2012 IOS Ideas and Planning

[Jon Brakel]

This is the time of year that we start planning for next year. We had our annual IOS TD summit after the tournament on Saturday.

Things that we are considering...

- Entry fees. Should we lower them or keep them the same. If we lower them what changes do we make to payout, player pack and ctps? We considered everything from keeping the entry fee and payout structure the same to having an ultra low entry fee and no payouts or ctps and other hybrid options in between. We also discussed reducing entry fee by dropping to all amateur c tiers. The problem that we have with changing is that we don't have a marketing department to figure out if players would show up to alternative payout structured tournaments (unfortunately only a small percentage of players post on this forum). One suggestion was that we might try it and change back if no one shows up. If players want a reduced entry fee, larger player pack and reduced or no payout then why aren't more players playing trophy only? You get two out of three with that so I'd think more players would take that option.

- Venues. This will mostly be decided by what dates and deals we can get at each venue.

- Divisional splits - who plays on what day? We will probably keep this the same as it still works for our volunteer staff however we might move ALL pro divisions to Saturday.

If anyone has any ideas for next year that you'd like to share please feel free to post them here. Critical feedback from events from this year are also helpful.

[Brad]

I'd like to see Crystal Lake (Lippold) on the IOS schedule.  I know you would get the numbers there. We had over 90 different players playing dubs there this summer.

[pdga#7648]

different locations. I really enjoyed playing Streamwood last year.
and I have mentioned it before, but the IOS is Illinois Open Series, not just Northern Ill Open Series. Central Illinois has plenty of courses. 
Run a A-Tier someplace again. that way you dont have to split up divisions over 2 different days. I am sure we could find the TD a place to stay for the weekend.

and why not put the Advanced division on the same day as the Open? Sunday tournys get old when driving home 3 hours, only to get home and try to get to bed for the early Monday morning at work.

[Jon Brakel]

Good points. My thoughts are in red below. They're just my thoughts and are subject to change as conditions and facts not in evidence change.

different locations. I really enjoyed playing Streamwood last year.
Expect to see new venues, not a guarantee but we're always looking at changing locations
and I have mentioned it before, but the IOS is Illinois Open Series, not just Northern Ill Open Series. Central Illinois has plenty of courses.  Logistically it is more difficult to run a tournament that is further away. We go pretty far out of our area to run Sinnissippi and it is enough to do that once a year. We used to run an event in Wisconsin every year! Illinois State Championship also has Illinois in it but it is run in the Joliet area every year.
Run a A-Tier someplace again. that way you dont have to split up divisions over 2 different days. I am sure we could find the TD a place to stay for the weekend.
I would run an A-tier every year if we had the money.

and why not put the Advanced division on the same day as the Open? Sunday tournys get old when driving home 3 hours, only to get home and try to get to bed for the early Monday morning at work.
The way that we split our divisions allows quite a few players to play both days. Players can play half-in Open on Saturday and Advanced on Sunday. They can play Novice on Saturday and Rec on Sunday. Etc. And for every person that would like Advanced on Saturday there is an Advanced person that can't play on Saturday.

[smyith]

more tournaments in the Lake and Mchenry county areas. we got kinda ignored this year(not by IOS just in general).

I like the entry fee's the way they are. very reasonable and cost effective.

i like the division split, if i can afford it i will play both days and see that many ADV players try their hand at Open often.

on the A-tier, what about doing a fundraiser tourn or discs? isnt that what alot of the big tourns do? i bet if you could get some special Comets run you would sell out super fast! or any other popular limited plastic disc.
or you could have an unsanctioned doubles fundraiser tourn this November or early next year. just do trophy only 1st-3rd maybe throw some discs in for the winners. that buffalo grove tourn usually gets a descent turnout and you dont get much more than that for prizes. Say you put it at 60 pro 50 adv and 40 am per team, with 36 teams thats $1800 - fees and prizes (idk the numbers here) and that at least has got to get you to $1k.
where would you even hold an a tier though?

[Dag]

Something that struck me as interesting when viewing the IOS points total document Tyler put together was just how few players had played three or more of this year's series. Looks like a number of people are playing the events rather than the series as a whole. There are a number of ways in which this might be addressed such as awarding more than trophy for series winners or some sort of 'frequent flyer' award for players competing in most of the season's events. Perhaps the season finale could be something out of or above the ordinary like the Mokena event Bruce did earlier or the Pine Hills events that Dana has been doing. Sex it up a bit and end the season with a bang.

[CEValkyrie]

more tournaments in the Lake and Mchenry county areas. we got kinda ignored this year(not by IOS just in general).

I like the entry fee's the way they are. very reasonable and cost effective.

i like the division split, if i can afford it i will play both days and see that many ADV players try their hand at Open often.

on the A-tier, what about doing a fundraiser tourn or discs? isnt that what alot of the big tourns do? i bet if you could get some special Comets run you would sell out super fast! or any other popular limited plastic disc.
or you could have an unsanctioned doubles fundraiser tourn this November or early next year. just do trophy only 1st-3rd maybe throw some discs in for the winners. that buffalo grove tourn usually gets a descent turnout and you dont get much more than that for prizes. Say you put it at 60 pro 50 adv and 40 am per team, with 36 teams thats $1800 - fees and prizes (idk the numbers here) and that at least has got to get you to $1k.
where would you even hold an a tier though?

I agree with Lake and McHenry but there are some problems there. Antioch, Waukegan, and Round Lake had events this year. We assumed Rich was going to run Crystal Lake this year but it's also a TD's worst nightmare during the summer. Those lightning. sirens are really a pain in the butt. Marengo is new but it's just not tournament ready yet. We just don't have quality courses in this area.

