League Rankings...

Leagues that allow players to compete against lower caliber cross conferences and divisions really miss the boat come playoff time. Our league has 3 conferences based on ability and experience that play on Monday and Tuesday nights. Playoff seeding is determined by division standings and then where a team finishes in respect to the other divisions in their conference. The three conferences are as follows Gold (top "A" shooters) Blue (intermediate to emerging "A" players) and red (everybody else). Recently my team finished second in the conference and earned the number 2 seed. This left us to play the number 15 seed. However, this 15 seed had two players that qualified for the playoffs by playing 7 matches in the red conference (minimum to qualify). However, these same two played 13 matches in the gold conference on Tuesday nights to qualify for the gold playoffs. When the league was made aware of this the response was they are good but may not actually be "A" type players even though their Gold team finished as the number 2 seed in that conference.

Well these two players went 10-1 in match play and had part in 17 of 21 points needed to win this round of the playoffs. This is wrong! Darters and leagues need to appropriately rank players based on ability. My team really took the brunt of this hard because we were clearly overmatched and had high expectations. There is a reason that we play in this conference. Is this occurrence unusual? Do I have the right to be aggravated and downright pissed off at these results. these two players if they played each match would have easily finished as the first seed but a greater problem is the allowance by the league to have these two players eligible to play in the top conference and the lowest conference.

I was hoping you could give me an objective point of view. Please save "the you only get better by playing better opponents nonsense". This wasn't a case of better..it was more like the High School Baseball Champs playing the NY Yankees. Being overmatched leaves nothing to learn. I do applaud my team for not giving up and trying their best in each and every game, regardless of how bleak it was looking!

Signed,
A Very Passionate, But Disgruntled Darter