Scioly.org

Unome wrote:I'm definitely on the side of open regionals here. I'm sure we could easily point to, say, SE PA C as an example of a regional where powerful teams fail to qualify for state because of unusually high competitiveness.

As I alluded to before, I would point to SEPA C as a feature, not a bug, of closed regionals. SEPA C owes its notoriety completely to the closed regional system.

Why argue about regionals when you can move to RI and not have regs?

EastStroudsburg13 wrote:

Unome wrote:I'm definitely on the side of open regionals here. I'm sure we could easily point to, say, SE PA C as an example of a regional where powerful teams fail to qualify for state because of unusually high competitiveness.

As I alluded to before, I would point to SEPA C as a feature, not a bug, of closed regionals. SEPA C owes its notoriety completely to the closed regional system.

Notoriety doesn't help the teams that are stuck there.

Unome wrote:

EastStroudsburg13 wrote:

Unome wrote:I'm definitely on the side of open regionals here. I'm sure we could easily point to, say, SE PA C as an example of a regional where powerful teams fail to qualify for state because of unusually high competitiveness.

As I alluded to before, I would point to SEPA C as a feature, not a bug, of closed regionals. SEPA C owes its notoriety completely to the closed regional system.

Notoriety doesn't help the teams that are stuck there.

Considering that Southeast PA gets the majority of attention and funding in the state in most things, not just SO, I think they can manage. I'm not losing sleep over a team missing states that might place in the top 15. Give that spot to a team elsewhere in the state so we don't end up with 1/3 of the teams at states coming from 4% of the state's counties.

EastStroudsburg13 wrote:

Unome wrote:

EastStroudsburg13 wrote: As I alluded to before, I would point to SEPA C as a feature, not a bug, of closed regionals. SEPA C owes its notoriety completely to the closed regional system.

Notoriety doesn't help the teams that are stuck there.

Considering that Southeast PA gets the majority of attention and funding in the state in most things, not just SO, I think they can manage. I'm not losing sleep over a team missing states that might place in the top 15. Give that spot to a team elsewhere in the state so we don't end up with 1/3 of the teams at states coming from 4% of the state's counties.

Regionals in PA is basically just SEPA in my opinion, at least for division C. Although the big 3 from SEPA improve by a huge margin between regionals and states, I wish there was a way to compare your position at the time. We are in central, which is not even close to SEPA in difficulty which makes it kind of tough for comparison. I like how they did the raw scores to help with that but I wish there was a way to compete against those teams at the time.

Isn't this the Texas thread not the "Deliberate over the SEPA C regional system"?

I don't mention SEPA once:P. Maybe should've replaced it with a TX regional, but I don't know much about them...tl;dr: yeah, guess we should start a new thread. Anyway, already type this, time to post!

Unome wrote:

SluffAndRuff wrote: What’s the backstory about Luo?

Roughly, he brought Mounds View from obscurity to national prominence. You're better off asking someone who was around then, I joined after he graduated although generally people who were active in 2014-2016 are aware of him.

It's a fun story, but I sadly forget the details:(. To be precise, it would be "*national* obscurity". Mounds View was competitive for many years, along with other notables like Eastview and Wayzata at the time (like 2010, back when another user, Koko, got Eastview to the top...). Luo comes along and basically launches them into the nats top 10 almost "out of nowhere" (if you were on the forums, the reason = duh). I don't even know all the details on how he did it, but probably a lot of recruiting and reorganizing to get all the members motivated and in tip top nationals shape. He's basically just that type of guy who would push you hard...not necessarily in a negative way? He's also the guy that started the MIT invite...which yeah, that wasn't done before and is obviously a lot of work.

lavarball wrote:

EastStroudsburg13 wrote:

Unome wrote: Notoriety doesn't help the teams that are stuck there.

Considering that Southeast PA gets the majority of attention and funding in the state in most things, not just SO, I think they can manage. I'm not losing sleep over a team missing states that might place in the top 15. Give that spot to a team elsewhere in the state so we don't end up with 1/3 of the teams at states coming from 4% of the state's counties.

Regionals in PA is basically just SEPA in my opinion, at least for division C. Although the big 3 from SEPA improve by a huge margin between regionals and states, I wish there was a way to compare your position at the time. We are in central, which is not even close to SEPA in difficulty which makes it kind of tough for comparison. I like how they did the raw scores to help with that but I wish there was a way to compete against those teams at the time.

To Unome: Why should this be a big deal? East said we can rebalance the number of states spots for regions if that's a big worry. If you offer open regionals as the solutions to teams that are "stuck", it sounds like you'd support a "pay to win" kind of situation (because of travel/lodging). On the other hand, according to windu, the majority of teams would stay put *except* for weaker teams and teams wanting to go to the competitive regional (?). There will be a good number of teams that would stay put anyway, so why not just redistribute spots accordingly? It doesn't seem like open regionals automatically picks out the best teams (just those that want to pay in money/time for whatever reason) or necessarily grants many teams significant flexibility, and distribution of spots would still be an issue. It doesn't sound like experiences are all bad, but there's pluses and minuses to both systems.

