One thing I like about the softball sanctioning bodies in general, is that they offer different levels of competition classifications (ie. A, B, C, etc.). In baseball you don't see this as much. At least at the older age groups, 14 and on up. At the younger levels, if I remember correctly, it was either "Open" or "Rec"...
Consequently, we've gone to a lot of top tournaments over the years that would do their best to seed teams during pool play, but it didn't always work out that the best 4 or 8 or 16 teams moved on to the single elimination rounds. Sometimes 2 or 3 top teams would be grouped into 1 pool with only the top team advancing while another pool winner would be a weaker team that advanced by default because of the lack of quality teams they were pooled with... Softball seems to me to be ahead of the curve with their classification approach.
I'm assuming that the reason most teams want to play in a "sanctioned" tournament is in hopes of advancing to a National Tournament? If not, other than the competition that a sanctioned tournament might attract, is there any real advantage in playing in one and having to spending the extra money in entry fees and/or sanctioning fees?
Obviously, most of my experience is with baseball, so forgive me if I ask too many stupid questions or try comparing softball to baseball too often
But, with BB there are 3 or 4 top level tournaments that we always tried to go to each year. None of these were sanctioned, but all had built a reputation for being well ran tournaments with quality fields, umpires, and most of all, they attracted the top teams from around the country. Are there any SB tournaments out there that are not "sanctioned" that everyone wants to go to year after year? If so, is it mainly because of the competition or are there other reasons?Thanks,
