bamadad
Probationary Member
Posts: 9
|
Post by bamadad on Oct 26, 2011 13:48:17 GMT -6
Our city recreation league is a member of Pop Warner. We are a member of a local PW league that consists of 6 recreation leagues from four cities in the surrounding area.
Whenever our league has enough players to form two teams in one age division, we have divided up our talent to where both teams from our organization are as competitively equal to each other as possible.
We don't see the other rec leagues that we play against using that same philosophy. Instead, when they have 2 or more teams in one age division, there is one "stacked" team and one with whoever is left over. The stacked team always have an obvious size and speed advantage over the non-stacked teams.
What we have seen over the years is that the stacked teams from the other leagues always beat us while we always beat their team of leftovers. The teams from our league across all age divisions tend to have mediocre records as a result.
Our board of directors have discussed changing our philosophy and dividing teams up by age. For example, if there are 40 kids signed up for Junior Pee Wee, the 20 oldest would be on the "stacked" team and the 20 youngest on the other team. The thinking is that the 20 youngest would return and play a second season in JPW thus becoming the oldest (i.e. stacked) team the following year.
Anyone else have a better idea on how to split up teams?
Thanks in advance
|
|
|
|
Post by jrk5150 on Oct 26, 2011 15:01:09 GMT -6
We're Jr. PW as well in Pop Warner.
We have two teams in Jr. PW. We're one of 5 in our league with two teams at this level.
One program blatantly stacks, but not every year. Every couple of years, they mysteriously end up with an 8-0 "1" team with 10+ older lighters and an 0-8 "2" team. Usually it's after a year where both teams were decent but not great.
Two programs in our league do the age thing. The first year kids coming up from the E's go to the D2's (not division 2, just second D level team). The next year, that D2 team moves over to D1, along with any older lighters from the prior year's D1 team. So their D1 team is ALWAYS good, and their D2 team is usually decently talented but with a lousy record. You just aren't going to win many games with all 9 year old kids.
Our program along with one other program divides them up evenly. Both teams usually are pretty good in both programs.
For our program, we've had a couple of years where if we'd have stacked, we go to Disney. In fact, three years ago, when we had 3 teams (we have 2 now), our D1's (we just call our teams D1, D2 to signify who is the "extra" team) had a lead at halftime in the Regional Final to go to Disney. Our D3 team was like 6-2, and we (I coach on D2) had a couple of pretty good kids but we otherwise sucked. If we stacked one team, we are DEFINITELY in Disney. The next year, our D1 team is 6-2, we're 5-2-1, and our D3 team is 8-0. Both of us lost to the D3 team, so against other towns, we were 17-2-1 as a program. You think we could have stacked that year, LOL?
Brookline/Jamaica Plain here in MA stacks their 1 team and they go to Disney some years. In fact, I've heard they keep the #'s low, and have just the best kids on their 1 team. Their 2 team is up and down - some years decent, some pretty bad. I heard their 1 team this year is like 18 kids, all O/L's, LOL. Not sure that's true.
But yeah, it sucks as a program that we don't stack. But we still end up with good teams - our D1's were 8-0 and didn't give up a point in the regular season last year, while we were 5-3. They lost in the 2nd round of the playoffs. They could have used our O/L's, for sure. This year we'll both be 6-2 or 5-3, and we both think we're having a down year. But I look at the programs that stack blatantly or by age, and I really don't think it's all that fair to the second team. Those kids pay the same amount to go get their butts whooped every game? Yuck. At least with the age based, you can keep promising them next year.
And I would HATE coaching the D2's if we stacked the D1's. Maybe if we alternated who coached, so the D2 coach moved up to D1 with the team...
So if I was going to do it, that's how I'd do it. First year kids over here, second and third year over there.
|
|
bamadad
Probationary Member
Posts: 9
|
Post by bamadad on Oct 26, 2011 15:30:48 GMT -6
Sounds like your league and mine are very similar.
One thing I left out is that the players in our league know 1) our league's teams split talent evenly and 2) the other leagues stack a team. I do my best to motivate them, but when we play a stacked team, our boys seem to go into the game expecting to lose. I can tell the level of effort is not the same.
|
|
|
|
Post by coachbrek on Oct 26, 2011 16:37:09 GMT -6
We start from scratch every year we have registration the last week of school in the spring, and we draft our teams one player at a time no keeping kids from year to year.
The team with the worst record has the first pick in the first round.
We evaluate Mon. to Fri. the first week of practice then have the draft friday night in an undisclosed bunker deep unerground.
