New seeding rules for WYYC

[unklesteve (Steve Brown)]

@Q

What’s wrong with granting players more experience on a larger stage. More players will rally around a scene if one of their own is sent straight through to the finals, as opposed to the semi or quarter finals. I also believe that there will be more incentive for the scene to try and get back up to that level, because the best player gets a slot in the World Finals.

And to be fair, they are still the winner of their respective nationals contest, which means they have some level of skill beyond that of their counterparts. It’s not as though the winner of the Vietnam nationals contest will be trying to Walk the Dog on-stage, they will have some level of skill that they can build on.

Actually, there have been National champions who showed up at Worlds and were Walking the Dog on stage. Not even joking.

When attendance was lower and the number of national qualifiers was smaller, it wasn’t a big deal. But when you have 190 prelims in 1A, and there are people struggling in that group to make it to finals who are clearly of a higher level of play than seeded National champions, you have to rethink your contest structure.

I’m all for everyone getting the opportunity to hone their skills and level up, but when you’re talking about a contest the size of Worlds, at some point you’ve gotta start trimming things back to keep everything not only manageable, but fair to the judges and other players.

[quinton (Q)]

@Steve Brown

Actually, there have been National champions who showed up at Worlds and were Walking the Dog on stage. Not even joking.

When attendance was lower and the number of national qualifiers was smaller, it wasn’t a big deal. But when you have 190 prelims in 1A, and there are people struggling in that group to make it to finals who are clearly of a higher level of play than seeded National champions, you have to rethink your contest structure.

I’m all for everyone getting the opportunity to hone their skills and level up, but when you’re talking about a contest the size of Worlds, at some point you’ve gotta start trimming things back to keep everything not only manageable, but fair to the judges and other players.

I see where you come from, and I appreciate the sentiment/explanation/reasoning.

My initial rejection to the idea came from a place of “flavor” I guess you could say. It feels like “worlds” should be the guys who won their respective nationals titles competing against each other for this bigger, more illustrious title, ya dig?

[vegabomb (LJ)]

I searched for more pertinent information but this was the easiest to find.

WATCH: 5 Olympic Underdogs Who Have Shaken Up The Summer Games

My opinion is that anyone that wins a national title should have a seed to the world title. I’ve not been to a WYYC. This is just my thought.

[Yossarian]

National champions will still be competing for the World title. If they are capable of winning Worlds, they are capable of getting through a round of preliminaries as well. Getting seeded straight to the semi-finals is still a pretty good advantage.

Re:the parallel to the Olympics: The Olympics don’t seed anyone past prelims straight into finals. Everyone has to go through the preliminary heats in events that have them, which means that the finals often end up with multiple athletes from the same country, and that most countries won’t have any athletes in the finals of a particular event. Being a national champion also doesn’t automatically qualify you for the Olympics. Athletes have to meet certain qualifying standards in addition to making it through their national trials, which is similar to the IYYF having national champions compete with other world class players (either at EYYC/AP, or in the semis at Worlds) before putting them into finals.

Players can still earn a seed into finals by winning one of the major international regional competitions. Events like EYYC and AP were previously in an awkward position in the Worlds structure. They are above the national contests in their regions and provide some of the strongest level of competition below Worlds, but being the European champion or the Asia-Pacific champion didn’t mean anything at Worlds.

U.S. Nationals does not give a seed to every state–rather, seeds are reserved for regional champions who compete at a level between the individual states and the entire nation. It makes sense to use the same structure to bridge between national contests and the World contest, especially since those bridge events already exist.

With the past seed structure, it would not take much for the semifinal round to actually have a stronger field than the finals. That would likely happen as more countries start sending players to Worlds. Finals are the most anticipated part of the event, and they are best when the strongest players are competing. Having an incredible set of 1:30 semifinal freestyles followed by a noticeable drop in overall quality in the 3:00 finals would be a huge disappointment (not to mention confusing) to the audience. I think it would end up hurting interest in the contest.

You could also end up with a situation where the other major contests (AP, EYYC, etc) start having clearly stronger fields for finals than Worlds, which would undermine the legitimacy of the World contest as a true world championship.

