Southern Arizona Friendship Cup

Team captains,

The following is for your consideration and assistance in forming your teams.

"No Senior Left Behind"

We have paraphrased a well known wording.

We might deal with situation in which for 6 spots in a team we have 10 or more players.
Our vision should be that ALL of them should be team members. Once players sign-up and pick a home team, he/she should be included without any rating considerations or other prerequisites. If player plays for one team (even 1 match) he/she can not play for another team in the same season, but he/she can change teams between seasons. It should be very valuable and beneficial for players to be part of their home team. First of all it develops unity, shared values, friendship and sportsmanship.

Selection process

It's extremely important to make the selection process transparent and fair. The following criteria could be taken into an account;

• Availability

• Rating

• Schedule preferences

• Willingness to play away matches

• Carpooling

• Behavior “following USATT rules including match conduct and sportsmanship”
  
  

How each team captain decides the criteria for selecting team players on a given day will be up to them but, consideration in the above order might be considered.

Ratings

How do you determine ratings for players who desire a spot on your team. You may or may not be able to use tournament rating, league rating, or recent matches.

Why not?

• Some recreational players play better than rated players

• Some USATT tournament rated players may not have played a tournament in many years and can not play at their old rating

• Some USATT tournament rated players may not have played a tournament in many years but have been practicing and are much improved
  
  

Why you might be able to?

• If you have an active league and ALL of your prospective team members play in the league regularly then you might have a sound basis for using their league ratings.

• If the team captain and all of the players know each other well enough it could be possible to assign unofficial ratings to prioritize each player

Qualification matches

If the above does not work then team captains could schedule some qualification matches. This should be done as often as the team captain thinks is necessary.

There are many ways this could be done but since most USATT events are done in a round robin manner you might consider this format.

• Divide your players into groups of 3 minimum to 6 maximum.

• Put your rated players into one group and unrated players in another group. Usually, but not always, rated players play better than unrated players. If you know you have an unrated player that should be in the first group, then by all means put that player there.

• It may not be possible to do this all in one day, but the same results should be had if done in a reasonable time period, such as over a two week period. These matches could be played during regular weekly practice, league play or any other settings based on players preferences or captain's decision.

• Players report the results of these matches to the team captain.

• If necessary the top two players in the second group could play a round robin with the bottom two players in the first group to determine the relationship between the groups and player final rankings.

• Based on these results team captains should be able to rate all of the players fairly and impartially.

• In the case of a new team member during the season he/she should play various level players to determine his/her ranking within the team.

Team captains, remember, the primary reason for this "cup challenge" is to develop and renew friendships.

You may want to have your higher rated players give you as much commitment as possible so you can maintain a reasonably stable team for competitive purposes and to keep your substitutions to a minimum.

In addition each club may have lower rated players that normally would not get the chance to participate in an event like this. Please try to include them. Every home team should have several lower rated players who do not wish to travel but would be more than willing to play against teams that have lower rated players who are willing to travel. Discuss this with your opposing team captain and if at all possible bring some lower rated players along. You might not include them in your teams scoring but they will still have a chance to compete which should give them a feeling of belonging and friendship. Just because their abilities do not normally allow them to compete it certainly does not reduce their desires for friendship and competitiveness.

Final step

Team captains should now have a solid basis for determining the selection order for a particular match. It is very probable that some of the players may not be able to make a match for any number of reasons , therefore substitutions could be a regular occurrence. The above procedures should give the team captains a fair method for selection.

All of the above discussions are an attempt to accomplish several things.

• First and foremost we want this to be FUN.

• We would like to have as many club members participate as possible.

• We would like to develop a genuine friendship among the various clubs.

• We would like to see personal friendships develop or be renewed.

• And did I say this should be FUN?

And finally, the winning team will be presented the “Southern Arizona Friendship Cup” at the end of the season.

Bragging rights are necessary, even in a friendly competition!

Larry Smith

Interim Director

Southern Arizona Friendship Cup
Larry@TimeYourFunds.com

Larry@SouthwestNaturePhotos.com

520-255-1993