Just wanted to start a dialog about two chronic problems in amateur athletic competitions which have not escaped the Gay Games, nor most gay athletic tournaments I have participated in, and those are: 1) the use of ringers and 2) entire teams playing below their level. These points were addressed in the daily notes by Cyd, Jim, et. al. and they are clearly interrelated.

How can these be eliminated or at least curtailed at the Gay Games or any other competition? I don't know, but they are everywhere, even in the mainstream sports leagues I've participated in. In my experience, when a league director discovers that a particular player on a team is playing below his or her skill level, that player is forced to leave that team and given the option of playing on another team at an appropriate skill level. Seems pretty fair to me. Would this approach work at the Gay Games? Just asking.

What about teams that deliberately place themselves in a division in which they don't belong in order to assure a gold medal? Apparently, there were a number of sports at the Chicago Gay Games (and Sydney and Amsterdam) where this happened and keeps happening, including ice hockey. Can you kick the team out of the competition? Refund their registration fee? Allow them to compete but deny them medals? Self-administered player rating systems designed to ensure a level playing field are woefully inadequate in meeting their objective.

Recently, I participated in a charity tournament. One team included several college players from a national championship team. Naturally, they slaughtered the competition. Is this any less offensive because it was a charity event? Everyone paid good money to participate. Aren't people entitled to a level playing field?

Ideas? Solutions? Or do we just live with it?
Thanks.

There were several cases in the Gay Games where people were moved from one division to the other based upon pool play. This is the perogative of the tournament director (I would argue both a right and obligation).

As you might imagine, the biggest complaints about this were from those who were moved "up." Bitter complaints, in fact (I thought one drunk softball guy was going to hit me he was so angry - and I was only tapingthe softball bracket up on behalf of the softball people and his team had already been told and agreed to the change). I can imagine the terrible pressure on people to not "rock the boat," and make those changes - especially from the mostly volunteer tournament managers. It's difficult to make the decision in a relatively objective way, of course. However, in some cases, safety and good sportsmanship seem to require it.

This kind of stuff will always happen. Some people put such a huge emphasis on winning, they'd rather win a gold against lesser competition than a bronze against their peers. Not all, but some.

Unfortunately, this kind fo thing spreads quickly. I knew a volleyball team that designed itself for one division and entered a lower division, knowing they'd get bumped up one. They got bumped up TWO divisions, and got killed in the playoffs.

NAGAAA does a GREAT job of monitoring this stuff, though it still happens in NAGAAA tournaments. To curtail it, it takes a LOT of work and effort. Event organizers, unfortunately, become the bad guys - when it's the teams that try to "cheat" that are the problem.

As for the LA Blades, that's a whole other issue, and it's a complicated one. The Blades didn't do anything against the rules. But, I just question going out and getting a straight pro player so you can win. If the guy was a name, like Ray Borque, that would have been AWESOME; or if he was gay, that would have been a great statement. But, no one benefitted from these no-name guys playing but LA. One thing that exacerbated the problem is that the "competitive" division was made up of them plus a bunch of teams that had originally signed up for the rec division.

In football, having Esera play was great. Players from other teams, and spectators, went up to him and thanked him and chatted with him. We've heard from other teams how cool it was to have played against a former NFL player. To me, that situation is different because he is gay and was a Gay Games Ambassador - he brought a great cache to the event and made everyone feel welcome.

I don't think there is a right or wrong answer to this, and I'll be interested in hearing other people's thoughts.

Hockey has dealt with the problem of a level playing field for a while. It comes up at every tournament and was probably present in Chicago, given some of the results.

Montreal has taken a new approach to this for the upcoming Outgames. While they have left the open division alone, they has taken the recreational divison and created a qualification round where all teams would play teams in a pool. Based on the results of the pool you would be either funnelled towards a rec 1 final round or a rec 2 final round. There will be 2 sets of medals awarded. I will certainly keep you posted as to how this works out.

I would like to see this adopted to both the competitive and recreational divisions as in hockey we have teams who knowingly or unknowingly put them themselves in a lower division than they should be.

In tennis, there were at least three players from Puerto Rico who registered to play at the D level even though they had NTRP ratings from the USTA of 3.0, which according to the Gay Games site should have put them at the C level. It wasn't, unfortunately, until the final day of competition that the sandbagging was discovered. So quite a few good competitors missed out on a chance at a medal because they happened to be in the same part of the draw as the underreporters in a single elimination tournament. I feel bad for them, mostly.

I still treasure the gold medal I got by default. We would have had a silver anyway, even had our opponents not been disqualified. But all the players who lost to them before have a right to feel cheated.

In that sense, player rankings like they have in tennis in most countries is a good thing, but the Gay Games needs to do a little better job of ferreting out underreporters earlier in tournaments. How they could do that with the huge number of players and very few qualified volunteers, I have no idea!

Of course, the story told in some pretty hateful emails by the other side is that Gay Games tennis officials are "heartless and without soul," racist, anti-Puerto Rico and that it was a conspiracy designed to enhance medals from Chicagoans because one of the people who complained used to live in Chicago. Lovely.

Kevin, I read these guys' complaints on the glbtq.com message board.

Will (my partner) has never lived in Chicago. They may have thought so because I live in Chicago, but that's just plain inaccurate. Moreover, none of the tennis officials in charge of the event live in Chicago.

Will was most certainly not the only one to complain about these gentlemen. At least one other person went directly to the organizers to complain that his opponent was clearly not a D player.


