Can’t wait to get back at it in 2022 as we continue to support St Baldricks and the fight against Childhood Cancer.
Just to close out 2021… we set a record with $130,261 raised. We are the 2nd largest SB event in NC and 12th largest event in the US. We’ve raised over $700,000 overall from past year campaigns. The amount raised in 2021 was truly an amazing feat given the challenges presented by Covid. . We also supported 2 local families in the fight against cancer. The Volleyball is great, but I hope you all feel a sense of accomplishment in what this event has become beyond those amazingly enjoyable Tuesday nights.
With that in mind, GROWLeadERship has started looking at the event itself and ways we can continue to grow. The major bottle neck has been the number of teams given the limiting factors of time and space. Mark Williams and I have put our heads together and come up with a way to add 4 more teams in 2022. These teams will be allocated to Springdale, Greystone, and Lake Park and also 1 more to the highest bidder from the member pools that do not directly host one of the Growler event. Crabtree (Senior Growler host) was a consideration for the 4th automatic team “source”, but stated in the past they are content with their number of teams. So, that allows for one extra team to be made available to all non-host pools (and we might even consider a new pool if one were to be interested). Each pool will hold an auction among their members for the extra spot (GROWLeadERship Team will run the auction for non-host pools). To the highest bidder goes “Team Captaincy” (NOTE: The minimum will be $1500 (Direct to St Baldricks)). The plan will be to place 2 of the new teams in C and two teams in D for 2022. We’ll work with the captains to make this as logical as possible. For year 1 New teams should be composed 100% of members from the sponsoring pool. Beyond year 1 they can fall into the same rules governing all the other teams that we clarified last year.
The other major area of concern as we grow is ensuring we have the manpower required to pull off the event. To that end we have decided to add a 5th variable to the Tournament GPI (Growler Performance Indicator)… Volunteer Hours.
See below for difference btwn 2021 and 2022:
Basically,
2021– 79% of points were driven off how good you are (Div, W/L, and Pt Diff) and 21% on Money Raised
2022 Proposed – 65% of points were driven off how good you are (Div, W/L, and Pt Diff) and 17% on Money Raised and 17% for Volunteering
To see how this might have affected 2021 we pulled the volunteer hours we have on record and plugged them into the new formula. This is what it would have done to the seeding:
We will capture volunteer hours via the same method used in the past, but in 2022 we will need the teams to ensure they are using the tool to make sure their hours are logged and therefore used in this equation.
The one additional change also displayed in the screen shot above is to award the Top 2 fundraising teams with the #1 and #2 seed (automatically). We are hoping adding the 2 seed to the mix will get more teams into the fundraising spirit as our “rabbit” #1 team can sometime get too far ahead to drive people to get one of the automatic bids:)
Again, a summary of the changes:
- Add 4 teams. Increasing the # of teams from 32 to 36 (2 additional in Div C and Div D)
- Add Volunteer Hours as part of the Points metrics for Ranking in Final Championship seed.
- Top 2 Fundraising teams will get the #1 and #2 seed
- Championship Night is still a 32 team single elimination format.
—The bottom 8 ranked teams will have to “Play In” a Monday night match to make the 29-32 seeds of Tues Championship Night. Water and Beer only that night – 1 hour to complete
Other Discussion Points that we’ll be sure to focus on in 2022:
- Revise the Raffle
- Formalize Sponsorship package (to include T-shirts and Admission Bands included)
- New Shirt Manufacturer?
- More speakers at the event
- Female Growler?
- Take a look at Admission and Registration costs ($80) as well as Team Donation Minimums ($1500)
Collectively we feel the train continues to run smoothly and we’ll be looking to just tweak a few things from years past. Our goal is to continue to grow the event year over year and provide for St Baldricks.
Thanks!
Bill Speri
Tournament Director