I’m assembling two teams from a K-8 school to play in a rated team event with K-6 and K-12 sections. The kids range from 3rd to 8th grade, most are unrated, and most have never played in any kind of tournament. I’m mulling over whether it’s better to place the four strongest players in the A team (even if this includes 6th-grade or younger players) or divide them by age.
If I go with the former approach, the 5th-strongest kid would become Team B’s 1st Board. If that turns out to be a 7th or 8th grader, however, then Team B would be forced to play in the upper section, where they’d face much tougher opposition (especially if the rest of B are younger kids).
Any present or former coaches out there with an opinion they’d care to share?
Talk with the organizer and the director of the tournament. What you or anyone from this forum would be right, could be wrong in the eyes of the organizer or the director.
You have third through eighth grade all in the same school?
My point is, usually students play for the school they actually attend, rather than as a whole, so the school they are from can get the trophy.
I have two middle schools, one has grades 5 and 6, the other has grades 7 and 8. The two schools have different names, and therefore when we go to tournaments, they play for the school they attend. This way, if a team from a particular school wins the trophy, it goes to that school. I would think there would be problems with a team made up of students from different schools winning a trophy. What school would get the trophy?
But then, maybe you do have them all under one roof and don’t have to worry about that. In that case, yes, I think I’d talk to the TD about how you can arrange it. Personally, I’d rank them by playing ability first and age second, then go down your list and pull out those that go in the K-6 section and then the K-12 section and run wit that way.
It really is a K-8 school, and all the kids on the team attend it.
I guess I don’t understand why I need to talk to the organizer or TD, though. As long as the teams qualify to play in the sections I register them in (i.e., no one above 6th grade on a lower section team & everyone actually attends the school they’re representing), why should they care who’s on the roster? If you’re just suggesting that I solicit their advice, wouldn’t that be a breach of their impartiality?
If this is a tournament with some history behind it, what harm can it do to ask the organizer what a typical turnout is? The organizer isn’t out to get you, he’s out to help you and your players have a good time.
Many tournaments have an ethos to them, if the sections tend to be top loaded with high rated and/or older players, your players might have a more positive experience if you split them into separate teams based on either age or rating.
The first rule of running a successful chess program is that the players have to enjoy what they’re doing, or they’ll go do something else.
The organizer or the committee that are the organizers of this tournament, will have special rules for the tournament. What the special rules are, only the organizers know for sure. Building a team is nice, building two teams is a little different. The organizer can say the team has to be within a age group, or a grade group, or for the girls a gender group. There are a number of minor rules the organizer wants for each team, this is the reason you got to ask questions.
The organizer can have a rule of having one team per-school, if your going to have two teams you better make sure the organizer will accept having two teams than one. The reason why the organizer could demand only one team, so the teams would not be paired up against each other.
It is not cheating or being unethical to talk with the organizer and the director before the tournament. It is the best way to settle any problem that could happen, because the coach and the director … are not even on the same page. If the director or the organizer do not want to talk about the tournament, that would be well a red flag. If the organizer or the director do not have a clue what they want or think will happen, that would be a problem. Talking, takes care of the problems that could happen or should not happen. As the poor communications between the director and the players makes a poor tournament; good communications between the director and the players makes a better tournament.