Playing divisions above your rating

[armiller]

Good thread. Not sure who to quote...

I recently became a PDGA member and jumped on the waitlist for an event. To be honest, I don't think I'd even be competitive to win Intermediate around here, but I ended up bumping up to Advanced. One reason is that the waitlist was WAY shorter (3 ahead of me instead of 17), but another is that I'd prefer playing up and testing my game against better competition and the tougher layout, where par scores quite well. Plus, I'm doing it for the experience. I may get blown out of the water, but I'd rather find out I'm outclassed than get out there and regret not playing up. I'm pretty sure I'll finished in the bottom half, but if I stay middle of the pack I'll be happy.

At any rate, if I end up with you in a future tournament, and you see me playing Intermediate (or Rec), you'll be able to guess how this went...

 

[ILUVSMGS18]

Everyone is Western NY plays WAY over their rating. In fact the majority of tournaments in WNY don't even offer Rec or Novice divisions, and when they do the fields are so small they get pushed into Intermediate the majority of the time. It's discouraged me from playing tournaments at all. There's massive Adv and Int fields but nothing under that, and even those two groups end up with scores that look identical down the board.

It's sad, but the TDs don't care and pay out the top half of the fields. I'd gladly just play for trophy if it meant playing within an even group, but too many players around here want to get paid in plastic. It seems no one has pride in winning, and everyone is called a bagger for playing their real division.

If anyone in NE NY actually played their rating, there would be maybe 2 Open, 6 Adv, 9 Int, and the rest Rec/Novice. I'm rated less than 850, and I'm playing Int, though that rating includes multiple less than 700 rounds.

 

[Casey 1988]

Everyone is Western NY plays WAY over their rating. In fact the majority of tournaments in WNY don't even offer Rec or Novice divisions, and when they do the fields are so small they get pushed into Intermediate the majority of the time. It's discouraged me from playing tournaments at all. There's massive Adv and Int fields but nothing under that, and even those two groups end up with scores that look identical down the board.

It's sad, but the TDs don't care and pay out the top half of the fields. I'd gladly just play for trophy if it meant playing within an even group, but too many players around here want to get paid in plastic. It seems no one has pride in winning, and everyone is called a bagger for playing their real division.

That is what a Cousin said when he first started playing tournaments, he lives in Dunkirk NY.
I think the sentiment about this stems from the Pre PDGA tournaments in Rochester NY and other parts of Western NY, they have had Disc Golf there longer then most other places in the USA, Dating to early mid 1970 and had everybody playing in same single division, everybody playing was top level "pro" player.

Cousins Father, my Uncle had played a round with Jim Palmeri and he told my uncle that back in the day there were not enough players to even offer a Rec divison, once amature and pro divisions were created. Remember at one point everybody played pro and there were Jr, open, Senior and Grandmaster, as well as those divisions in women as well, except maybe the Jr was combined.

South Dakota is the same way, you have to have a minimum amount of players in a division like 3 to have this happen, exception is JR divisions. Sometimes it is one person who wants to play a division like Rec and they get bumped to choice of Novice or Intermediate. Those same players who would be playing Rec or novice, get called sandbaggers though jokingly at other events they are playing the correct division. A few events though you have to offer them due to PDGA rules have had problems with players in Rec so the directors basically say yes we have to offer Rec though we will not allow players to sign up for the division. Mostly had problems with Rapid City tournaments and players cheating in way that would be bad for even a casual round and breaking the PDGA rules of etiquette on the Noise to other cards/groupings of players and then litter.

 

[Casey 1988]

If anyone in NE NY actually played their rating, there would be maybe 2 Open, 6 Adv, 9 Int, and the rest Rec/Novice. I'm rated less than 850, and I'm playing Int, though that rating includes multiple less than 700 rounds.

So it is a whole NY thing then, not just a Western NY?