Loved the format of morning and afternoon games and consistent times
Every game on time . The gap between was great
Scoreboards, announcing, smoke machines, player intros, player interviews were all great. Would be awesome for JO’s, Kap 7’s other tournaments to experiment here.
Online scores were posted in near real - time
Prize money was a nice add
Quicksilver merch was unique and well designed
Woolet was set up very well.
Score clocks, score keepers, and general quality of “behind the scenes” was great
Cons:
Time of year. It’s hard to commit to a tournament the week before JO’s. Earlier in the year would be awesome
Lack of “international”
Weaker competition than expected. Many key players did not attend and several key teams
Neutral:
Refs. There was a bunch of talk of “top quality refs”. I am not saying there was crazy-bad reffing going on but I did not see much difference that most tournaments
Ugly:
Parental behavior - Not sure if there was a code of conduct but the continuance of parents yelling from the stand at players, ref’s, coaches, and even kids its just sad. I witnessed this several times. Although I did see one parent getting ejected, based off of what I witnessed I hope he is suspended.
Overall, I hope this pushes some other tournaments to adopt the pros from the list and have Quicksilver look at a different date of perhaps merge with another tournament like Kap7 or compete with Kap7 (ALA Newport Invite - scrimmages).
Kudos to the folks who organized and executed on it.
Polofan, I would agree with you on most points as well. Yes many teams were missing key players so there were some surprise results. I also attended 18’s and witnessed 2 teams in particular that had horrific parents. I got stuck next to a short angry man who kept yelling out that number () is dirty, number () is dirty. One of them being my kid, a center working for position under the watchful eye of the 2 meter referee is not being dirty!. There is crafty, there is playing water polo, there is pushing the envelope to get an advantage, and there is being dirty. I did my best not to respond to the little angry guy. The other group was the worst I have ever witnessed! In the 10 years of watching youth water polo year round, I have never witnessed so many uneducated, idiotic comments from fans and parents. I feel like many of them were some girlfriends family since the team was local. It was like I was a a high school basketball game. “Oh is that your son ref?” “do you need Glasses ref” so much more and non stop. I cant believe the refs did not have them removed. I hope they were drunk, then they have an excuse… It was embarrassing!
But yes same refs, there seemed to be a few good ones, but then there were a few of same old bad refs from all the other tournaments mixed in. Lots of table mistakes not putting flags up to signal the end of an exclusion.
Other than that I loved the energy that GOLS and Quik put into the tournament!. The announcing at the top 8 pool at Woollett was pretty cool for the kids and fans. More of that may help educate friends and family to the intricacies of water polo that cause them to yell out stupid things. The way the schedule worked to try and get every team a game or two at Woollett showed that the organizers cared. The fact that you can qualify for 18U platinum and never play at Stanford during 4 days of JO’s is a shame.
Would be an epic tournament to run before Futures starts or in conjunction with Futures to have a big opening weekend of futures with all age groups competing to kick off the season. Then do it again for super finals 3 weeks before JO’s.
Jeff, not sure they needed to be seeded higher. They looked good but not that good. The lefty from the Netherlands and Kai looked good, the rest looked like solid 18’s. They had lots of close games but, so did many other teams. I don’t see many of the games from this tournament being a good indicator of what we will see at JO’s. It was probably a good warm up for them to learn to work together with the imported talent.
Lots of kids missing by choice, cost or other reasons. 4 days of hotel for out of town kids adds up quick, 1100-1200 to play a tournament one week before spending that same amount is a big pill for some parents getting ready to send their first semester college tuition payment in…
I hope some clubs begin to take actions against unruly parents. After one game, my players had parents of another club chirping at them while they were changing after a game. Frustration during a game is one thing, but chiding 18 year old boys after a high-level water polo game, which will obviously be physical, is completely out of bounds. It seems to me that a few specific clubs are responsible for a lot of the issues. Of the clubs we played, I can think of two that really stuck out as having obnoxious parents, but I think it’s best we don’t publically shame anyone to avoid back and forths on this great new water polo forum. We had a lot of that on WPP, and it has been great to see the conversation here be civil and about the water polo.
It’s a shame because it was an incredible tournament to warm up for JOs. But it’s the adults that cast negativity over the events, not the boys.
On Sunday a parent went onto the pool deck, from the stands and started screaming at the ref’s. I had never seen that type of crazed behavior at any level. He was quickly booted but did not go quietly.
Equally sad was the high fives he was getting from parents and kids after the game.
I agree with you on some teams‘ players and parents behavior- lacks sportsmanship and human decency.
18 u Gold medal game - both teams players and parents acted classy and coaches also carried themselves professionally. I can’t say the same about the 18 u bronze games players/ parents.
Agree with polofan’s pros and cons list. Hopefully Quicksilver re-ups for next year - would be great to parlay their sponsorship to Futures or an age group of Futures and keep some of the changes - especially the breaks between games. Hopefully sales from the merch helped justify the expense. The event coordinators did an excellent job promoting the lead sponsor in social media, the livestream and in person.
GOLS did a much better job with the stream and graphics. The final game(s) had great different camera angles and the announcer was solid. Post game interviews and details of player background over the mic were really cool.
The small details were not unnoticed by me. Credit to the organizers.
That’s nice but, the refs in that game were some of the better ones. The Gold Medal 18 boys game is probably not the best litmus test for what is happening elsewhere.