I'ts the only way to have even teams in our program.
|
|
|
|
Post by bobgoodman on Oct 26, 2011 20:09:42 GMT -6
Our city recreation league is a member of Pop Warner. We are a member of a local PW league that consists of 6 recreation leagues from four cities in the surrounding area. Whenever our league has enough players to form two teams in one age division, we have divided up our talent to where both teams from our organization are as competitively equal to each other as possible. We don't see the other rec leagues that we play against using that same philosophy. Instead, when they have 2 or more teams in one age division, there is one "stacked" team and one with whoever is left over. The stacked team always have an obvious size and speed advantage over the non-stacked teams. What we have seen over the years is that the stacked teams from the other leagues always beat us while we always beat their team of leftovers. The teams from our league across all age divisions tend to have mediocre records as a result. There are so many ways to organize these things, I frequently get confused as to what's meant. By "our organization", do you mean your rec league, or do you mean a club or other organiz'n that fields teams within that league? Do you have 6 leagues with both intra-league play and a considerable amount of inter-league play? Having an A and a B team, similarly to varsity and JV for interscholastic play, makes sense if the A & B teams don't play against the same teams. An example would be a league where the various clubs' A teams play each other, their B teams play each other, etc. if they have C and on down. In some cases a stronger club might play its B team against a weaker club's A team, but not in league play. If promotion and demotion of players during a season is allowed, it provides an incentive for players in a club to be picked by their recent performance to play on the higher class team in a given weak. But if you're referring to teams that all play each other round robin, or at least in the same circuit such that they have common opponents, then stacking teams makes no sense. If you had to stack one team just to be close to competitive, what would that do to the other team's morale? If you had to stack one team just so the other teams would be competitive against the weaker team, where does the stacked team get competition? Still, that's far from the weirdest situation. At DumCoach this week there was discussion of a league where a club formed 2 teams with overlapping rosters, both playing against the same opponents. Nobody thinks that's fair just reading about it. |
|
bamadad
Probationary Member
Posts: 9
|
Post by bamadad on Oct 27, 2011 9:58:51 GMT -6
But if you're referring to teams that all play each other round robin, or at least in the same circuit such that they have common opponents, then stacking teams makes no sense. If you had to stack one team just to be close to competitive, what would that do to the other team's morale? If you had to stack one team just so the other teams would be competitive against the weaker team, where does the stacked team get competition? Let me clarify how the organization is structured. We are the local Pop Warner recreation league for our town. We are a member of a regional organization that consists of a total of 6 recreation leagues like ours from other towns in the area. Our rec league has two teams with talent evenly split between them in every age division. I coach the Junior Pee Wee team and there are 8 teams total in that division. We play a round robin schedule. That part of your reply I quoted is the situation we face, especially the morale part. The only competitive games are when stacked teams play each other, unstacked teams play each other, and in our case, when we play the other team from our own organization that has equal talent with us. We always lose when we play the stacked teams from other organizations and we always win when we play the unstacked teams. Across the board, the scores every week are typically lopsided with the losing team scoring zero points most of the time. We have yet to play in a game that was still competitive in the 4th quarter. |
|
|
|
Post by jrk5150 on Oct 27, 2011 12:16:37 GMT -6
Yeah, that blows.
We (coaches) were just talking about that the other night. Our 1 team lost to the other program that blatantly stacks, this is one of their really good years. We spanked their "2" team that is the leftovers.
Here in the Pop Warner of Eastern Massachusetts Conference (4 leagues, each with Division 1 and Division 2, each with 6-8 teams), each program with more than one team designates one the "1" team, they play the regular league schedule. The rest of the teams within the same age group are designated as "extra" teams. We play each other, we almost never play the 1's. We play out of league as well, as not all the teams in our league have 2+ teams. To make the playoffs, we have to have the best record among the "extra" teams in our league and division, then we have to have an equal or better record than the second place "1" team (two teams from each division within each league make it), then we have to play that second "1" team off to go to the playoffs.
I almost wouldn't mind if we set something up within the conference where teams could designate which teams are going to play competitively, and set up a Division 3 league, no playoffs, where the understanding was it was going to be lesser competition. That way it's all out there in the open. If you have the talent, field two teams competitively. If you don't, then stack one team and put the other in the "other" league. I mean, you don't have to advertise that your D2 team is non-competitive, but you could put your first year kids there and not worry about them getting smoked by another town that divides the teams up equally.
I don't know. Tough thing to do. I know our town tries to make sure siblings are on the 1 teams to keep their schedules together. We as the D2 team might be playing in a town 30 minutes away from where the rest of our program is playing. That would be tough on all the families with siblings playing if we mandated the first year kids go to that team...
|
|
|
|
Post by Chris Clement on Oct 27, 2011 12:40:33 GMT -6
The age thing seems ok until the older team's coach wants to take just that one special kid from the younger team.
|
|
|
|
Post by davecisar on Oct 31, 2011 6:06:27 GMT -6
Our League is made up of 20 Orgs
Many of the Orgs have multiple teams in an age group
LEague rules mandate you draft to create equal teams
They dont tolerate any BS, this year they found out an org had stacked a team, that team forfeited all its games and the coaches were all relieved
Sure every once in awhile an Org has a team go 10-0 and another at same age group 1-9, but the league investigates and it's usually a coaching issue- not a stacking issue. The threat of the nuclear retaliation is enough to keep most in line.
This year my Org had 2 teams of 5-6th graders and we both went 7-2, no stacking. Had we stacked we could easily have won it all- instead we had a Division Title Winner and a Divsion Runner Up who were both in the top 3-4 teams in thier 40 team age grouping.
Sure you might have some differences based on the 5 coaches kids, but no blatant- hey we want this team to win at the cost of leaving the cupboard bare for the other team.
It's all about the leadership of the league and ours has excellent leadership at the helm
|
|
