Format's for Div II/III Qualifiers

[jjefferies]

I understand that the usual format for a Div II/III qualifier is pools followed by DE's. From the final standings those who are eligible for Div II (based on 25% criteria) are selected. Then from the top those eligible for Div III are selected (again using the 25% criteria). There are some nuances in this autoqualifers etc.

But this year in Cal. with the Summer Nationals in San Jose we're having a lot more people coming out of the cracks including some vets who are crossing over. That is "A" level epee Vets who are qualifying for Vets foil or saber. All they have to do is show up fence and they are qualified. But for a young "U" or even "C" level foilist who gets to face an "A" level (in any weapon) in their first DE it can be extremely unfair.

So I'm looking for some way to make the process a bit fairer while staying within the spirit of the rules book.

So give me some feed back on this:
1. Pools as usal (7 fencers if possible)
2. Vets are qualified and drop out UNLESS they are eligible and intend to fence Div II/III.
3. DE's for Div II. FOLLOWED BY
4. DE's for Div III with seed based on the initial pools.

Does anyone see any problem legal or practical in this?

[mgriff]

Originally Posted by jjefferies

So give me some feed back on this:
1. Pools as usal (7 fencers if possible)
2. Vets are qualified and drop out UNLESS they are eligible and intend to fence Div II/III.
3. DE's for Div II. FOLLOWED BY
4. DE's for Div III with seed based on the initial pools.

Does anyone see any problem legal or practical in this?

Just that anyone who drops out of an event for other than a verified medical reason is eliminated from the list of competitors. If before the pool bouts are finished, it's treated as though the fencer was never there, and all of the fencer's scores are crossed out--in effect, the pool becomes one person smaller. If in DEs, the fencer is excluded and the vacated place in the final results remains empty.

[KD5MDK]

Yes. The initial pool results will have very little correspondence with the appropriate seeding of C and under fencers or D and under fencers.
Suppose there's a Vet B in my pool and no C. Let's say that fencer is doing his best to do nothing but not get black carded so as to avoid injury while qualifiing, so everybody beats him handily. My evil twin has no As or Bs in his pool, but a tough C who's slightly better than him. He comes up 5-1, I come out 6-0. I am unfairly advantaged because my fencer was not trying to win whereas his was.

Better way:
1) Have National Qualifier events, C&Under. This will provide your Div II and III qualifiers.
2) Have a Divisional Championships and Veterans Qualifier event as well, no restriction other than Division Membership. This will provide more, better, fencing and your A & V veterans qualifiers.

[mgriff]

Originally Posted by KD5MDK

Better way:
1) Have National Qualifier events, C&Under. This will provide your Div II and III qualifiers.
2) Have a Divisional Championships and Veterans Qualifier event as well, no restriction other than Division Membership. This will provide more, better, fencing and your A & V veterans qualifiers.

But there is no provision in the Athlete's Handbook for separate veteran qualifiers at the divisional level. The only qualification paths for veterans are to fence in whichever of the Div2/3 qualifiers they are eligible for, to fence in their sectional championships, or to fence in any NAC they are eligible.

In other words, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A DIVISIONAL VETERANS-ONLY QUALIFIER.

[oiuyt]

Originally Posted by KD5MDK

Suppose there's a Vet B in my pool and no C.

Note that the Vet B is a B in some other weapon (or wouldn't be allowed in the event in any case). In THIS weapon s/he is a U (or whatever). S/he doesn't replace the C appropriately in the pool unless s/he is a C. If s/he has a C and isn't trying to fence because s/he doesn't care about results... well, there's a black card available for that. Absent that approach, there's not much you can do about someone favoring their opponents because they've entered an event about which they don't care.

-B

[KD5MDK]

jjeffries was proposing an event in which veterans of all classifications were allowed in the pool rounds.

[mgriff]

Originally Posted by KD5MDK

jjeffries was proposing an event in which veterans of all classifications were allowed in the pool rounds.

That would still be against the rules--only veterans who are eligible by rating to fence in a Div2/3 qualifier may fence in those events (or any portion thereof).

And while the idea of a divisional championships is a perfectly fine idea, it would not be a qualifying [event] for SN.

