There have been leagues throughout the history of organized wiffleball that have not featured teams but focus only on the statistics of individual players (Cleveland Wiffleball League, etc.). Humboldt Professional Wiffleball Association is the largest league of it's kind. According to their most recent data they have around 40 players and a third of them are women. They pick teams every game and it's a free-for-all every time. For some leagues who have trouble keeping teams afloat this format should be considered. The only lame thing about this league is they don't have a website, instead they have a myspace...and they somehow manage to not even keep that updated. That's pretty pathetic if you ask me. But they do put out a video every once-in-a-while.
There is one thing I really like about not having teams that could make the style fun to play in: it would have guarantee a much greater league unity and identity among the players. Of course, it would probably inflate the personal egos even more. Haha
ReplyDeleteA website wouldn't be tough to keep up, but would be pretty thin: more or less just a list of individual's stats. It could be fun tracking all the different rosters, who has played with who, and whether or not players do better together, etc.
Yeah it is a shame that they don't have even a basic website. Myspace is a joke anyway. I mean, seriously? At least get a league lineup site or something to put the stats up on. I realize that some leagues out there are not really that organized but if you've got the drive to edit video then why not get a basic site up and running for the league as well?
ReplyDeleteWe ran with a Myspace back in '06 when we were just looking to host a couple tournaments a year. Far, far from ideal, but it worked for connecting with people and you could kinda/sorta use the myspace blog to do stats and info. But yeah, nowadays at least switch to facebook. League Lineup for this style could be really simple: set up 1 team with all the players on it and just input weekly stats updates. Definitely agree that video editing is much more involved (although, maybe more rewarding to them?) than doing stats and player info for.
ReplyDeleteFor the record...we do have a facebook. It's a bit more updated. We're not the most technical league, but our games are awesome. Hands down. We're going into our 7th year of anyone-can-play Sunday games. Wiffle on, good people.
ReplyDelete