What I learned in the past week is that in Southwest Washington (Tacoma/Olympia) has not only added the 18-39 league, but has moved some other leagues around. Specifically, this year, 40 & Over was played January thru March (Winter), and 18 & Over April thru June (Spring) as normal leagues. The 55 & Over league was played in the Fall as an early start league.
TLDR: I go on for a bit below, and please do read it if you have time, but the short story is the schedule change has been made to try and increase participation, and while I hope participation does increase, I'm skeptical it will as it seems there are some factors that are going to make that difficult that may not have been considered or given enough weight.
Now, on to the details!
For 2019, Southwest Washington is swapping the slots for 55 & Over and 40 & Over, the latter becoming an early start league played this Fall and 55 & Over moving to the January thru March slot as a regular league.
Why was this change made? The main reason appears to be that there has been a drop in participation in the Winter/Spring leagues and they are looking to try to do things to reverse this trend. Here is the chart that was provided in a document on the schedule changes from the coordinator.
We can see that 18 & Over has dropped a bit each year, down 89 registrations or 8% from 2015 to 2018. The 40 & Over also dropped, 5% from 2015 to 2017 but came up a bit for 2018 to make the 3-year drop just 41 or 4%. Regardless, the decline appears to be real in both leagues, a total decline of 130 or 6%.
So what might be causing the decline? The schedule change document mentioned that players had made comments that having the two different leagues played back to back caused them to decide to play just one or the other and not both like they had in the past. It also said a survey was done, where some of the comments presumably were made, that indicated support for 40 & Over to be played in either Winter or Fall, although it did indicate there was more support for leaving it in the Winter (3.34 vs 2.48 weighted score).
If this is all true, one can see how a change might be a worthwhile thing to try to see if it helps participation. But is there other data to consider? Does the data support this conclusion? Or what are the implications of a change like this?
First, what is missing from the above chart is the 55 & Over participation numbers. By my calculations, those have gone up each year since 2015 from 460 to 524, an increase of 64 or 14%. The increase of 64 does not completely offset the loss of 130 from the other two leagues, but still gives reason to believe there may be something else going on.
What that something else might be is that players are simply getting older. In the three years from 2015 to 2018, all those age 52-54 turned 55 and became eligible to play 55 & Over, and common sense says they will have decided to play in that league and may decide to drop 18 & Over as they no longer need to play the "youngsters" to get a second league in. And some of those 55+ players may have reached retirement age and/or decide to spend some of the Winter in the desert which makes them unavailable for the 40 & Over season.
If both of these factors are significant contributors to the decline, it may be that the 40 & Over and 18 & Over leagues being back to back is not as big a factor as the comments indicate, and instead the real issue is that the void created by some players getting older is not being filled with new players under 40.
Second, are the players playing in multiple leagues declining? Or are the individual leagues declining on their own?
My analysis shows that 655 players were rostered on both an 18 & Over and 40 & Over team in 2015. This declined to 591, or down 64, in 2018 so yes, fewer players are playing in both leagues. But we can also look at other combinations.
The count of those playing both 55 & Over and 18 & Over went 227, 215, 249, and 227 in the four years ending 2018. So on average, this has stayed pretty flat.
The count of those playing both 55 & Over and 40 & Over went 261, 313, 316, and 335, an increase of 84, so a pretty dramatic increase. In fact, this increase was more than the 18/40 decrease.
So what does this tell us? The decline in 18/40 but flat in 18/55 would seem to support the notion that players prefer to play both leagues when there is a gap between them. However, the increase in 40/55 would seem to support what I wrote above, that the player population is growing older and is just more comfortable doubling up in 40/55 than with 18 & Over. It is likely that both are a factor, but the increase in 40/55 being larger tells me the age factor is larger.
As an early start league, players in the 2019 40 & Over league will now register with their 2017 year-end rating. These players will be eligible at that level on their teams through local playoffs in December, but if they are bumped up at 2018 year-end will be ineligible to continue playing on their team at Sectionals at their rostered level. In fact, a team could have enough players bumped up that they win local playoffs and can't even field a team at Sectionals. Correspondingly, if a player is bumped down at year-end, the 40 & Over season will already have been played and these players won't be able to play 40 & Over at their new level until the 2020 season.
Note that it is the demise or early start ratings that makes both of these issues worse than they would be otherwise.
Both of these early start implications are going to put the Southwest Washington teams at Sectionals at a disadvantage. On the first point, they could lose their best players to bump ups while teams from other areas playing 40 & Over in the Winter or Spring won't be affected. On the second point, all of the other areas will have been able to include bumped down players to their rosters. Now, admittedly, this is only going to impact the one or two teams at each level that advance to Sectionals, but it is going to make it a lot tougher for those teams to compete with the other areas, particularly those from Portland and Seattle that already had an advantage of having many more players to draw from.
Now, you might argue that when 55 & Over was an early start league the same issues existed. That is true, but just sort of. First, most other areas run their 55 & Over as an early start league so no one was disadvantaged by doing it differently. Also, 55 & Over is a combination league, that means a 7.0 team for example can have 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0 players on the roster, so there is more flexibility to absorb a player being bumped up at year-end that 40 & Over does not have.
One advantage Southwest Washington will have with 55 & Over is that they will be able to have the just bumped down players on their rosters where the other areas won't. But there are fewer levels/teams/players in 55 & Over so the advantage will benefit far fewer players and teams, and it is a smaller advantage and less likely to come into play given the combination nature of the league and fewer levels played.
So, IMHO, 55 & Over seems much more well suited to being the early start league than 40 & Over.
Another dynamic with leagues in the Northwest is when players may migrate south for the Winter or vacations. The typical time for this is January thru March which is smack dab during the 55 & Over season now. The gotcha here is that the players most likely to do a Winter migration are probably those age 55+. So that growth I noted above in the 55 & Over league may turn around as players may be out of town during that season now.
I've written a lot, hopefully it all made sense, but what do you think, particularly if you play in Southwest Washington? Is this schedule change for the better? Is it worth trying something different to try to increase participation? Or is it going to make it more challenging for older players to play league and is ignoring the real issue which is the lack of new under 40 players?
I think there are some challenges to this schedule working out for the better, but I do hope it does and participation goes up, and teams that go to Sectionals feel they can compete.
If you are so inclined, please leave a comment here or on Facebook, and vote in the poll below if you are from Southwest Washington.
Do you like the Southwest Washington schedule change?
You may vote for multiple selections.
See this blog for details on the changes to the schedule.
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