Cincy SC recently introduced a formal mechanism for parents and coaches to provide feedback on the tournaments our teams attend. We’re calling it GATOR, mostly for fun, but also to differentiate it from other stuff we have going on. GATOR loosely stands for Grouping and Analysis of Tournament Observations and Recommendations. Don’t try to remember that though. Just call it GATOR. đŸ™‚
The purpose of GATOR is to continue to improve on the tournament experiences of our Cincy SC teams. Feedback our families provide will help us decide whether to go back to a tournament again and help identify what to look for, or watch out for, when deciding whether to enter a tournament.
In Fall 2019, we sent teams to nine different tournaments, with some tournaments having only 1 team (Dog Days) and others having as many as 19 teams (Forest Park Star). We sent teams to the Ohio United Cup (4 teams), the End of Summer Classic in Sandusky (12 teams), the Midwest Fall Cup (13 teams), and the Dublin United Champions Cup (5 teams). We asked participants to provide their feedback using this survey.
We had 209 GATOR responses about these tournaments. Here’s the summary of answers to the “Would you go back?” question:
| Tournament | No | Yes | Total | Yes % |
| 2019-08-17 Dog Days | 2 | 2 | 100% | |
| 2019-08-24 Ohio Utd Cup | 5 | 9 | 14 | 64% |
| 2019-08-24 Sandusky | 27 | 41 | 68 | 60% |
| 2019-09-14 Midwest Fall Cup | 4 | 39 | 43 | 91% |
| 2019-09-21 Dublin Champions Cup | 1 | 11 | 12 | 92% |
| 2019-10-05 Cincy Challenge | 2 | 10 | 12 | 83% |
| 2019-10-12 Blue Chip Inv. | 4 | 4 | 100% | |
| 2019-10-19 Forest Park Star Inv | 17 | 31 | 48 | 65% |
| 2019-10-19 Halloween Havoc | 2 | 4 | 6 | 67% |
| Grand Total | 58 | 151 | 209 | 72.2% |
Of course, filtering by team provides other insights. For the Ohio United Cup, only one team had any “no” votes:
| Gender | Team | No | Yes | Yes % |
| Boys | 2011 Elite | 2 | 100% | |
| Girls | 2006 Elite | 6 | 100% | |
| 2011 Elite | 5 | 1 | 17% | |
| Grand Total | 5 | 9 | 64% |
And for the Sandusky tournament, the responses varied widely by team:
| Gender | Team | No | Yes | Yes % |
| Boys | 2006 Elite | 2 | 3 | 60% |
| 2006 Premier | 8 | 5 | 38% | |
| 2007 Premier | 2 | 5 | 71% | |
| 2008 Elite | 1 | 5 | 83% | |
| 2008 Premier | 2 | 4 | 67% | |
| 2009 Premier | 3 | 1 | 25% | |
| Girls | 2005 | 5 | 100% | |
| 2006 Premier | 1 | 6 | 86% | |
| 2007 Premier | 3 | 1 | 25% | |
| 2008 Premier | 5 | 3 | 38% | |
| 2009 Premier | 3 | 100% | ||
| Grand Total | 27 | 41 | 60% |
As always, the comments are the most helpful piece to understand what people liked and didn’t like. Our directors read every response and we share a summary by team with each coach as well.
It’s out hope that tools like GATOR help us continue to improve our tourney selections and the overall tourney experiences for our players, families, and coaches.
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