Club Championships

The Ice Chart below provides a detailed schedule for last season's Club Playoffs.  At the time there were several opinions epressed (good & bad).  To refresh your memory, there are some comments below the ice chart.

COMMENTS:

After reviewing the changes made to the original drawtime errors for Monday, March 14^th, I still do not understand the rationale for not wanting to eliminate the potential conflicts between the Club Championship & City Mens draws.     

There are only 10 teams entered in the new City Mens competition & only 4 are common to the Club Championships.  

As it stands, should the 3 affected teams win their games in both events on Wednesday & Thursday, they would have their ‘A’-qualifier semi-final in the Club Championships scheduled at the same time as their semi-final in the City Mens on Monday, March 14th.

 As I suggested on Saturday, the simplest solution would be to have kept the B2 & B4 games of the Club Championships at 6:50pm and have changed the semi-finals (games CM9 & CM10) to 9:00 pm instead. That way, all affected teams’ potential Club Championship games (win or lose) would be restricted to the early draw, while the City Mens games would be restricted to the late draw. It sets up possibly playing back-to-back but that is obviously more favorable than a forced forfeit.  

We fully understand that conflicts with multiple team entries in the Club Championships have always been ‘luck-of-the-draw’ and are difficult, if not, impossible to avoid.  That being said, with just 10 teams and only 9 total games in the separate City Mens event, avoiding conflicts for the 4 common teams is reasonably preventable.

I appreciate that this year has a new & more complicated format, and I won’t deny how quickly the draws needed to be posted, but having the foresight to make these amendments in advance will save the club potential grief should these probable scenarios occur.   I apologize again for my persistence, but these drawtime changes would be easier to address prior to the playoffs commencing on Monday.

I made the time changes yesterday due to time constraints and to forestall multiple queries re double-booked times (I went to the volunteer windup last night).  I fully intended to review everything else when I had more time.   As for Mike's concern, this implies that he will be playing in all events he has entered. He is not the only team that will be in that situation at some time during the playoff period.  I do not intend to try and adjust to everyone's schedule (nor should the committee) as that is the road to many errors. As for the confluence of championships, in future years the Cities will not likely be scheduled as late as they are this year and thus conflict is likely.  I thought it was an opportunity to work on a champions night as opposed to a final a day.

At any rate I hope you can help as you will see from Mike's note there is both an error (12 games on six sheets) and an unnecessary time conflict. The two events could have separate draw structures and defined times that would not conflict - including playing two games in one night, let alone two games on the same draw time. There is still time to reset the draw times for the curling in the second week and onward.

The Cities are not until April, hence the Club Champs play could be completed before the City draws even start. This was the rationale we discussed in the set-up when I was asked to work with the change plan.   

Also while I have you, although too late now, I will again suggest the seeding should be changed to filling each section of the draw equally from nights vs an across the club seeding - check the brackets for inconsistent distributions. I realize this changed along the way as a decision must have been made to bring in a number of 'wildcard' selections. Not sure why this would be done if the committee would like a fair distribution on entries.  

Just so you don't have to look here is a summary of how the draw as been set in reference to night distribution:  

First 8 bracket - 1 Mon, 3 Tue, 2 Thu, 2 Oth (Wed or Fri)  

Next 8 bracket - 2 Mon, 4 Tue, 1 Thu, 1 Oth  

Next 8 bracket - 1 Mon, 1 Tue, 1 Thu, 5 Oth  

Bot 8 bracket - 2 Mon, 0 Tue, 4 Thu, 2 Oth  

Total - 6 Mon, 7 Tue, 8 Thu, 10 Oth 

Our deliberations and posters declared that entrants to the Cities can only play in one event - no duplication. 

Now that the events are populated, I notice the following duplications: 

1) M Repp is in Mens; W Ferguson in the Open (potentially 2 duplicate players); 

2) M Hellwig in in Mens as is B Duncan (Brian is on both teams)- they play each other the first game.  Mark's Monday team is also in the Open; where he is the only duplicate. 

3) B Hill is in the Mens and his 3rd (Brad McArthur) has declared for the Mixed which starts later on; 

4) Kathy Mao is on P Mao Tuesday team in the Open and has also declared her Wed womens' team for the Women's event. 

