Ok, so I’m officially buckling down and organizing another summer league. I asked a friend of mine, Gabe, from Kansas City about how Kansas City runs their league and this is what he sent back. Sounds pretty fun! Portland has something similar draft setup.
Gabe’s letter:
Let me give you some history. For several years we did team registration. This was fine but people would whore over to other teams if their team wasn’t there one week. Three years ago some people came back from Chicago and took charge of things and we went to a draft. I was a captain two of those three years and it went the same both years.
The first week / night there was a hat tournament this night people paid, registered and got their disc. During the registration process people filled out a questionnaire (name, gender, playing experience 1-5 (one being no experience, two played once or twice, three summer league player, four played in a tournament one or two, five being club level), what percentage of the games you can make and can you make the tournament at the end of the season). While they played in the hat tournament the captain that they were assigned to for that night / game would rate them 1-5 and put any comments down. These sheets were then pulled all together and names were sorta by gender then rank. Now your ready for the draft.
We planned on putting 12-16 people on each team so make sure you have that many captains. This past year we went into the hat tournament with ten captain and after that night we had to find two more captains. We picked women first one year then men first the other. We did a random serpentine draft where everyone pick a number from a hat and the number one pick a player, then a two picked a player and so on up to 10 or 12. Then the last person that picks gets to pick again and you go back down. During the draft remember that each captain is probably a 5 so they should loose a pick for the first round of their gender. Between all the captains we knew everyone on the roster with a few exceptions. Talk about players ’cause the idea is to get even teams. Know that when people are picking players they don’t have to pick a five the first round they could pick a one but it will affect their team.
One of the the things we did was to let people play with one other person. The catch was both people would have to list the other person on their form. This was decided so that spouses / sig others could play together. If you do allow partners to play together you have to keep track of how many additional picks are made. i.e. I could pick a five woman and get her five husband on my team so I would loose a round in the men’s draft for that pick.
Since it was / is a coed league we made a rule that you have to have a least two of each gender on the field at all times. I would have loved to have seen that three but our female numbers couldn’t support it. If you can’t play at least two you play what you can and you play short numbers. Talk with the captains about how they want to view summer league. For me it was a chance to scout new talent and for me to work on some throws. For others they just wanted to win at all costs. You will get some people that are real anal about rules but remember you will have some people out there that only know football and just touched a disc. It is not uncommon for the first half of the season to stop play and explain the rules to the offending party and everybody and give NO penalty for the infraction. But you guys tend to be more laid back anyway. 🙂
We played once a week although there was some talk to move that to twice a week. We played on Thursday nights that gave people there weekends if they wanted them. A lot of this depends on how many fields / teams you can get together.
We charged a lot but that was ’cause the fields were expensive. We charged about 35 buck and that included all the games, the tournament at the end, the dinner for the tournament, a disc and some tee-shirts. You should adjust your price to whatever you think you can get back. The shirts weren’t printed till the last half of the season…but that’s not necessarily something good. 🙂
These are some rules that we didn’t play by but for a summer league I liked. http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Park/4633/02ccul/notes.html