AlwaysImprove wrote:PDad wrote:PGF had 16's the first year, 2010. They added 14's the next year.
I think the increase in teams was due to the increase in association berths in 2009. SoCal ASA went from 3 to 12 and Sioux Falls 16U had 164 teams that year. They're entitled to 8 fill-in berths and can only use additional ones up 138 teams. I tracked the 155 14U teams in 2010 and there were only a handful I couldn't account for their berth.
14U: 2006 - 111, 2007 - 129, 2008 -- 81, 2009 - 122, 2010 - 155, 2011 - 103, 2012 - 114
16U: 2006 - 136, 2007 - 137, 2008 - 144, 2009 - 164, 2010 - 160, 2011 - 172, 2012 - 148
16's 2009. The socal tournament originally was held for 3 berths. As things played out they handed out the additional 9 berths. That was repeated across the country. Not sure this is different from how PGF is doing.
BS, it wasn't increased afterward. ASA changed the association berths at their annual meeting in 2008 to their current formula of giving the larger associations a berth for every 500 teams registered. There was considerable discussion on here about the increase prior to the SoCal State tourney.
ASA's expansion of association berths was welcome relief to the SoCal teams because we didn't have to chase berths outside our region anymore. Some strong teams still had to go to our regional and NQ to get berths - mainly due to the blind draw down here. The resulting mega-nationals were too big though.
I simply questioned your assertion of ASA handing out 80 invites because I've never seen anything like that. I didn't say anything about the PGF invites.
For the record, most of the invites are deserving and I doubt anyone would want to draw them as a first round opponent. There are a few that fall under the "Host" berth category. I've been toying with the idea of allowing teams to challenge an invited team for their berth - best 2 out of 3 during a PGF Qualifier. Each invited team could only be challenged once. It would be very interesting to see what would happen and it would quiet the critics.