I think that is all of them but I could be missed some.  How do we proceed? Technically, they should decide which team(s) default (or, we default them all).  Realistically they represent a sizable portion of the entire field.  Perhaps, each player has to now declare for which team they will play in our competition and remain with that team until winners in each event has been decided (they could find spares who would play ahead of the regulars). The duplicate player could re-join his teammates when- i) when his declared team is out; or, ii) at the point of having won the event and thus being named as the team going to Cities. I think the latter although the curlers affected would obviously say otherwise. 

I know the club is trying out a new playoff format this year and I think for the most part there are some nice aspects to the changes.  I think

there is one thing that does need to be reworked for subsequent years,   however, and it has to do with the 1-32 seeding that was used this year.  Using that seeding, only 2 of the top 16 teams are from Thursday men's   which is arguably the toughest league.  It would make much more sense to   rank the teams in their night of play and then come up with an equitable   seeding that spreads those nightly-ranked teams amongst the four   qualifying brackets in the Club Championship draw.  Simply taking the points that teams have accumulated on their night of   play and using that as the 1-32 ranking does not make sense. 

this doesn't need to be an Agenda item but I'd like to ask the  question "Is there a way to start our curling season in October and curl 

through the Brier to later in March?    As you know, this year our Monday curling ended in February.  Sure there was  the (poorly explained and poorly understood) opportunity for a couple more  filler (aka. 'nothing') games but weren't those games really just extra  games to help justify the fees paid?   Is the whole early-start / early-end only to satisfy the City Championship  schedule - in which, what?, 90% ??, of the teams don't even participate?  The few teams that do have the ability and objective of competing in the  Cities effectively force all other teams into a schedule that, in my  opinion, begins too early in the season and ends too early in the season.  Might it be possible to have one evening league as Cities league (super  league)?  That league could start in August, if necessary, to satisfy the  playdown calendar.  Meanwhile, those teams without the skill or interest in  competing in the Cities playdowns could start in October and curl clear  through to the end of March or even into the front-end of April.    Our team, and I think many other teams do not enter club play with the  objective or hope of pursuing the City championships.  And, I think most  people would agree that the season both starts too early and ends too early. 

I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here, but depending on what happens there could be potential for a draw conflict for at least 2 teams: 

Mao and/or Ferguson have a potential draw-time conflict on Tuesday 22^nd at 9:00. Both teams are in the Open Cities semi-finals on Monday M21, with the possibility that both could proceed to the Final in CO11, M22 at 9:00. On the Club side, we play each other tonight in an A Qualifier.  There is still the potential for both teams to make it to the Semi-Finals for the club playdowns:  CB5 and CB6, which is also on M22@9:00. In the event that one of these situations were to happen, would it be possible to reschedule one the games to Wed M23? 

Perhaps we 'missed the class' and didn't have a good understanding of the  Club/Cities/Players but we understood that when Paul went into the  post-season with your team, we were not able to enter our team in anything  unless we recruited a replacement player from inside the club that was  orphaned from another team.  Dave was going on vacation, as well, so the  chances were pretty slim of Ray and I finding a couple of curlers to go with  .. so we ended our curling in February.  We didn't really want to be done  that early. 

as the Club Championship draws to a close and the new format was put   through its paces for the first time, I had some observations that perhaps  

we can look at for next year. First, I don't think each night's points, when compared across nights, are of equal value.  For example, all three Wednesday ladies teams were ranked in the top 16 and three of the five Friday open league teams were ranked  in the top 8, but only 1 Thursday men's team was ranked in the top 8 and only one other Thursday team was ranked in the top 16.

I may have missed a game or two one way or the other, but to the best of   my calculation, here was the breakdown of teams in the Club Championship  

on a per night basis along with the number of wins each night's teams  garnered:

- Monday night:      six teams; 13 wins

- Tuesday night:     nine teams; 15 wins 

- Wednesday ladies:  three teams; 2 wins 

- Thursday night:    seven teams; 21 wins 

- Friday night:      seven teams; 7 wins 

On a percentage basis, the data looks like this: 

  - Monday:      19% of the teams; 22% of the wins 

- Tuesday:     28% of the teams; 26% of the wins 

- Wednesday:    9% of the teams;  3% of the wins 

- Thursday:    22% of the teams; 36% of the wins 

- Friday:      22% of the teams; 12% of the wins 

  The data is clearly skewed, as you might expect.  It does not include the  result of tonight's final which we can't yet predict.