[KD5MDK]

Originally Posted by mgriff

But there is no provision in the Athlete's Handbook for separate veteran qualifiers at the divisional level. The only qualification paths for veterans are to fence in whichever of the Div2/3 qualifiers they are eligible for, to fence in their sectional championships, or to fence in any NAC they are eligible.

In other words, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A DIVISIONAL VETERANS-ONLY QUALIFIER.

Doh. My bad. I was sure that 1) I'd seen other Divisions do it before and 2) It said something along the lines of "Divisional National Qualifier Tournament".

Sorry.

On the upside, it does say

VETERAN – must meet age eligibility requirements above AND compete in
• Current season Section Championships OR
• Current season Division qualifying competition for Division II and/or Division III Championships
in which only those with a “C” classification or lower (D, E, or U) may compete OR
• Any NAC during the current season.

So if you fenced Div I, II or III at a NAC you'd qualify, not just Vets events.

[oiuyt]

Originally Posted by KD5MDK

jjeffries was proposing an event in which veterans of all classifications were allowed in the pool rounds.

Perhaps.

I didn't take it that way, as he specified in the problem high-level vets fencing out of their weapon.

#2 I took with the other half of the AND operator (intending to fence in the event at Nationals), altough the fact that he included the first half implies that you're correct about what he's looking for.

Including high-level vets allowed to fence in their primary weapon appears to be trying to shoehorn the solution to another problem into the proposed "fix."

-B

[jjefferies]

Yow, such legalisms. But I see the point. In the generic sense I suppose a cross-over is a cross-over, VET or otherwise. And I believe there was a thread at one time that touched on high level fencers being able to fence below their level in a different weapon.

Thanks one and all. Every so often I need a sanity check.

A secondary question coming from the first, does it make any sense to have the DIV III eligibles have a second DE to determine who goes to DIV III? Is there any issue to be had with using the initial seeding from the DIV II pools for the DIV III DE? Or is it just cleaner just to have the one set of pools and then the DE with DIV II and DIV III coming from the results of the one DE?

[edew]

The problem is that the original intent was that there's one event, the Div II qualifiers. All fencers with a C or lower classification are allowed to compete in that event. THEN, the top X percent (used to be 40%, I believe, then down to 30% and now down to 25%) qualify for the Division II event. AND, all D-or-lower fencers who attend will automatically qualify for the Division III event. AND, all fencers of veteran age will automatically qualify for their veteran age group event.

Then, we restricted Div III entrants to top X percent as well (now being 25%). This encourages us in the division (the geographical one, not the skill level one) to hold a separate Div III (the skill level one) qualifier. While you can hold a combined Div II/III qualifier, I think a separate one is better. Note that there's no trickle down. A D-or-lower fencer who qualifies in the Div II qualifier (in the separate Div II/Div III qualifying event case) does not automatically qualify for the Div III. In the combined case, a D-or-lower fencer who qualifies for the Div II would qualify for the Div III by definition.

I believe we went through this exercise last season and determined that it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. It really doesn't make much difference running a combined versus a separate one. The main problem is the math involved in the combined while there's a logistic problem with the separated one.

[dberke]

Originally Posted by jjefferies

A secondary question coming from the first, does it make any sense to have the DIV III eligibles have a second DE to determine who goes to DIV III? Is there any issue to be had with using the initial seeding from the DIV II pools for the DIV III DE? Or is it just cleaner just to have the one set of pools and then the DE with DIV II and DIV III coming from the results of the one DE?

Are you suggesting that you fence pools with both Div II and III fencers, then separate them into their own DEs? If that is indeed what you're suggesting, then I think you are describing a format that's not sanctioned by the USFA. Just because the event is a qualifier doesn't mean you can use formats not normally recognized as sancitonable. That would be somewhat like taking a 32-person event, fencing pools, then splitting the top and bottom 16 fencers into their own DEs and calling each its own event and awarding ratings in each.

There are only two acceptable options for running the Div II/III qualifiers. You can either run separate qualifiers as two independent events (in which case most Div III fencers probably would fence both), or you can run a combined Div II/III event and determine the qualifiers using the qualification rules described in the Athletes Handbook.

