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If your school has more than one team, how do you pick which members go on which team?

We are currently trying to divide about 25 students into two teams for invitationals and cannot decide on the best method...

Our school district often has 4 or 5 teams (this year is the first year that our high school has 5 teams).
It can be a bit of work sometimes, but usually it's not too bad.

First we make the varsity team. That's the team that will be going to states, and nationals if we make it (only one team per school can go to states, no matter how well every team from that school does at regionals). Basically, anyone who was on varsity the year before is guaranteed a spot, and the remaining spots stay open so we can see if there are any 7th graders for the jr. high, and for the high school, we take new 10th graders who performed well at B division. The open spots might also go to an older kid who performed well but didnt make the team the year before, or came as an alternate (because there was no room, or we didnt need their events that year).

Teams B-E dont matter as much. We want them to do well, but we plan on having varsity do the best, so these teams are mostly composed of groups of kids who want to do events together. We check to see what events people say they want to do, and we divide the teams so we have 2 people doing an event per team, and we try to keep people who want to work with each other together. Neither of these are always possible, but we try our best. We often do testing to see who gets what events when we have too many people fighting for the same event, and sometimes we have too many people, so those that dont come to meetings often and dont try too hard will become alternates.

Basically, with 2 teams, your school should get 15 people that will do well, and have all events covered (by that, i mean there's no point in having 4 people on the same team who are all really good at the bio events, and then having no one on chemistry events). This will be the varsity team. The remaining team does it more for fun than for winning and going to the next competition.

For Invites we usually don't get into teams. For Regionals our coach splits us up into a team being "considered for States," another good team, and a not-full team of people that kind of just do one event (and not that well), er, those people. Being on the "A" team does not guarantee you to be on the states team, and being on the "B" team does not disqualify you.

My advice is not to split into teams- our team recently went against a very good school who split its teams. They dropped a few places likely because they split their teams.

But spilt teams allows for more people to join- you usualy have one main team, and one or more backup teams. We have 2- A team and B team, and the State team is a combo of both. The State team becomes the A team for the next year.

In past years, my team has used Invitationals to qualify people for the varsity team. The coach would take people who are interested in the same event and place them on different teams. Once the results from the invitational were in, the coach would take these factors into consideration:

1. What events does a person want to do? Once the rulebooks are out, team members are asked to write down the events they would like to compete in, and then rate their desire on a scale of one to four.

2. Based on past performance, what events is that person good at? If someone is a new member, you can usually determine what they will be good at by observing their preferences in events. If that fails, you will know after the first invitational.

3. Once you have a decent idea about what the person will be good at, take a look at the event schedule for the highest-level competition your team expects to compete in. You can now compare what everyone on the team would like to do with what the schedule allows them to do. This is also the point where you compare the differing desires and abilities of the different team members against each other. Ideally, this will end with a list of events for every participant.

Arabesque wrote:If your school has more than one team, how do you pick which members go on which team?

We are currently trying to divide about 25 students into two teams for invitationals and cannot decide on the best method...

For invitationals only:

• Decide which you want most out of the invitational: to win or to get a lot of experience.

• • If you want to win, make Team A have the best 15 students and put the remaining members on Team B.

• • If you want more experience, split your team evenly into Team A and Team B placing people who want to do the same event on different teams. Do this even if you only have two people practicing one event. This way you can see how well they can do on their own plus two others who are not working on the event can see what the event is like. This might spark an interest in members that they did not have before.

gneissisnice wrote:(only one team per school can go to states, no matter how well every team from that school does at regionals).

That may only be true for some states but if you look at the state results from last you for the state of colorado you will notice that Pouder, Cheyenne Moutian, and Widefield had more than one team
http://www.pphsg.org/so/stateweb/history/statec2009.xls

Anyway my school is doing the exact same thing as your school so taking what advice my sister gave me about this with around 24 students she said the only other year that the high school i go to split teams we had an 11 man "A" team and a 13 man "B" team for regionals. Well the "A" team qualified for states so the than moved up 4 people from the "B" team.

sweetcoop wrote:

gneissisnice wrote:(only one team per school can go to states, no matter how well every team from that school does at regionals).

That may only be true for some states but if you look at the state results from last you for the state of colorado you will notice that Pouder, Cheyenne Moutian, and Widefield had more than one team
http://www.pphsg.org/so/stateweb/history/statec2009.xls

Anyway my school is doing the exact same thing as your school so taking what advice my sister gave me about this with around 24 students she said the only other year that the high school i go to split teams we had an 11 man "A" team and a 13 man "B" team for regionals. Well the "A" team qualified for states so the than moved up 4 people from the "B" team.

Hmm does Colorado have regional tournaments? Cause otherwise, i dont see how more than one team per school can be at states.
In New York, you can have multiple teams for regionals, but only one team for states.

And yeah, that's generally what we do too, except our other teams (AKA non-A teams) usually have the max 15 people, while varsity has like 12, so we can leave spots for people who do well at regionals that arent on varsity.

gneissisnice wrote:

sweetcoop wrote:

gneissisnice wrote:(only one team per school can go to states, no matter how well every team from that school does at regionals).

That may only be true for some states but if you look at the state results from last you for the state of colorado you will notice that Pouder, Cheyenne Moutian, and Widefield had more than one team
http://www.pphsg.org/so/stateweb/history/statec2009.xls

Anyway my school is doing the exact same thing as your school so taking what advice my sister gave me about this with around 24 students she said the only other year that the high school i go to split teams we had an 11 man "A" team and a 13 man "B" team for regionals. Well the "A" team qualified for states so the than moved up 4 people from the "B" team.

Hmm does Colorado have regional tournaments? Cause otherwise, i dont see how more than one team per school can be at states.
In New York, you can have multiple teams for regionals, but only one team for states.

And yeah, that's generally what we do too, except our other teams (AKA non-A teams) usually have the max 15 people, while varsity has like 12, so we can leave spots for people who do well at regionals that arent on varsity.

Yeah we have two regionals one for the north and one for the south.
Here are last years results for both regions

South Results: http://www.pphsg.org/so/stateweb/histor ... C-2009.pdf

North Results: http://www.pphsg.org/so/stateweb/histor ... C-2009.pdf