2023 Best Flighted Tournaments in California (from SR)

[RandomSoccerFan]

I know there was some headscratching about the brackets in various Surf Cup events, but this list provides some data for discussion. This ranking as I understand it is by how close the average matchups ended up as a final score. Tournaments with a lot of blowouts fare poorly, while tournaments where more games were closer fare well.

 

[focomoso]

Not to get too nerdy on ya', but I bet if you plot the rank vs. the number of games considered, you'd find a correlation. More teams allow for more even brackets and more games spread out the blowouts. Smaller tournaments have to take all comers and if that means uneven competition, that's what you get.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

It stands to reason that the more teams there are, the more likely they can be matched up against closer teams - sure. It's one reason why larger and popular tournaments are typically better than smaller and less popular tournaments. However, if any of the larger tournaments are on the right side of this image, it does call into question whether they are taking appropriate care when bracketing. One example is the Carlsbad Cup in 2023. They did awesome for girls bracketing, and show quite poorly for boys bracketing, and if you look at the difference in number of teams, it doesn't explain such a difference (there are slightly more girls teams, but multiple brackets in all age groups for both genders).

 

[Soccer Dad & Ref]

Not to get too nerdy on ya', but I bet if you plot the rank vs. the number of games considered, you'd find a correlation. More teams allow for more even brackets and more games spread out the blowouts. Smaller tournaments have to take all comers and if that means uneven competition, that's what you get.

I came here to say the same thing. I've seen some lowly attended tournaments that beg teams to join to get just 4 teams in the one age bracket. Often ends up with a team on the high or low end...

 

[Carlsbad7]

It stands to reason that the more teams there are, the more likely they can be matched up against closer teams - sure. It's one reason why larger and popular tournaments are typically better than smaller and less popular tournaments. However, if any of the larger tournaments are on the right side of this image, it does call into question whether they are taking appropriate care when bracketing. One example is the Carlsbad Cup in 2023. They did awesome for girls bracketing, and show quite poorly for boys bracketing, and if you look at the difference in number of teams, it doesn't explain such a difference (there are slightly more girls teams, but multiple brackets in all age groups for both genders).

Doesn't really matter but I looked at both the Boys and Girls 2023 Carlsbad Cup teams to see why they might be different.

- Looked like the Boys had more teams and they were generally SOCAL league level. (I only saw one ECRL and no ECNL or MLS Next teams)
- The girls had less teams but up until u13 it was the bigger clubs. (Saw maybe 1 or 2 ECNL and GA teams but not very many, mostly SOCAL)

My guess is that the SOCAL teams aren't as stable as GA or ECNL teams which means their outcome isn't as easy to predict.

Surf Cup has all the ECNL and GA teams which are very stable which makes the outcomes easier to predict and therefore easier to bracket by level.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

Got it - I was looking at these two links:

Carlsbad Cup 2023 Boys
Carlsbad Cup 2023 Girls

It looks like Boys has 34 brackets, while Girls has 33 - I must have added wrong initially when I compared the two - but it looks the amount of teams is certainly comparable, and it is a reasonably large tournament. It's also possible that the girls population skewed somewhat toward larger clubs - but with hundreds of teams - it's hard to see how the population was very different on the boys side.

Bracketing is never going to be an exact science, and even if the same methodology is used up front, the outcome is going to be different from time to time. It is just strange that in this case of such a large number of teams, that one side of the tournament is an outlier statewide for doing a fantastic job in matching up teams and limiting blowouts - while the other side is an outlier statewide to have poorly matched teams and an excessive amount of blowouts. In tournaments with a few dozen games, weird things are going to happen pretty often. But in tournaments with thousands of games - it's harder to explain when weird things pop up (like this).

 

[rainbow_unicorn]

I disagree with the use of terms like champs, good, fair, poor, red flags. Tournament quality is not solely measured by how highly ranked the teams are. There are some very good, well-run tournaments out there that offer good value for flight 2 or flight 3 families. Some tournaments in the "champs" category are poor (IMHO) with their super high registration cost, $20 parking per day, nightmare trying to get IN to the parking lot, etc.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

This is rating nothing but the flighting of tournaments. Everything else is irrelevant. Teams that can expect there will be less blow-outs rather than more blow-outs, as the organizer has taken care to do their best and use all available info to match teams reasonably closely - will have a better experience, when compared to an otherwise identical tournament that flights reasonably poorly.

All of the other myriad other factors that determine whether a tournament is a positive experience or not, will certainly determine whether a team/club has a good time and decides to come back again and again.

 

[Zeke]

I disagree with the use of terms like champs, good, fair, poor, red flags. Tournament quality is not solely measured by how highly ranked the teams are. There are some very good, well-run tournaments out there that offer good value for flight 2 or flight 3 families. Some tournaments in the "champs" category are poor (IMHO) with their super high registration cost, $20 parking per day, nightmare trying to get IN to the parking lot, etc.

It’s just different when you are looking for a flight 2 tournament. Something local on shaggy grass is exactly what you want.

I wouldn’t use the tournament comparison tool to evaluate a local tournament against a premier event. But I might use it to compare two local events. 14-1 games are not fun. If the tournament director can’t say no to the trophy hunters, I’d pick a different event.

 

[Slobodan]

View attachment 19326

I know there was some headscratching about the brackets in various Surf Cup events, but this list provides some data for discussion. This ranking as I understand it is by how close the average matchups ended up as a final score. Tournaments with a lot of blowouts fare poorly, while tournaments where more games were closer fare well.

View attachment 19327

If Placer United is holding their #1 rated cup at Cherry Island, that needs to drop about 50 spots. That's like playing soccer on a driving range in Palmdale. Arguably THE worst playing location in NorCal. Great for the U-littles and that's it.

 

[Slobodan]

Players Showcase in Vegas is overrated, too. If you're at Kellogg or Bettye Wilson, you might get a coach to come see you. Otherwise it's too spread out if you're older.