Regardless of which you choose, you then can choose from the sanctionable formats used for all other events. Those choices include (1) single round of pools to a DE, (2) multiple rounds of pools to a DE, and (3) pools throughout. I suppose you could potentially run repechage if you wanted to, since that too is a sanctionable format.

FWIW, here in the WWD, we used to run qualifiers as all-pools (with a cut after each round). That took forever, and sometimes who qualified came down to indicators. Last year we switched to the pools + DE format, but we did two rounds of pools (the "Brazilian" format) and used the combined results to seed the DEs. That worked out well, and allowed a fencer who may have had a lousy first pool to "redeem" themselves in the second round of pools. You might want to consider a format like that to equalize things a bit.

Dan

[jjefferies]

Originally Posted by dberke

Are you suggesting that you fence pools with both Div II and III fencers, then separate them into their own DEs? If that is indeed what you're suggesting, then I think you are describing a format that's not sanctioned by the USFA.
Dan

Of course not. What was suggested and has been used before is to run one round of pools. Then a DE for Div II with everyone participating. Then a second DE for Div III with only those eligible participating. But the second DE would take the initial seed from the original round of pools. The main advantage is that you would have only a single round of pools. But I'm questioning whether a separate DE for Div III would make things any fairer for the lower ranked fencers. The issue being a decent but lower classed fencer meeting a higher ranked fencer early in the DE's and getting knocked out which does happen often enough in the combined.

[jjefferies]

Originally Posted by edew

I believe we went through this exercise last season and determined that it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. It really doesn't make much difference running a combined versus a separate one. The main problem is the math involved in the combined while there's a logistic problem with the separated one.

I think you are right. I remember the Division web mistress asking why a person who was ranked before someone in the Div II was ranked behind them in the Div III. She wasn't happy with having it on the website that way.

[dberke]

Originally Posted by jjefferies

Of course not. What was suggested and has been used before is to run one round of pools. Then a DE for Div II with everyone participating. Then a second DE for Div III with only those eligible participating. But the second DE would take the initial seed from the original round of pools. The main advantage is that you would have only a single round of pools. But I'm questioning whether a separate DE for Div III would make things any fairer for the lower ranked fencers. The issue being a decent but lower classed fencer meeting a higher ranked fencer early in the DE's and getting knocked out which does happen often enough in the combined.

Thanks for the clarification... I must have missed the part about everyone participating in the Div II event.

However, I still don't think this would be a valid format. I don't think you can "share" the pool round between two distinct events. I would be quite surprised if the USFA approved of such a format.

Your concern about having a C-rated fencer knock out a Div III fencer in the DE round of a combined event is reasonable. However, I would argue that the effect would be farily negligable. If you have two Div III fencers and they're both knocked out in the same round by a C, their relative placement with respect to one another will still be valid. If one beats the C to make it further in the event, they naturally should be the one more deserving of the qualification slot. So, in the end, I think they will still finish in the proper order.

If the effect of the C-rated fencers on the Div III fencers is a concern, you should run separate events. If you use a single combined pool, the C-rated fencers still will have an effect on the Div III fencers' indicators, which may affect the seeding into the "Div III DE".

Dan

[needle]

Originally Posted by jjefferies

The issue being a decent but lower classed fencer meeting a higher ranked fencer early in the DE's and getting knocked out which does happen often enough in the combined.

This is definitely a concern with combined DEs. Think of a very strong C, doing a lousy job in the pools, then "waking up" in the DEs, and knocking out every D in his bracket. In the extreme case of this, if he's at the very bottom of the seeding, he would eliminate in 1st DE the person, who in separate Div III event (or in the event that uses same pool seeding for separate set of DEs) would end up in the final.

[KD5MDK]

The odds of the 1st seed also being a C who would have qualified if they hadn't lost that bout is also possible. Is that less unfair?

[keith]

It's a shame there isn't a tournament format that allows a do-over in the event of losing a DE.

[needle]

Originally Posted by KD5MDK

The odds of the 1st seed also being a C who would have qualified if they hadn't lost that bout is also possible. Is that less unfair?

It is less unfair. Sandbagging happens a lot, getting sandbagged from Div II qualification by Div II fencer is fine - not a good thing, but fine.
Getting sandbagged from Div III qualification by Div II fencer is a different matter - yes, that does seem unfair.