The change in D2 a couple of years back from "one year and out" for everyone to allowing undergrads to continue until they played on a team good enough to get invited to the ICT was less an attempt to equalize the number of players in each division than it was an attempt to keep overall participation growing, and to keep weaker schools coming back, after trying us once. Some schools, face it, just aren't likely ever to become quizbowl powers, and might never even produce teams rising to the level of .500 records in D2. Under our original rules for D2, we had a selling point to attract some such teams to giving something other than once-a-year CBI a try--once. But would they ever come back again, if we said, "OK, so you just went 0-16 in D2 competion; next year these players have to move up to D1, where the teams are twice as scary." Harsh! Some schools will spend all or at least most of their time playing D2 only. We remain interested in reaching out to them, trying to give them appropriate competition, and trying to grow the circuit. Upon reflection, allowing undergrads from such teams (or any teams) to return to D2 even up to a fourth year, until they've been part of a team good enough to earn an ICT invite, seemed to make the most sense for us. D2 has grown phenomenally in size over the years, becoming larger than D1 now at most SCTs. And since we found that not "enough" players were getting kicked out and up to D1 when participation grew, we increased the ICT D2 field size from its original (and logistically easier, sigh) 16 teams. We'll continue to keep an eye on that.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:45 AM EST EST