It was the USTA officials, not the Gay Games people, who made the determination based on visual evidence and the fact that they OWN A 3.0 RATING and PLAY IN USTA LEAGUES AT THE 3.0 LEVEL!!! Why these guys thought that they could pull a fast one and beat up on us little guys -- and than have the temerity to lie about it -- I'll never know. They were caught red-handed. Every other player I found by entering their names on the USTA site was playing at or above their appropriate spot.

Sorry they feel there's a conspiracy, but the organizers were far too worried about getting the matches in, figuring out what happened to the tennis balls, moving from one site to another, dealing with the heat, tracking down volunteers, posting the results as fast as they could, etc. to give a shit who was from where.

Cyd: Good comments. (Just for the record, I wasn't alluding to the LA hockey team but an east coast team with a rep for playing below its skill level at this and previous Gay Games.)

It's interesting and enlightening (and a little enraging) to hear of these anecdotes involving players/teams in the wrong teams/divisions. I'm glad there was some bumping of teams in some sports. I've personally witnessed the emotional ballistics from players/teams being bumped or otherwise penalized for cheating their rankings/rosters. That kind of un-sportsmanship makes me furious.

I guess I am simply naieve hope that no one would "cheat" to win. A former Denver Bronco who hosts a sports talk show recently said, and I quote, "If you're not trying to cheat, you're not trying to win." Nice.

I'm not certain about other sports, but I know in softball the gay games did an excellent job of observing games, scores, results and then moving teams to the correct division.

There was a Chicago team that finished pool play 1-2, yet they were still bumped up as the two losses were against teams that were also moved up, one of which took the bronze medal in a division one higher than they initially started.

Yes, even Volleyball is not immune to entire teams "sandbagging" or playing WAY below their true level of play. At least this time around, those in charge of Volleyball formed a committee of players from ALL levels of play and experience. (Ranging from "B" all the way up to " AA"/"Open" There were SEVERAL teams that tried to sandbag and attempted to NOT be noticed. One team in particular, a certain team from Singapore had 1 "Open" level player (who plays for the Singapore National Olympic Team ), 1 "A" level player, who plays at the state level in Malaysia, several "BB" rated players and 1 or 2 "B" rated players. They (even knowing their true place), decided to enroll the team in the "C" Division. Even after the team captain was informed 2DAYS before competition even started that they still had the chance to play fair and bump themselves up to the proper level where they should have been in the first place. Thanks to this committee of 10 experienced players, it was UNANIMOUS that this team in question should be playing in the "A" Division . Sure, there was a LOT of complaining/bitching/moaning. But after all was said and done. Out of a total of 110 teams, 35 teams were either bumped UP or DOWN and only 3 teams had complaints. Team Filipino , who tried to sneak by in "B" Division , got bumped up to "BB". Peru Inca Empire , who had the nerve to try and play in "BB" got bumped up to "AA" where, by the way, they took the Bronze Medal out of 6 VERY strong teams .......and of course, Singapore NewUrbanMale.com , who had the audacity/lack of true sportsmanship to attempt to play in "C" Division , got bumped up to "A" Division . BUT, do to threats of a lawsuit/whining/complaining/threats of calling the Singapore Embassy........a low-level "NAGVA" rep and "B" player made the command decision (having over-ridden the final verdict by several "A" and "AA" players), to fold in on their demands/complaints and let the team play in the "BB" Division . Besides undermining the unanimous decision from the Rating/Sandbagging Committee, this individual from NAGVA made the decision WITHOUT consulting anyone one of us who was on said committee. What a shame.........but at least this time around, the situation was dealt with, unlike what had happened in Sydney. For future games, I think ALL sports should have such a committee to look at players and over-all team performance, to make sure people are playing at their appropriate level. A good chunk of these queens either have no clue of the concept of "sportsmanship" ".......or just choose to throw it out the window. Either way, there are enough of us out there in the International Volleyball circuit who KNOW most of the International players. Play where you belong and you will avoid the shame and embarrassment you not only brought on your home country, your team, but also to Gay Games and Volleyball as a whole. And for those teams/players who DID play at their level.........your true sportsmanship did not go un-noticed. I, along with the entire Committee thank you for making our job not only easier, but quite enjoyable (despite the 3 teams who caused unneeded drama.) Kudos to those who came and played their game!
Peace,
VolleyBaller

The statement about "After all was said and done... only 3 had complaints..." is misleading. Perhaps these three, which "Volleyballer" goes on to describe as particularly egregious violators of the spirit of the games, are the only ones whose complaints were somehow "official", but there were several of us who complained that this "committee from ALL levels of play" had uprated our teams too high and got a response of: "It's too late." As a result, our team and two others we know of, being from the same city, were killed in the bracket play and out of the tournament very quickly. Volleyballer makes it sound like their committee really solved the problems. I disagree. While the committee's purpose is a good one it made it's changes of rating too late. Any adjustments should have been done early enough to allow the changed teams to play at least one game in pool play in their "new" division. How else would you know whether you made a mistake or not? Clearly, not ALL of the raters got to see ALL of the teams that were up/down rated. I wonder if it was the "B" level rater who looked at my team, and, being inexperienced, thought we were better than we were. Having had plenty of time to plan for the event (even with the truncated Outgames/Gay Games drama), there was no really smart system in place for up/down rating. Those who were rating were part of the teams themselves, not impartial. There were not enough of them to ensure completely well-rounded judgement. There was no system for correcting up/down rating mistakes. I appreciate the effort but felt like my volleyball experience, and that of the other two teams whose players I know well, was hurt. In the future, I would not pay all the money associated with participating in a sport like volleyball where such subjective evaluations are left up to an unprepared governing body. The subjectivity of a referee's call is one thing, the evaluation of a player and their individual skill and how that skill set affects the team is another more complicated matter.