[BrendanB]

A one day event means it is an offseason. Being in districts we generally know the teams we are competing with that day and what they are capable. Things I tell our students to watch for is teams who are competing better or worse than their typical performance.

With it being the offseason teams are using different drivers at some events so its wise to find out if teams are planning to switch their drivers for the elimination rounds.

My advice would be come up with a top 14 list give or take for a 24 team elimination tournament at a bare minimum. It doesn't need to be as perfect as your competition season picklist but at least you are more prepared than you were that morning. Unless we have a specific strategy in mind for the elimination rounds I trust our team rep to make a decent 2nd round selection again using our previous knowledge of them mixed with what we've seen throughout the day.

It is rare though to attend an offseason with normal rules for the alliance selection. For example, Battlecry does random selection in the second round leaving us to just focus on who we would select first. River Rage makes the first round picks random so you have to be flexible depending who your first pick was.

With events making up their own rules its why I generally encourage our students to focus more on exercising their abilities to watch matches and make basic notes on performance to sort through the field of teams. Its a lot less stressful and if we don't have a list we don't worry about it. The purpose is more for the students to learn and become better prepared for the following season. In general the best policy is to have fun and learn something new.

As for the final day of an official competition, you want to know what traits you want to see in your picks. The first round selection is a little easier to sort through who you want. Typically the top tier at an event sticks out and their performances can be sorted by average balls scored, results from matches together, and generally just watching them to see where they peak or struggle during their matches. For our second picks we usually make columns on a whiteboard from the previous day listing the top teams in the fields we want to see our third alliance member playing. Then we watch the final matches sorting them based on how they are playing while keeping an eye for teams not on our current lists as they change how they play on the final day. After a round or two of matches we have our near final sort and aim for our list to be 26 teams deep.

Then we copy our whiteboard list on to two pieces of paper: one stays with the scouting team in the stands and the other goes on the field with our rep. Our main group in the stands puts the number we believes is best up on the board for our rep to see. We like this system as it keeps us flexible and if we select someone in the first round or are selected ourselves we can conference with our partner so both teams are heard. Worst case our rep has a list of teams with them so they can follow along with what our group in the stands is thinking or they can follow the list and make a good decision that was already vetted by the scouts.

I prefer this system as it allows us plenty of time to sort through our picklist while still keeping an eye on the field. It also means we can receive input from our entire scouting team without being hurried or panicked so we can make clearer decisions.