2013 National Tournament: Wright State University

[silverheart7]

That's why our school has 4 teams going to regionals XD

We had eight

We're going to take five, and I thought that was a lot.

[fozendog]

I know New York sends two to nationals (almost) every year, but does Alabama send two?

[foreverphysics]

I know New York sends two to nationals (almost) every year, but does Alabama send two?

Usually, yes. However, we don't know about this year yet--we're always close to borderline, and depending on team registration numbers...well.

EDIT: This only applies to Division B. Division C never sends 2 teams.

[blockhead]

Not that it would make a difference for my former team but failure to align the events at States with Nationals is a huge problem. Sometimes the person in charge of States doesn't really care what happens after the competition he runs. It'd be interesting to examine the top teams at nationals for the past few years. Do those that end up in the top few slots come from states that align State and National schedules. I bet so.

[zyzzyva980]

I'm sorry, I just don't buy the idea that state schedules have to be aligned to national schedules. Look at the numbers here. 120 teams go to nationals. If you figure for every spot at nationals there's on average about two teams who really have the capability of winning that spot, you've got about 250 teams out of 6,000+ where the national schedule has a significant chance of mattering (~4%).

But then how many teams are actually competitive at nationals? For each division, maybe 15-20, and I think I'm being generous. Obviously every team has done well to get here, but if you really have a problem with scheduling alignment chances are you feel like you have a good chance at getting in that top 10. Most of the other teams are happy to be there, but they aren't going to let a thing like schedules ruin their weekend. They focus on the state competition so they can simply get to nationals. So that gets us down to maybe 50 teams out of 6,000 (<1%).

But if you're really going to contend at nationals, shouldn't you be able to overcome scheduling conflicts at the state or national level? If you're one of those top 40-50 teams in the country, you've already got a really good team, and it's not because of just two or three people carrying the team. You shouldn't have any problem finding solid alternates should the state schedule have a couple conflicts. So theoretically, this issue should matter to maybe 0 out of 6,000 teams in the country. (0%) Did I do my math right?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for synchronization. It would be nice if the state competition schedules could be the exact same as the national competition schedules, but that's just not feasible. Maybe an event supervisor can only be there for a couple time slots, or maybe a sign up event needs to be condensed into fewer slots, or who knows what else? Running a state tournament is never an easy task.

The bottom line (and TL;DR) is, if your position at nationals is in doubt, you better be working off the state schedule instead of the national one. And if you think that makes you less competitive at nationals, well, the strongest teams in the country should be able to overcome that. Of course, that's just my opinion on the matter.

[The Eviscerator]

I'm sorry, I just don't buy the idea that state schedules have to be aligned to national schedules. Look at the numbers here. 120 teams go to nationals. If you figure for every spot at nationals there's on average about two teams who really have the capability of winning that spot, you've got about 250 teams out of 6,000+ where the national schedule has a significant chance of mattering (~4%).

But then how many teams are actually competitive at nationals? For each division, maybe 15-20, and I think I'm being generous. Obviously every team has done well to get here, but if you really have a problem with scheduling alignment chances are you feel like you have a good chance at getting in that top 10. Most of the other teams are happy to be there, but they aren't going to let a thing like schedules ruin their weekend. They focus on the state competition so they can simply get to nationals. So that gets us down to maybe 50 teams out of 6,000 (<1%).

But if you're really going to contend at nationals, shouldn't you be able to overcome scheduling conflicts at the state or national level? If you're one of those top 40-50 teams in the country, you've already got a really good team, and it's not because of just two or three people carrying the team. You shouldn't have any problem finding solid alternates should the state schedule have a couple conflicts. So theoretically, this issue should matter to maybe 0 out of 6,000 teams in the country. (0%) Did I do my math right?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for synchronization. It would be nice if the state competition schedules could be the exact same as the national competition schedules, but that's just not feasible. Maybe an event supervisor can only be there for a couple time slots, or maybe a sign up event needs to be condensed into fewer slots, or who knows what else? Running a state tournament is never an easy task.

The bottom line (and TL;DR) is, if your position at nationals is in doubt, you better be working off the state schedule instead of the national one. And if you think that makes you less competitive at nationals, well, the strongest teams in the country should be able to overcome that. Of course, that's just my opinion on the matter.

I think his point was that by not having aligned schedules, some states that could be strong contenders are put at a disadvantage--even in just placing 10 places behind in a couple of events could be costly. I know that for NC, our state schedule is pretty disadvantageous for the teams that make nationals. We have 4 NC only events that replace national events, 3 "national events" that follow NC rules rather than national rules, and 18- rather than 15-person teams. Then, we also have our state competition very late, only 3 weeks before nationals. So yes, I agree that a truly rock-solid/strong team should be able to overcome that kind of disadvantage (in fact I've done it myself, although only for a single event), but is it really feasible for the whole team? With that little time to learn plenty of new events amidst AP exams, in addition to all the different commitments that each person on the team has, it really throws NC teams out of the contending position.

The past couple years, NC teams (at least in C division) have all placed top 20 (often top 15), but each time, they each have been more than capable of placing in the top 10, considering the fact that out of the 4-6 new events we need to learn, we usually place past 45 in at least 3 of them, corresponding to at least a 60 point deficit (that's only assuming that on average we place 25 in those events if we had done them in the previous in-state competitions),a significant hurdle to get past. Not to rag on Ohio (their teams have many other factors as to why they're so dominating), but it is really helpful to have the state schedules aligned exactly like the national schedule.

