Hello Ladies! Welcome to the Spring Session of the APA Ladies Only Division. This is the final qualifying session for the 2012 APA Ladies National Team Championships. As of this writing, we had a rock solid 10 ladies team for the in house league at the Hungry Stick and a not so rock solid 5 teams in the Library in house league. If we can get one more team locked in for the Library division, we should be good to go for qualifying up to 4 more teams for the City Championships. We will be running 12 weeks for this session, and we should finish up just in time for the City Championships in June. I do wish to take some space in this newsletter to quiet any notions that we treat ladies divisions differently than any of our other divisions in San Diego County. I’ve had some questions brought to my attention, and rather than answering them individually, I thought I would share them for everyone to see.
Question 1- Why do the ladies divisions only get half the prize money that the other divisions receive?
Answer 1- Ladies only play half the amount of matches as the other divisions. It really is that simple. If the ladies divisions wish to bump up their weekly play from 22 or so yearly matches to about 44, we could provide the exact same prize money, awards, Vegas rooms, etc.. In other words, if a division of random people wanted to do an every other week type format, they too would be subject to the same type of payback we do for the ladies division. It was set up this way because we were informed everyone wanted a more relaxed schedule. We would be happy to change it to an every week format if that’s what everyone wants.
Question 2- Why do the ladies divisions play to 19 instead of 23?
Answer 2- The Ladies division used to play to 17 instead of 19. When it went up to 19, the team counts dropped significantly. It got to the point of almost doing away with a National Championship entirely. APA believes another increase would hurt the program even more. It has absolutely nothing to do with anyone believing that the guys are better than the ladies. It has a lot more to do with the very low percentage of ladies that are skill level 5’s and above.
Question 3- Can the ladies do a division that plays to 23?
Answer 3- The answer to that question is yes. We most certainly can. However, the APA Ladies National Championship is and will continue to be a 19 rule tournament for the time being, and if you are playing in a 23 rule league, you can play in your ladies only league and then you would be placed in the Open Division Blast to qualify for the Open Division City Championships. Basically, it would be considered an Open division which featured ladies only competing. The 14 team quota for a National slot would not be transferred from the Ladies 19 rule league to the 23 rule league, because the teams would now be considered Open teams instead of Ladies teams. Basically, the ladies would have to compete against all the other Open teams for slots to Nationals.
The way the payout structure works is if we have it to give, we give it. The first year we sent a team to Nationals, we only did a single session. That did not generate enough revenue to do anymore than 2 rooms for Nationals for the whole team. Last year, we had a bit more even though we had less teams, and we paid for 3 rooms for Nationals. If we have enough left over, we will put it towards the travel and rooms for Vegas first, then anything after that would likely be placed in prize money. That first year didn’t cover the entire cost of the ladies team for Nationals, which ended up getting covered from the Open division prize money. There is a lot involved with the structure of the prize fund and the most important goal we have in managing that structure is fairness to everyone, regardless of gender or ability. If anyone has any other questions that I did not answer here, please feel free to call the league office. We will be happy to answer your questions.
For this current session, please note that Division 351 is now 353 and Division 352 is now 354.