouraged because they had to face
players that have been at this for a while (Last year, we
tweaked the rules even more so that no team could have
more than one player with significant circuit
experience, thus forcing members to go and find potential
teammates while at the same time creating more teams and a
greater competitive balance among teams). 2). It allows
you to set up a schedule where in you get the games
of the "Champions Division" done first, usually for
us on Wednesday (practice night anyway) and
Thursday. We are fortunate to have enough non-playing
volunteers to help us with the reading for those nights so
that all interested members can play in IM's. So
Wednesday/Thursday Champions Division, then Saturday afternoon, Open
Division (making sure you have scheduled it on an away
football afternoon and trying to work around the game on
TV, thus keeping your numbers high, at least in our
case), Sunday afternoon/evening Open Divisions, and a
Wednesday evening open division. This brought us about 40
teams last season. The tournament directors then pared
down the field to two playoff groups of eight, who
were selected based on W-L record and a strength of
schedule factor, thus not penalizing teams who played in
the Champions' division for facing tougher
opposition. Those eight team playoff round-robins are played
on Wenesday/Thursday about two weeks after the
opening round has concluded. This has the effect of
spreading the games out, and allowing the program to
conduct regular practices in the mean time. After the top
four teams have been taken from each group, they face
off about another two weeks later in a Finals, where
they play the four teams they haven't faced and their
records against the teams in their playoff group carry
over. The top four teams at the end of that play in a
double elimination bracket to get your winner.

By
spreading it over a longer period of time, you decrease the
initial commitment for the players who are new to the
game, while at the same time attempting to recruit
them. Use any and all advertising venues that you see,
and word of mouth helps. Beyond that, if you have any
questions, please feel free to ask.

CDB