@bruning-0

I am so happy to hear you are having success with cornhole. When we sent out a survey in the fall, cornhole received the highest level of interest, but when we advertised the event, our students did not register.

We have space for Tennis, but our Thursday Tennis League registration ends tomorrow.
Sadly, no students registered.

@ramirez said in Spring2021 - How do we get our participants back?:

I just pivoted from badminton and ping pong for our next leagues to Wii Bowling

We were so excited to debut brand new wiffleball back stops / strike zones, made of pvc and galvanized steel. Unfortunately, our student's have not shared the same excitement - although we have had some fun moments pulling them out here and there.

Feedback from some baseball players - they would love to play, but they know/think it would mess up their arms.
Feedback from non baseball players - no interested in playing competitively, but maybe to goof around.

Pickleball is played in our fieldhouse everyday - by staff. We have tried a number of pickleball events, while those students who attended had a blast, it has proven to be a difficult sport to advertise to the skeptics. Yes - it looks like a cheap plank of wood and a wiffleball, BUT it is fun! I also tried pushing pickleball heavily in the fall, as it was the go to hobby in the NBA Bubble. I figured if Lebron would try it, get competitive, and have fun - our students would follow.

Lewis University - Romeoville, Illinois

Current feedback on our campus suggests students simply "do not want to participate in a series of gimmicky 'sporting' events". Quote, courtesy of a very blunt Lewis student. Our students want the real thing, but as you are aware - that is not feasible due to Covid19 restrictions.

Knowing that students are not interested in events like Football Combines, Basketball Shootouts, Soccer/Hockey PK's, Volleyball Battleship, and Batting Cages ideas, what other ideas are there?.

We have had some success with Badminton, Nerf and Table Tennis, but even our most recent Table Tennis event did not reach minimum participation. We are not permitted to do anything which could result in a lack of distancing, aka contact.

Hope everyone is remaining safe!

Adam Burkhart
Lewis University

I am definitely intrigued to have the integrated brackets, but I am quite lost on how administrators can track/manage the total number of teams and the score/team rankings once the tournament begins. On a side note, I was thrilled to see that we could modify the scoring, as we have been using Fibonacci with Yahoo for the last few years.

1. How do admins link students to register? (We traditionally use links and qr codes that send students directly to registration.) After testing team creation, all I can see is "View Bracket" which leads to an empty bracket and settings, which leads to scoring scoring totals.
2. How do admins see which students have registered? (Especially for participation statistics.)
3. How do admins delete students that have registered? (We are not permitted to allow athletes to participate.)
4. How do admins modify team names? (Inappropriate names are always an issue.)
5. How do admins and students access the scores/rankings once the tournament begins?

Not trying to be a pain, but I would really like to finalize our March Madness marketing...

Thank You,

Adam Burkhart

A touchy subject every year. We try to walk a fine line, but lately we have been forced to deny team names much more often. Students are always looking to find a way to sneak in a less than savory name, some are just more subtle than others. I really like the guidelines you have, and with your permission I would like to adopt the list with a few modifications for our needs.

Currently we try to be a little lenient if the team name is clever and corresponds to the sport at hand. There will always be judgment calls, but we try to allow some leeway to encourage creativity. Obviously the pitfall with showing any flexibility is some students will take it as a challenge to push your limits with each submission.

The following are names that were permitted, but certainly pushed the limits. They were relevant to the corresponding sport, so we chose to allow them:
"Sets on the Beach" Volleyball
"Crazy Pitches" Wiffleball
"Turn your head & Coughlin" Flag
"The Master Batters" 16" Softball

Other occurrences we simply modify the team name to fit our guidelines:
"Pull my Ditka" changed to " Ditka"
"Cunning Stunts" changed to "Stunts"

We strictly use the free agent list through IMLeagues. Unfortunately many times we have to step in to help place them on teams. Traditionally we will send an email out the day before registration ends, asking teams to consider adding one or two of the available free agents. Other times I will call or message captains that are more open to the idea of adding free agents. Sometimes teams need a little coaxing, so we will offer small incentives like a full season of early games.

While creating free agent teams can occasionally be successful, we find that teams created strictly from the free agent pool are usually problematic. Dramatically more forfeits and lackluster attendance. All too often they are "just excited to play" until they realize the team is outmatched in skill, and that they lack leadership to keep people showing up.

My suggestion is to encourage free agents to create a team, invite 1 or 2 friends and then try to fill their remaining roster with other free agents. This way the team has a specific leader and an identity.