Hang 10 Volleyball

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Divisions & Sandbagging

Every tournament, we spend hours and hours reviewing signups and then “researching” players, including, but not limited to, looking at results from other tournaments, reviewing historical results from our own tournaments (we know the results of every single player that has played in one of our tournaments), and talking with fellow players and tournament directors that have played against players or seen certain players play. We do all of this to do our best to ensure that everyone is signed up in the right division so that everyone has an enjoyable day (I will never understand how it is fun to crush teams all day by sandbagging, but I am just old school I guess). Do we get it right every time? Absolutely not. Do we try our best? Absolutely.

General Rule:

At Hang 10, our rules are very simple when it comes to determining which division you should play in: you play at the highest level of any player. An Open player playing with 3 A players. They play Open. 3 A players playing with an AA player. They play AA. And so on.
This is the general rule you should default to every single time you sign up for one of our tournaments. Can there be exceptions to this general rule? Absolutely, but you have to clear it with us in ADVANCE of signing up. We are really easy to get in touch with and are extremely responsive (just ask anyone who has messaged us).
At our tournaments, we generally take everyone to playoffs and do an upper and lower for each division (obviously it depends on the total number of entries). In other words, you are going to play a ton of volleyball no matter what your record is, so why would you not sign up in the right (or a higher) division and make sure you get some good reps in? How you get better is playing against players as good or better than you.

Divisions:

A is our lowest division. It is reserved for players that are generally new to volleyball or have some other limiting factor(s) such as age, injury, etc. If you are 22, currently play club at college and play 5 times a week, then you are not an A player. If you are 45, play maybe 1 time a month, throw your back out getting out of bed, then you probably will be fine in A.
AA is our middle division. In theory, this should be our largest division for every tournament (and has historically been until the last several years) and should consist of the widest band of skill sets. That 22-year-old playing 5 times a week? That’s an AA player. That “aging” 35-year-old woman who used to play Open but now can only play maybe 1 time a week is probably going to be fine in AA.
Open is our highest division. This is generally going to consist of former D1 athletes and others who are playing all the time. If you play Open or AA (and make playoffs consistently) at other tournaments, you probably should play Open in our tournaments.

We recognize that the competition level at other tournaments can, at times, be higher than ours. Just because you have never won A at a tournament doesn’t automatically mean you are an A player. Using common sense goes a long way and, if all else fails, just message us and ask.

Moving Forward:

In the past, we sent a courtesy email when we moved sandbagging teams up divisions. We will not be doing this anymore. It will be up to you to monitor your divisions and if you are worried about being moved up for sandbagging reasons, then you probably are sandbagging anyways.
We are strongly considering moving to no cash payouts in A at all. If you want to win cash, play AA or Open.
It’s nearly impossible for us to catch all sandbagging given there are so many new players playing in our tournaments (and even with hours of research). Given this, if we deem that your team is sandbagging during a tournament we are going to do one of three things: (1) you will be permitted to play pool play but then you will forfeit playoffs, (2) you will be permitted to play pool play and allowed to play playoffs, but will not win any prize and you will be required to play the next highest division for all future tournaments, or (3) we will move you to Open for playoffs. Whether we do (1), (2) or (3), you will not receive a refund. And honestly, I am probably going to do (3) 99% of the time so you can see what it feels like to be one of the teams that had to deal with your sandbagging ways all day.

At the end of the day, volleyball should be about having fun. It’s not fun whenever you decide to sandbag and ruin fair competition for others, so please just sign up for the right division. If you want to sandbag, please just go play somewhere else.

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