As far as the fundraiser discs. Innova absolutely has killed the CFR market. For the Rockford IOS we sold 100 Champion Destroyers within a few months. I believe we moved 150 for that event. Now they have started releasing all of their most popular drivers in all plastics it's killed the demand. It's a ton of work to sell discs.

I like the idea of some non sanctioned tournament fundraisers but I really don't want to be the one putting in the time to do them.

[Jon Brakel]

Continuing with what Brett said...

All the time that I can give to disc golf is taken up with 5 IOS events. If someone wanted to run an A tier fundraising tournament that would be great. I think we need more good courses in McHenry and Lake counties before we can have many more tournaments.

It was pretty hard to sell those fund raiser discs for the Rockford A tier. For the reasons that Brett said it would be even harder now to do a fund raiser disc.

As far as making tournaments fun and special it takes some significant combination of money, time and volunteers. I think I pumped up the fun factor for hole 11A for this past weekend. But I'm only one person. It would make for a lot of fun if we had 6 people out on 6 holes running fun side games on those holes all weekend. However we just don't have the volunteer base to do something like that.

[Jon Brakel]

I forgot to mention something about players attending all events. I think once we expanded from 3 events it has been a very small percentage of players that play all events. Our overall points system is designed to encourage players to play all events. As far as adding more incentive it just comes down to money. The players are not charged a fee for the series and nothing comes out of entry fees or payouts to cover the series trophies. Series trophies are paid from the 50/50 that we run at each event.

[Jaj Man]

I pretty much love the way its set up now, only thing i would change is like said above is the venues. I can't always do both days but plan on helping out next year on the day i dont play. CTP's and Player Packs are what keeps me interested and Scott does a great job of having stuff we like. But Fundraiser Doubles tourneys sound like a great idea I'm gonna try and run a glow tourney next year at buffalo grove maybe can help IOS.

[DiscGolfSchodt]

Silver Lake?

[Ledgestone]

and why not put the Advanced division on the same day as the Open? Sunday tournys get old when driving home 3 hours, only to get home and try to get to bed for the early Monday morning at work.

I definitely agree with Doug - a lot of people in the Peoria area would love to play but none of us like to play Sunday tournaments. I know its different in Chicago and the Quad Cities, but there are hardly any Sunday tournaments in this area for a reason. I, for one, would definitely try to play a few of the events if Advanced was on Saturday. Just my two cents!

[CEValkyrie]

There was several reasons for Advanced on Sunday.

When IOS events were gettng too big for 1 day we had to run 2 day events.

Typically the Pro divsion was always on Sunday. To avoid  other tournament conflicts and to get more pro partcipation we decided to run Pros on Saturday. Jon hit on it in his post but the division structure gives a ton of flexblity to play 1 or both days. That is true to everyone but Open players. The Advanced divsion is very small now. If you run a Pro/Adv day you have a small number playing while the Int/Rec/Novice/ ect.. day would be very large. The PDGA structure really killed the Adv division. It was very typical to get 30 to 50 advanced players before the ratngs break change.

When I was more involved it sucked trying to play on Sunday after settng up and tearng down temp holes. One of tthe reasons we started to run events it to play them. I'll be settng up and tearing Sinnissippi this year. It's not easy work.

[pdga#7648]

okay, then how about this? move either Pro Masters or Adv Masters to Saturday?? why both on Sun? I thought Pros on Saturday avoided conflicts?  Not trying to start a war here, just reasoning in some way. I am still stuck on just Sunday, as Open Master,Adv or Adv Master. I understand wanting others to play multiple days, but alot of us, that is not an option. My rating only lets me play Adv divisions or Open, and I am not a Open player by any means, with a 955 rating. If you moved Pro Masters to Saturday, then I could have that option of playing both days.

[pdga#7648]

okay nevermind. I see know why that can't happen. Open Masters may want to try there luck on Saturday in Open(ex Mr. Fritz)
I guess it doesn't really matter anymore, as I don't have to compete with them younsters in the Advanced division anymore. With all the Peoria area tournaments this year, I can play those on Saturday and still play on Sunday IOS. guess I will just need to save some vacation time for Monday's 

[Bruce Brakel]

There were two other considerations.  Open-2-4 versus all others split the field fairly close to 45/55 and it was the easiest split to communicate.  Back when Brett was the IOS promoter, something easy to remember and communicate was important. 

Now that a lot of TDs run split weekend tournaments, and they run lots of different splits, I think it is more feasible to rely on PDGA.com, discgolfscene.com or Discontinuum do the communication. 

There will always be some players who have to work on Saturday and some players who would prefer not to play on Sunday. 

[Jon Brakel]

There were two other considerations.  Open-2-4 versus all others split the field fairly close to 45/55 and it was the easiest split to communicate.  Back when Brett was the IOS promoter, something easy to remember and communicate was important. 

Now that a lot of TDs run split weekend tournaments, and they run lots of different splits, I think it is more feasible to rely on PDGA.com, discgolfscene.com or Discontinuum do the communication. 

There will always be some players who have to work on Saturday and some players who would prefer not to play on Sunday. 

Before you misinterpret what Bruce is saying as a slam on Brett, it had nothing to do with Brett. It was just at the time word of mouth and a flyer were the two main ways of communicating events so the message needed to be simple.

[Bruce Brakel]

Yeah, no slam on Brett.  Brett was doing the communicating, mostly orally at various leagues, and he needed something simple to say that players could remember.  We love Brett.  No slams.  

Jon, check your e-mail at the account that this message board has for you.

[airspuds]

Just feedback via the grape line ,

played with guy who played, #  51 

sinissippi

those guys run great events
was the comment

he did not know at the time , i was the southside member
of DISContinuum