Registered: Sep 2002
Location: London, Ontario
Posts: 4002

Changes to World Team Qualification including a win-and-go option at Nationals:
http://www.teamusa.org/USA-Curling/...ocess-announced

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Registered: Jan 2012
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If my 30 second review of this is correct, this should eliminate a big portion of the hate towards the program where Team USA is all but assured before a single rock is throw. Be in the top 25 and win and you go to worlds. I don't know where the magic 25 number comes in (too high, too low, or just right?) but this is a step in the right direction.

The release didn't say anything about the pre-Nationals OOM standings of the team that actually WON on the ice each of the last three years but I'm sure one of the dozens of people that still care will post that information once they turn off the Olympics and turn on their ice compressors.

Jason

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Registered: Sep 2002
Location: London, Ontario
Posts: 4002

On the first page of the PDF document about 2/3rds of the way down is the ranking of the top 3 USA teams on the Order of Merit heading into Nationals over the last 3 seasons.

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Registered: Sep 2011
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Definitely some big steps in the right direction.

A couple of fairly minor quibbles/questions, and one major one from the PDF:

1. The 3rd paragraph says "8 competitions", but the 3rd summary bullet point says "6 best OOM"...what's the discrepancy?

2. Why the 1/23 Date? Seems arbitrary. I would rather see it being "in the Top 25 upon the conclusion of nationals"...although I'd be fairly surprised if the National Championship didn't get you enough points to make it into the Top 25 in most situations, at least if you played your limit of events leading in.

3. (and this one isn't *all* that minor)...the season results they showed to prove this was the right number don't really seem to do that, IMO. There's only one year (2015/16 Mens) where there was more than one team that could have benefited from this rule (and then, only 2 teams could have). So, basically, what this is really saying is "If you are our Top OOM team, you get to go if you win Nationals"...which is...kinda redundant, IMO.

Still, it's better...so credit for trying. Still seems unnecessarily complex to me...but then, I'm going to think that for anything other than "Win and In"

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Registered: Oct 2013
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alanmacneill, here are what I think are your answers.

1.) As I read it, it is 8 events to be eligible for the top 25 going into nationals. This is consistent with the OOM system. 6 seems to only apply if a non-Top 25 wins the nationals, at least thats how i read it. I think the difference is that without a Top-25 winner it wants to award team USA to a team that has had more success in Top 3 finishes, rather than mediocre in lots of events.

2.) I like the date, as this will make it a clear statement beforehand which teams are in a win and in situation and which ones dont regardless of how anything else goes. I see your point of view, but I think having pre-knowledge is key. It is also consistent with USA Curling's goal of forcing you to play a lot of events to get into a Team USA situation. By to allowing the nationals to count, it forces you to have to play one more good event (a team may have only had 7 events leading up to the nationals and then its eigth event is nationals and I think that is what USA curling was trying to avoid).

3.) no reason to discuss much on this, as our views on Win and In have been in the past clear. But to me this is a great step.

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I agree with you that it's the 6 for one scenario and 8 for the other...but that's my question...why? I'm betting it's a case where cut and paste happened without proofing...but maybe there is an actual logic behind it...if so I'd love to hear what it is.

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Registered: Nov 2012
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quote:

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Originally posted by AlanMacNeill
I agree with you that it's the 6 for one scenario and 8 for the other...but that's my question...why? I'm betting it's a case where cut and paste happened without proofing...but maybe there is an actual logic behind it...if so I'd love to hear what it is.

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Registered: Oct 2013
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quote:

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Originally posted by AlanMacNeill
I agree with you that it's the 6 for one scenario and 8 for the other...but that's my question...why? I'm betting it's a case where cut and paste happened without proofing...but maybe there is an actual logic behind it...if so I'd love to hear what it is.

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To be honest, I'd rather see the team that was consistent over the larger number of events, for Worlds at least.

And this is because there are Qualification points at stake, and 3rd is better than 8th. Yes, 1st is even better, but if you told me "You're guaranteed to get 4th at least, but the best you'll get is 3rd" vs "You've got a 20% chance at first, a 20% chance at 2nd-4th, a 20% chance at 5th or 6th, but a 40% chance at 7th or worse", I'd take the 3rd-4th in a heartbeat in a system where points matter.

But, I admit freely, that is a very arguable question, with very legit arguments on both sides.

I think Chief's point may be more to point though...the OOM is a rolling 2 year system, the US's derivation of it is a 1 year system ("All teams start at zero at the start of the season"), so that may be the reason for 6 events rather than 8....6 over a year vs 8 over 2...I can see that.

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Registered: Sep 2002
Location: London, Ontario
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No mistake in the 6 vs 8 events. People seemed happy with the 6 event system for qualifying for World Championships via points, but wanted to add in a Top X ranking target to be able to avoid one team running away with the competition and giving teams a hard target to shoot for.

The Order of Merit uses best 8 events so instead of re-inventing the process or adding an arbitrary unknown number as that target, the decision was made to go with the OOM process.

Now teams are more likely to be chasing the ranking rather than chasing another USA team (and cheering against them to not earn more points and run away with them).

It's a good hybrid that gives teams a goal to reach for as the top teams continue to push up the rankings overall.

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