Furthermore, if all of the countries that recognize the IYYF organized national contests and sent players to worlds, there would not be enough spots in finals to accommodate them all. If the IYYF is successful in growing the organization of competitive yoyoing to that point, this change would be necessary no matter what. It would be literally impossible to give them all seeds into finals given the provision that they feel the largest field they can judge fairly and accurately is 15-20. Again, this is where reserving the Finals seeds for larger regional events makes more sense in terms of both elevating the level of competition and ensuring the event can grow smoothly.

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1:30 semis seems like a good change. The margin of error for 1:00 freestyles is really tight, and a lot of great players have gotten knocked out by small mistakes. Giving them a little more time to work with will hopefully give players a little more leeway to showcase their skill.

30-second freestyles will be intense. It is good players are given a reasonable opportunity to avoid them, though, and something definitely had to be done about the time strain of 1A prelims. I’m glad the IYYF is thinking proactively to try to address these issues.

[quinton (Q)]

@Yossarian

Re:the parallel to the Olympics: The Olympics don’t seed anyone past prelims straight into finals. Everyone has to go through the preliminary heats in events that have them, which means that the finals often end up with multiple athletes from the same country, and that most countries won’t have any athletes in the finals of a particular event. Being a national champion also doesn’t automatically qualify you for the Olympics. Athletes have to meet certain qualifying standards in addition to making it through their national trials, which is similar to the IYYF having national champions compete with other world class players (either at EYYC/AP, or in the semis at Worlds) before putting them into finals.

I disagree with you here. Drawing parallel to the Olympics is actually a fallacy, in that the similarities stop at “Mulitinational Contests”. The Olympics consist of countries putting forth their best athletes to compete against other nation’s best. Even past gold winners aren’t seeded any further because the Olympics is more about trying to show that all of the countries are on equal footing and have the same chance of getting gold. Worlds is way more individual oriented, while the Olympics is focused on unification.

[snowmanjoshu]

Steve’s right, and here’s why.

If you’ve won Vietnam nationals, you’ve still got a huge advantage over everyone else - you skip the first two rounds and go straight into the final qualifier. If you’re really good enough to compete with the other National winners, you’ll go through and get to compete in finals.

That simple, really. National winners still get a huge advantage, and those good enough to deserve to be in finals will be in finals. You’re not taking anything away from them, you’re still handing them a time-saving advantage.

[quinton (Q)]

You’re a little late to the party, pal/

[Yossarian]

I’m not saying the Olympics and the WYYC work the same way or have the same purpose. Just that the Olympics give less of an advantage to national champions than the WYYC does even with the new rules, since vegabomb was drawing a parallel to the Olympics, and that having national champions do a round of qualifying won’t prevent an unexpected world champion from emerging. The unexpected Olympic champions in the linked article still had to go through the same preliminary events (if any existed) as other entrants in their event.

If the WYYC is more individual-oriented and less nation-oriented, wouldn’t that give them less reason to guarantee every country gets a spot in the finals and more reason to try to get the most-skilled players in the finals?

[quinton (Q)]

@Yossarian

If the WYYC is more individual-oriented and less nation-oriented, wouldn’t that give them less reason to guarantee every country gets a spot in the finals and more reason to try to get the most-skilled players in the finals?

You’re right.

[unklesteve (Steve Brown)]

I think the new system is a great halfway point. National champions are still seeded through to Semis, which is still a HUGE deal and puts them way ahead of the rest of the pack. But this guarantees that we really do have the best of the best in finals, and I think it’s going to give us a higher level of play in finals…which is necessary if we’re going to grow the sport, the event, and attract larger $$ sponsors.

[quinton (Q)]

@Steve Brown

I think the new system is a great halfway point. National champions are still seeded through to Semis, which is still a HUGE deal and puts them way ahead of the rest of the pack. But this guarantees that we really do have the best of the best in finals, and I think it’s going to give us a higher level of play in finals…which is necessary if we’re going to grow the sport, the event, and attract larger $$ sponsors.

I can agree.