Generally, it's also somewhat demoralizing as a team--having 3 weeks to figure out a new event when most other teams in the country have already done it all year can make it feel like it's not worth studying for. And even when someone does decide it's worth working towards, it hurts their other events.

[kentuckyfan1001]

I'm sorry, I just don't buy the idea that state schedules have to be aligned to national schedules. Look at the numbers here. 120 teams go to nationals. If you figure for every spot at nationals there's on average about two teams who really have the capability of winning that spot, you've got about 250 teams out of 6,000+ where the national schedule has a significant chance of mattering (~4%).

Yeah, to add to The Eviscerator's point, it didn't really hurt Ohio in the past that our state schedules weren't aligned - this is because we have like 8 or so invitationals so that the national-qualifying teams always know how to do conflict resolution in scheduling.

What I'm wondering is whether or not a state tournament emulating nationals will affect those teams. Not just scheduling, but also how many events they run, if the events they run are exactly the same as that of nationals, and if they use the same exact rules as that of nationals. It seems like NY, NC, and TX, arguably all strong states do fail to get to the top 5 at nationals in recent years precisely because they have so many other factors to worry about. OH, MI, IL, CA (both N and S) seem to run by the books, and it seems like that has helped a lot of the teams there. I'm curious to what extent that it does affect teams. This may not be a quantifiable answer, unfortunately.

[blockhead]

I agree with Kentucky. The teams that do well "do overcome" the lousy scheduling. That is how they do as well as they do. But they can't do as well as teams that don't have" to overcome" it. The "if you are good enough you can..." goes only so far. Yes, but not as well as those that don't have to overcome____ (whatever). State Directors could make it a priority and structure states so the teams that work the hardest in their state can compete with teams from other states. The idea that doing so would hurt the other teams from their state who don't win is just a cop out. Even though our team isn't in contention to go to states, we don't look as strong as other states when a top finish is out of reach for our state's teams that go to nationals because they have too much to overcome despite immense effort. The answer? A new state director perhaps?

[EastStroudsburg13]

For New York, I don't know about "too much to overcome." For one, F-M and Gelinas have been pretty darn successful, and since teams can choose which events to do, can't the best teams simply choose to do the events they know are on a national scale? And bringing back a point kentucky mentioned, the top teams in NY go to enough invitationals that use the normal list of events (mainly in PA and OH) that by the time nationals comes around, they've had a good amount of experience with the national setup. So while in an ideal world, NY would be set up as just running the 23 events with a couple trials, I don't think tit's something you can look at and say "They could be doing better if not for this".

However, I think you could make a stronger case for states like TX, NC, and MT. TX teams can also choose their events and also go to lots of invitationals, but since most of the invitationals they go to are in TX, they follow TX rules where they can choose the events they do. This puts them at a slight disadvantage because they don't experience the setup of "23 events, and just 23" very often.

NC has a much stronger argument. First of all, from what I've seen, there aren't a ton of invitationals around there. Second, the setup in NC is really messed up. They replace so many events and change things in other events that it has to be difficult to prepare for nationals, especially since their state tournament is less than a month before nationals. Also, their teams don't do as well as teams from NY or TX, even though they are one of the largest states in the country in terms of teams. If they were to switch to a traditional setup, I think there would probably be a noticeable improvement in the national placings of NC teams. I mean, I guess they would lose this "identity" they may have been trying to build by being different from anyone else, but I don't understand why it's necessary, especially when other teams' national success is on the line.

And then there's MT. I don't think MT teams are going to be placing super high at nationals soon, but, I mean, is it really necessary to have your state competition so early with the previous year's events? Doesn't that just give the national champion an inherent advantage? I think it could do them some good to at least compete with the rest of the states so they don't seem like so much of a novelty.

So there's my two cents. While there are a couple states where weird event setups hinder teams' performance at nationals, I don't believe this is that great of a problem in NY. The teams do very well anyway, and they usually have a significant amount of experience from invitationals in other states. Also, we as a scioly community already cite NY as one of the top states regularly, so NY's reputation as a strong state is not at risk here. It would be nice if they changed it to a more traditional style, I don't think it's as dire of a situation as you make it out to be.

[Luo]

For New York, I don't know about "too much to overcome." For one, F-M and Gelinas have been pretty darn successful, and since teams can choose which events to do, can't the best teams simply choose to do the events they know are on a national scale?
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I don't believe this is that great of a problem in NY. The teams do very well anyway, and they usually have a significant amount of experience from invitationals in other states. Also, we as a scioly community already cite NY as one of the top states regularly, so NY's reputation as a strong state is not at risk here. It would be nice if they changed it to a more traditional style, I don't think it's as dire of a situation as you make it out to be.

Personally, I don't buy the "they do well enough already" argument. If it is possible that a change (such as adhering to the national tournament schedule) could allow New York teams to do even better than they do now, I believe that such a change should be made. While I agree with your point that New York teams' national success shows that states adhering to the national tournament schedule isn't necessary to do well, this doesn't change the fact that New York's unusual state schedule hamstrings its national-bound teams. I also don't believe that the availability of invitational tournaments in neighboring states is a valid excuse for using a bizarre state schedule; this effectively tips the scale further in favor of teams that have the financial means and coaching wherewithal to attend several of these tournaments in other states.