Deadness for MCA Silver
Saturday, February 27, 2016 at 10:28AM After a roundtable discussion with the most experienced Silver players, the MCA is moving forward with utilizing carry-over deadness for tournament play in the Silver Division for the 2016 season. A key toward moving forward with the initiative was the launch of the Bronze Six-Ball Division in 2015, which should accommodate new players.
A key benefit includes the potential consolidation of existing Silver players with players of a similar level that are shifting up to Gold just to get experience with carry-over deadness.
"Overall, this should allow us to have a bigger developmental division. The Gold has morphed into a consolation bracket for the Pro Division for several events," said MCA President Dylan Goodwin. "That means a handful of players have spent their mornings in challenging games against Pro players. In some cases that has been good exposure, but utilizing the same rules across the three divisions allows those players the option to move up or down with out stepping outside of the deadness game. The vast majority of our players are devoutly commited to playing 'deadness' croquet."
Goodwin indicated that he wasn't sure how this move would impact the Gold Division overall.
"I would like to see the Gold stand on it's own, rather than a consolation bracket for Pro. I am just not sure how the numbers will breakout, but we are slowly drawing interest from experienced players from the overall KC nine-wicket scene. You never know until you see them at the event, but we certainly have rumors of good players looking at joining us for the 2016 season. More experienced players coming in would help us build Pro and Gold out."
Goodwin did also say that he expects the initiative to slow membership growth.
"My experience has been that players that get into deadness too early hit a wall and drop out. To mitigate that, I'm going to need to get our golf croquet development plan for south KC up and running."
Reader Comments (6)
Keep me posted. I will be interesting to see how brand new 9 wicket players will embrace COD. Will you be playing on an official 100 X 50 foot court.
We always play on full size courts except at the KC Open. There we use a modified layout that achieves the same inner wicket dimensions as a 96 x 50 court. You can actually see that layout in the last issue of USCA's Croquet News at the start of the One Court Model feature. With the modified layout, we can fit two nine-wicket courts onto the space of one six wicket court. I plan to do a web piece on this modified layout. Court space is one the key issues for the sport and this helps in that area.
I am trying to get a handle on one set of official rules for the 9 wicket game .It seems that your group plays the 9 wicket game with carryover deadness as the basic rules. Am I correct?
Dylan
How did it happen that you adopted a hybrid 9 wicket game, with COD, from the basic USCA rules of the 9 wicket game?
We play very much close to the standard USCA Nine-Wicket Tournament Rules. We have improved the 9W wiring rule and use that. I recommend that the USCA adopts our rule there. We use 1B instead of 1A for clearing.
We've played USCA 9W tournament rules since the USCA re-launched 9W nationals in 2008. Prior to that, all of the groups that I am aware of in Kansas City utilized carry-over deadness for six-ball (cutthroat) croquet.
Please forgive me for my interruption that COD was not part of the basic rules. In reviewing the history of the 9 wicket standard rules since 1986 and the adoption of the rules by Jack Osborn the language was not clear about carryover deadness. It does appear that carryover was part of the basic rules.
In the USCA website 2013 Synopsis of Nine Wicket Croquet it stated under the section Hitting other balls. If a striker ball hits a live ball we say it has made a roquet, and the striker becomes entitled to take croquet from the roqueted ball. (All balls are live at the start of the turn.) This is done by picking up the striker ball, placing it in contact with the roqueted ball, then striking the striker ball. The croqueted ball is now dead, and remains so until the striker ball scores its next wicket or stake point or until the start of the next turn.
The new USCA 2016 standard basic rules now make it clear that on each turn you are alive on all other balls. There is no carryover deadness in the standard basic rules. This is a major change to the 9 wicket rules and now puts the USCA 9 Wicket game, a game in its own right and not a stepping stone to the US 6 Wicket game with COD. I understand that it will be hard for the old timers who are now playing the 9 wicket game with COD to transition to the new standard rules. This game is a whole different strategy from COD.