sideliner:
Over the years I've developed a high respect for your opinions, but this time I can't agree with your argument. GAPSS is combining the 16U and 18U age groups and I therefore don't think it is at all surprising that some of the organizations have more than one team in attendance. And even without such a combination, I don't think the claim that organizations should be restricted to only one team is justified.
I think that it is really important to acknowledge what goes into an application to a Stingrays, GAPSS, or other Showcase tournament. As the initial drafter of these applications for Buckeye Heat 95 over the past few years (final say going to the Head Coach, though of course it's a fairly quick process of finding out whether he agrees and, if not, what changes should be made; sad to say his lawyer doesn't get the tie-breaking vote
), I can tell you that we include a LOT of detail in our applications. We identify the schedule from our previous year, the important wins (and believe it or not, the important losses) that we had during that year, the particular attributes of our roster (the word "lefty" appears several times in our discussions of both our offense and defense, and references to improved speed are also highlighted), the improvements that we think we made through the tryout results, any significant interest from respected college programs that our players have received, any individual awards they have received, the experience and training of the coaches, etc. etc. We assume that our sister Buckeye Heat teams and the non-Buckeye Heat organizations whose teams get into Stingrays or who get multiple teams into GAPSS and other showcases are providing the same type of detailed information.
SO, if the application information establishes a team as one that should be accepted over another team from a different organization, why should the TD decide to refuse acceptance on the grounds that there are too many teams from one organization? What does multiple teams from one organization have to do with the quality of the application of any particular team?
In fact, I was very disappointed when Stingrays went towards the policy of only accepting one team from one organization for each age group. I'll tell you flat out: if multiple teams from the Lasers, Cincy Doom, Classics, Ohio Ice, heck you name the organization (and I don't include Stingrays here simply because for obvious and totally justified reasons all the Stingrays teams are accepted into the Stingrays tourney) have a better application than ours, those teams should all get in before us. To sacrifice better qualified teams in the name of allowing lesser qualified teams from other organizations to be in the tournament strikes me as endangering the confidence of college coaches that they will be seeing the best teams/talent at the tourney.
JMHO.