Do's and Do not's of a leauge???

I am in the process of starting a league and want to know what are some of the thing you guys like and do not like about yours?

[Jim Coonradt]

I prefer an A Pool and B pool setup for singles over a handicap system. Then if the player wins B pool a couple of times they have to move up. We generally get a good turnout every week. Our doubles league on Thursday has been averaging 12 to 14 people. The Wednesday league has seen up to 22 or more people. Tags are always in play for Wednesday singles.

[josh wieschowski]

most everybody in our area sucks, they play alot and litter the course but they suck and they dont participate in our league play or tourneys. it bums us out, there are 6 of us on average that like play competition and can each hold our own, and its down to 4 of us who do course maintenance on both our local courses.........kinda frustrating but we make it work. we play monday nights and alternate from single play to random doubles and we alternate between both courses. we take a dollar from each player for course improvements/maintenance and the rest is cash, every now and again our skate shop who sells a few discs will dontate a 10 dollar gift card or a disc and we award that to first place. we then post our league stats online so everyone can see where they stack up, kinda pointless when you only have six guys and you already know who stacks up where, but we hope to see more players some day. other than that, keep a sign posted for when your leauge activities are held and pray for people to show up.

[Jim Coonradt]

The fact that nobody helps with course maintenance doesn't surprise me at all. Unless you can get the word out and have a work day that tends to be the case. We had a work day of sorts this year and I think that we got six people. Not sure how to get more people for league. I guess that people here just like to compete so they show up. Especially if they know that there is money to win.

[AK Discer]

We have to go as far as not telling people about work parties and wait till they show up to tell them what we're doing in order to get anybody. Otherwise it is always the same 4-6 people helping out. It pisses me off when you talk to them on the phone or face to face and then they don't show. A lot of times they're the first ones to bitch on a course when something isn't right in their mind. If you didn't help, you don't deserve or have any right whatsoever to bitch about anything.

[R. L. Norrick]

This has been all very helpful. Thank you guys. One more Question...

What should the first event be? Price? Reward? What will make people show up?

[Jim Coonradt]

You could start with either a singles or a doubles event. Just get everything set up ahead of time and things will go smooth. I always write everything down in a notebook. My left front pocket is for the $5 entry and the right front pocket is for the $1 Ace Pool. That way the two don't get mixed. Post what time the league will start. Just remember that come August you should start scaling the starting time back to 5:30 PM. September will mean a 5:15 starting time and then finally 4:45 at the beginning of October. Generally that's when our summer league ends.

Payouts are based on how many people show up. In doubles we pay first and second place but if we get more than 14 third can get paid as well. First place should be rewarded.

With singles it also matters how many people show up as well. I haven't run singles in a while so I can't really say how many get paid. The winner in A Pool usually gets half of the total (or close to it). I would probably pay the top 25%. So twenty people would be $100 with first taking $45, second $25, third $15,fourth $10 and fifth gets money back. Something along those lines.