THESE ARE VOYAGES OF THE T.O.T ENTERPRISE...

Captain's blog stardate February 27, 2013: The first captain's meeting of the season took place on this night. What is usually a quick meet and greet turned out to be a long dragged out affair. In the first captain's meeting we talk about the budget, how registration is going, equipment, etc., pretty quick stuff. It was going smoothly until the point in the meeting when the prez asked if there was any new business. A couple of items were brought up and a discussion/ debate was underway. What seemed like hours later (probably more like an hour), the new business items were resolved (sorta) and the first meeting was in the books.

The next captain's meeting (March 27) is the one that takes the longest to get through. The usual items are discussed, but the part that seems to take up the most time is going through the ratings of each of the registered players.

At the end of each season, the team captains rate all the players on their roster and these ratings are recorded and used to assist in the following season draft. The league also has a ratings committee who will go through the list prior to the March 27 meeting. The committee will comb through each level and try to place every player where they believe they should be. The ratings committee will spend several hours going through the players.

With the captains ratings of the players and the ratings committee spending several hours looking at every player on the list, you would think that we would go in to the meeting and it would be all said and done. Not the case; there always seem to be captains that think certain players should be rated differently. And so the debate begins...and several hours later we have a ratings sheet. I would really like to see the captains rely on the judgement of the rating's committee. The difference between a rated 1 and 2 or a 9 and 10 is so small... and these are the kinds of numbers we discuss at length. In my opinion a high rated 2 is as good as a low rated 1.

Once we have the ratings figured out, we move on to team shirt colours and order of the draft. These two things move quite quickly; each team picks a number out of a hat or some other vessel (the last two years it's been an easter egg with some chocolate goodies and the number) and starting with number 15 this year, the teams select their shirt colours. The order of the draft is decided by the same numbers. The team that chose their shirt colour last will be the team picking first in the draft. The Hurtin' Units have been in the middle of the pack in all three season, and we will be in the middle of the pack again in 2013, picking 8th. In our first two seasons we picked Royal Blue and in the third season we ended up with Kelly Green as our shirt colours. We are hoping for a different colour this season.

Captain's Blog Stardate March 27, 2013: The second captain's meeting of the season took place on this date. As I mentioned earlier this is the longest meeting of the season. I was expecting a long meeting (usually 3 hours in length) and I was not far off the mark. The ratings debate will always be the focus of this meeting and we hope, in the end, we get it right.

We hope we get it right; but with a fresh crop of new players every season, the rookie position, on our teams, is always a lottery pick. This season the rookie player will be slotted in as a rated number 6. This was a change brought up over the last several seasons and it was finally voted in for this year. The sixth slot seems about right; it's the middle of the pack. With the old setup, the new/ rookie players were slotted in the 10 position. There was nothing wrong with the players coming in as a 10, but unfortunately some of the number 10s were number 1s and some were number 12s. I agree that the players being brought in as a six seems, on the surface, to be a little more fair. We have seen in previous seasons that the rookie position can upset the parity of the league.

In addition to the ratings being sorted out, we also decided on the numbers of games played on the season and how many teams we are going have in the league. With the number of players registered, we had two options for the number of teams; we could go with 14 teams with a roster of 13 players per team or we could go with 15 teams with 12 players. The captains voted in favour of 15 teams of 12 players. There were two sets of captains/ teams that are not going to return for the 2013 season; The Lucky Stiffs and the Banshees are the teams not returning. And since we need 15 sets of captains, two new sets were brought on board. The new captains are John Tessier with co-captain John Barrow and Chuck Cragg with co-captain Steve Black.



The team picking last for team colour,
gets first pick of player at the draft.

As I mentioned earlier, this is also the meeting when the shirt colours are decided. The Hurtin' Units will be dressed in black shirts with yellow lettering in the 2013 season. I said I wanted a change and this is definitely better than the Kelly Green.

Over the 3 seasons the team wearing black has won the T.O.T championship. Hurtin' Units were the eighth pick over all in the choosing of the shirt colours. We were not the first team to chose black, the first team (Dogcatchers) actually took black with white lettering. I'm looking forward to wearing a different colour this season, the Kelly Green last season was a little soft, black is definitely a tougher team colour.







Draft Order and Shirt Colour

Order Team Shirt Colour/Piping

1 Grisslies Kelly Green/Black
2 Dodge City Rounders Purple/White
3 Tap Masters Gold/Black
4 Blues Brothers Cream/Blue
5 Gruesome Devils Forest/White
6 Beer Bros. White/Black
7 Draft Kings Teal/White
8 Hurtin’ Units Black/Gold
9 Hot Tub Woody’s Gray/Black
10 Brew Jays Navy/White
11 Dislocated Joints Maroon/White
12 Dog Catchers Black/White
13 Dusty Cleats Orange/Black
14 Red Dogs Red/White
15 Rusty Rebels Royal/Yellow
The Draft is quickly approaching; Mike and I are looking forward to draft day and meeting our new teammates. Bring on draft day.