With that, a tangent: Why not support something further...if the point is to help some teams that we say are the best or want to improve (?) to get to States, why not scrap regionals altogether and just host tournies to give awards to the top teams or even top individuals. I am aware that's not what you said, but your approach is "letting people decide what they want" as well as favoring the "best" (?). On the other hand, there is a range of options to consider, and it doesn't seem clear that open regionals or closed regionals are completely better. It seems like you/windu/etc and East are going off different logic without addressing that. East on chat last night compared this with the bids debate, and I feel like we should know how each other feels on this issue by now:P. Would be good to start a new thread or drop this altogether if it's like that. Onto the next point...

To lavarball: This could be me not knowing your team dynamic / team motivators, but measuring yourself against other teams to me is either the purpose of invites or only helpful up to a point. If a very important motivator is competing against competitive teams and you'd be willing to travel to do it, why not just make that motivation based on invites? Otherwise, aren't teams aware of how they need to work harder anyway? At least in my experience, it's pretty easy to tell whether another team is doing better based on the years of past results available.

TheCrazyChemist wrote:Isn't this the Texas thread not the "Deliberate over the SEPA C regional system"?

It all started out as an investigation of why certain areas of Texas are underserved. Ultimately I think it comes down to outreach by the state organization and getting feedback from new teams in how to better recruit other new teams. Things like regional system and trial events, ultimately, have relatively small impact compared to concentrated recruitment.

syo_astro wrote: To Unome: Why should this be a big deal? East said we can rebalance the number of states spots for regions if that's a big worry. If you offer open regionals as the solutions to teams that are "stuck", it sounds like you'd support a "pay to win" kind of situation (because of travel/lodging). On the other hand, according to windu, the majority of teams would stay put *except* for weaker teams and teams wanting to go to the competitive regional (?). There will be a good number of teams that would stay put anyway, so why not just redistribute spots accordingly? It doesn't seem like open regionals automatically picks out the best teams (just those that want to pay in money/time for whatever reason) or necessarily grants many teams significant flexibility, and distribution of spots would still be an issue. It doesn't sound like experiences are all bad, but there's pluses and minuses to both systems.

With that, a tangent: Why not support something further...if the point is to help some teams that we say are the best or want to improve (?) to get to States, why not scrap regionals altogether and just host tournies to give awards to the top teams or even top individuals. I am aware that's not what you said, but your approach is "letting people decide what they want" as well as favoring the "best" (?). On the other hand, there is a range of options to consider, and it doesn't seem clear that open regionals or closed regionals are completely better. It seems like you/windu/etc and East are going off different logic without addressing that. East on chat last night compared this with the bids debate, and I feel like we should know how each other feels on this issue by now:P. Would be good to start a new thread or drop this altogether if it's like that.

I want to point out that Florida has an open-regionals policy AND redistributes bids based on regional attendance. My doing so, we dont make teams feel like they have any restrictions while simultaneously decreasing incentives and advantages to traveling to other regionals far away.

syo_astro wrote:To lavarball: This could be me not knowing your team dynamic / team motivators, but measuring yourself against other teams to me is either the purpose of invites or only helpful up to a point. If a very important motivator is competing against competitive teams and you'd be willing to travel to do it, why not just make that motivation based on invites? Otherwise, aren't teams aware of how they need to work harder anyway? At least in my experience, it's pretty easy to tell whether another team is doing better based on the years of past results available.

It appears your perspective is coming from that of someone who was used to traveling to alot of invites. This is the perspective of the top 10% of teams in my experience, not the case of MOST teams. The majority do not travel to invites and do use regionals as a way to gauge their competitiveness.
Most teams are NOT just aware that they need to work harder. Maybe the coaches are, but competitors need to fail in the face of strong compeititon to realize they need to work harder in my experience. A final point on your last sentence: You are extremely experienced compared to most at analyzing results - I doubt most people would be able to draw the conclusions that you can from past result data.

windu34 wrote:

syo_astro wrote:To lavarball: This could be me not knowing your team dynamic / team motivators, but measuring yourself against other teams to me is either the purpose of invites or only helpful up to a point. If a very important motivator is competing against competitive teams and you'd be willing to travel to do it, why not just make that motivation based on invites? Otherwise, aren't teams aware of how they need to work harder anyway? At least in my experience, it's pretty easy to tell whether another team is doing better based on the years of past results available.

It appears your perspective is coming from that of someone who was used to traveling to alot of invites. This is the perspective of the top 10% of teams in my experience, not the case of MOST teams. The majority do not travel to invites and do use regionals as a way to gauge their competitiveness.
Most teams are NOT just aware that they need to work harder. Maybe the coaches are, but competitors need to fail in the face of strong compeititon to realize they need to work harder in my experience. A final point on your last sentence: You are extremely experienced compared to most at analyzing results - I doubt most people would be able to draw the conclusions that you can from past result data.

In fairness, a strength of the closed system is that you can quite easily draw conclusions from past results, because you are competing against the same teams. You know how your team is improving or declining based on how you move up and down the regional rankings. An open system clouds that up a bit (depending on how many teams elect to attend their closest regional).

I find it hard to believe that competitors who face relatively weak competition at regionals, and then struggle against strong competition at states, do not realize that they need to work harder to improve. A team not in the top 10% of teams in a state, by and large, will have teams that they can measure themselves up against, regardless of what regional they attend. If a team does want to take the next step in gauging their competitiveness on a yearly basis, it only takes one invitational to increase their chances to compare themselves by 50% or 100% (depending on if they make states). But regardless of open vs. closed regionals, teams have to take initiative to improve, and the teams that put in the effort will succeed.