What I propose is that we use the intra-night team ranking rather than a   1-32 point ranking that spreads the teams out over four qualifying  

brackets.  If we use the same qualification criteria as this year (i.e. -   top 6 teams on each of Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday; top 3 Wednesday  

ladies teams; top 5 wild card teams not otherwise qualified), the four A   event Club Championship brackets would be as follows: 

Bracket 1    Bracket 2    Bracket 3    Bracket 4 

#1 Mon       #1 Tues      #1 Thur      #1 Fri 

#6 Thur      #6 Mon       #6 Fri       #6 Tues 

#4 Tues      #4 Fri       #4 Mon       #4 Thur 

#5 Fri       #5 Thur      #5 Tues      #5 Mon 

#3 Thur      #3 Mon       #3 Fri       #3 Tues 

#2 Wed       #3 Wed       #1 W/C       #1 Wed 

#3 W/C       #2 W/C       #4 W/C       #5 W/C 

#2 Fri       #2 Thur      #2 Tues      #2 Mon 

Some latitude can be used in placing the wild card teams into the brackets  so as to minimize the number of teams from the same night playing in the

same bracket.  Just as a contrast, in this year's Club Championship draw,  the 8 team bracket we were in had four Thursday night teams in it.  With

some considerations, the above draw should be able to limit the number of  teams from any single night in an 8 team bracket to a maximum of two.

I haven't had a chance to look at what a B event would look like with drops from A, but I think the same philosophy could be maintained there as

well. in the grand scheme of things, the limiting of teams in the Club  Championship was fairly similar to past years with the exception of

opening it up for the possibility that a ladies team could win (I don't believe that ladies teams made it to the final round of 16 in past years).

In years past, we would qualify 8 teams on each specific night (Mon, Tues, Thur, and Fri) and have those 8 teams play down to 4 teams on their

respective night and then have those resulting 16 teams play a SKO event for the Club Championship.  This year, we still had 32 teams play a DKO

down to 8 and then a final round SKO to declare the Club Champion.  Both draws amount to about the same.  If I had one thing that I liked about the

"old" way is that you still played on your regular curling night for at least one more night following your last square draw game.

I also think you do have to keep something like the Players' Event. Perhaps not all the teams that don't make the top 32 (or whatever number

we come up with) want to play beyond the last square draw game, but there are definitely some teams that do.

I would have to think a bit about whether dropping the overall Club Championship in favour of multiple specific Club Championships is a

preference.  I didn't mind the two different events this year, I just thought the seeding for the Club Championship needs some work.

    > Thanks for your comments; I will pass them along to the committee reviewing the playoffs.  Do you have any thoughts about the entire process? This year we limited the number of teams in the Club, tried to have teams declare for City events, had a double for the Club, two games minimum for the Players, etc. 

> Do you see merit in eliminating the overall Club Championship and replacing it with 6 Championships (eg, the City winners for Men, Women, Mixed, Open, Sr Men and possibly Sr Women)?  If so, should these (depending upon expected entry) be SKO or DKOs?  I'm also envisioning the first week following the final GR being a single on the night you normally play (ie, then we have time to finalize and publicize the draw; plus, more teams from the night would get a chance to make the "real" competition).

Constructive comments on the year.  First, the ice conditions were great from just before the Junior's to the end of the year, faster than the usual with lots of swing.  Thanks for this, please keep it up next year! I have not seen the ice like that in years...perhaps pre fire.  Regarding the playoffs...I did not like the

format because it involves too much play for most people, particularly  if you want to be City Champion.  Being Club Champion is more important 

to our team than City Champion (we have been both...) but I do not fully  understand why the two playoff groups were required?  To me, the Club 

Champion should represent the Club at the City Championship, and if the  reason for the change was due to the possibility of a women's team being 

the champion, so what.  The highest finishing men's team can represent  as the men's champion.  Lastly, the communication of these changes could 

have been better perhaps with a letter to everyone and more information  on the web page in a timely manner?