trbenedict wrote:This year, there are three players who qualified for last year's Ohio A who are eligible to return (Clark Smith, Hari Parameswaran, Andrew Zhang), as well as four players who qualified for Ohio B (John John Groger, William Groger, Tommy Varley, Pranav Padmanabhan, and Jason Wright). It depends on how many additional people sign up to try out, but giving at least the returning A team members a fast track seems both feasible and appropriate.
This seemed to work pretty well last year. I'd endorse it again for this year as well.
trbenedict wrote:To chip in my two cents, I think an in-person tryout can run similarly (and transparently) to how the online tryouts have the past couple years...last year the format sought to find players to fill chairs for literature, science & math, history, RMP, and fine arts, and that was done by tracking the percentage of tossups a player got in a category (questions answered/questions heard). There was also an advantage given to players who had distinguished themselves as exceptional performers during the year and players who had previously qualified for a NASAT team (those players got to skip prelims and go straight to the finals). I'm not sure what the format for the last in-person tryout was (perhaps Tom or others could describe so we don't succumb to repeated pitfalls), but I feel confident the community has learned from the last few selection procedures and can put on a fair and efficient in-person tryout.
Yeah, so by and all large, every year that there were online tryouts there were also progressive updates as to who stood where along with pretty established criteria. When the last in-person tryouts were conducted, there were no updates through the day as to where everyone stood. Instead, players were shuffled across rooms with no apparent rhyme nor reason while the people behind the planning process were in a closed-door control room. I don't think that latter part is problematic, but given the fact that no scores or updates were provided throughout the day (or posted publicly after the fact) to the participants or the coaches that attended (they were all kept on a chalkboard in the room that no one was to enter in) and especially considering that the sixth player to round out Team Ohio that year averaged <20ppg in the tournament the day before (while another try-out participant, who was passed over, went 44-44-22 in that same event) with the justification of "it's an experiment, he's eclectic" with nothing to suggest their invitation to join was merit-based, one can't help but think that the goalposts kept getting pushed and that there weren't six spots to play for - there were five.
In sum, I believe that this year's tryouts should incorporate some "here's where the field is playing out, here's where the points are falling in what category and who is scoring what." That alone would pretty much eliminate my concerns about (lack of) transparency in this process. Again, I don't think the closed room for analysis and discussing who we want put where for the next room assignment is bad; I just believe that if we're having players drive from all across the state for these tryouts (whether or not their school is attending the main event that these tryouts will be appended to), then the players should be afforded the right to know where they stand and where. I think you'd find this to be beneficial as well, Tyler, since you have two players on your high school team who certainly are capable of being invited for one, or two, spots on Team Ohio 2018 and because you('ll be) wear(ing) the coaching hats for both teams.