Town League Team Selection Process

OVERVIEW

Children playing on Town League teams participate in the same placement process as those children who choose to play on traveling teams.  However, the objective of establishing the teams for the Town League programs is to create equal teams, in contrast to the traveling teams (where the intent is to place players of similar ability on teams so that the teams will be competitive against like skilled teams from other towns).  The purpose for doing this is to level the playing field so that no team either dominates all other teams, nor should there be a team which consistently loses most matches. Our goal is that each team should have a 500 season. 

During the spring of 1999, the Board determined that the team development process should be “blind” as to specific players and should only consider the ranking of the players.  It was further determined that once coaches are determined, each coach should select an assistant coach who will be automatically assigned to the same team.  Other players will be randomly assigned to teams based on their ranking.

THE RULES 

NOTE:  For all examples in this document, it will be assumed that the section has six teams in it. 

1.       Registrar identifies prospective coaches and assistant coaches and forwards information to Town League coordinators.

2.       Coordinators contact prospective coaches and assistant coaches.

3.       Placement Coordinator provides placement rankings.

4.       Players are split into 11 rounds for team assignment.  For example, if there will be 6 teams in a section, players ranked #1-6 are in Round 1, players ranked #7-12 in Round 2, etc.

5.       Coaches’ and Assistant Coach’s children are automatically assigned to the appropriate  team during the appropriate round.  For example, if a coach’s child is ranked #17 and the assistant coach’s child is ranked #62 in the example in #4 above, the children are automatically assigned in Round 3 and Round 11, respectively, to the appropriate team.

6.       Round by round, the players in each round are “shuffled” and each is assigned to a team.  For example, if the player ranked #17 is a coach’s child, that coach receives his child automatically in the third round, and each of the other teams receives one of the five remaining players in that round.

7.       Siblings will be assigned to the same team (unless a parent specifically requests otherwise).  If two sisters are ranked #13 and #32, when player #13 is assigned to a team in Round 3, the player ranked #32 is marked as the Round 6 selection automatically and that team does not receive an additional player in Round 6.

8.       Coaches may not trade players.

Requests for two players to be placed together will only be honored at the discretion of the Placement Committee in extreme circumstances and only when the request has been made in writing to: feedback@belmontsoccer.com