2009 GSA Volleyball

Announcements
Welcome to the GSA Volleyball 2009 official website.

The season is now over. Congratulations to the champions of our tournament, Colorless Green Ideas taking first in the Major League and Dr. Tepper first in the Minor League. You can find pictures of the winning teams here.

GSA volleyball will be managed by Alex Styler in 2010, so please send any further questions to him.

If you are interested in implementing the Elo rating system in your own tournament, please e-mail me and I will send you some useful PERL scripts I wrote for that purpose. We found this year's games particularly fun and fair since we used the ratings to find the best matches. Here are the basics of the algorithm I used, which is slightly modified from the "ideal" setup:

  • We started by producing an ordered list of how skilled we believed each team was based on their performance last year. We started each team with a score of 900, or 100 times the number of regular season games. We set the maximum score change for a single game to 100. This is an arbitrary choice, but in retrospect 200 or 300 would have been a better choice in order to increase the rate at which teams would reach their "equilibrium" score.
  • For regular season games, ignore who won or lost games but instead base ratings on the total number of points scored by each team in the game.
  • For the first three weeks, we played teams against teams with nearly the same predicted skill level in order to let scores spread out a bit. In the ideal Elo rating system, games should be completely random (as in a season with schedules made entirely in advance), but we wanted to favor fairer games.
  • For the remaining six weeks, we used the following algorithm: select the highest rated team that has not already been scheduled. Select the highest rated opponent that the previous team has not played yet. In the event that at the end of this procedure we have two teams left over that have played each other, instead play them against the lowest-rated pair of teams that can be scheduled to play them. Again, this is a departure from the Elo model, but favors fairer games overall.
  • At the end of the main season games, use the scores to seed a single elimination tournament ladder in the normal fashion.
The advantages of this are:
  • Fairer, more fun games.
  • Since rating changes are based on points scored instead of games won, "barely losing" registers differently than a crushing defeat.
  • Lower-rated teams can actually score points against better, higher rated teams just by playing their best game. This actually happened several times throughout the season.
  • High predictive power for the final tournament, with relatively few upsets.
Registration
The 2009 season is over!
Basics
  • The season runs from February 8 until May 3. We have nine weeks of regular season and two weeks of playoffs.
  • Games are every Sunday, and only on Sunday (except Spring break and Easter) between 5pm and 9pm.
  • We play 6 on 6, but you are allowed to play with as few as 4.
  • All games are in the main gym of Skibo gym (NOT Wiegand gym) on Tech St, located next to Tepper.
New Rules
  • If you know ahead of time that your team will not be showing up, let us know one week in advance and we will not schedule a game for your team. Teams that fail to show up twice without notice will be removed from the league.

    Reasoning : This new rule is not designed with punishment in mind, rather to make the league more fun. If a team doesn't show up, the opposing team will have no one to play against and they would have made the trip down to the gym for nothing. This happened a lot last year -- one team won FIVE games just by showing up. Therefore please make sure you have enough players on your roster and recruit only players who can make it semi-regularly.

  • For the first nine weeks of regular season, there will only be one league for all teams. We will implement the Elo rating system. For the last two weeks of playoffs, all the teams will divided into two leagues and each league will have their own playoffs so this part is not that different from previous years. The ELO ranking will decide the seeding for the playoffs and will also be used to ensure teams play against other teams of comparable skill level.

    Reasoning : The dual league format is designed to maximize fun by preventing teams of vastly different skill level from playing each other. However this requires teams to somehow know what level they are at before they even play their first game and this has been a problem. The new system does away with the guesswork and will also prevent skill level mismatch.

FAQs
  • How many players should there be in a team?

    Any number between 8-12 should be OK. Keep in mind that having less then 4 players on the court is automatic win for the opposing team if they have 4 or more players. Having too many players is not really bad, just that each player gets to play less. Also, try to recruit players who can show up regularly.

  • Can my spouse/significant other/friend be in my team?

    As in the case previous years, all team members who are not CMU students must get written approval from us in order to play. Spouses of CMU students will certainly be allowed to play, but others may be denied. Undergraduates are NOT allowed to play.

  • I'm not sure if my team should be in the minors, intermediate or major league.

    We are implementing a new system this year which puts all teams in one big league during the regular season.

  • Can a player be in two different teams?

    Yes. However note the following caveat, the two teams might be scheduled for the same time slot or worse still might be scheduled to play each other. Request for change of time slot for this reason will not be entertained.

  • Can I field players who are not on the roster?

    Technically no. But in the spirit of GSA volleyball, what is often practiced is the team fielding a non-roster player will just ask for permission from the opposing team.

  • I would like to play but I do not have a team.

    Send us an email and we will put your name on this website. That way teams looking for players can contact you.

Important Documents
Other Links

You might also find these links interesting:

Here are the e-mail addresses of this year's organizers. If you're not sure of who to e-mail with your concern, please address it to Shiang Yong.


Maintained by Ben Sauerwine