To: All WPHPA Tournament Directors

Subject: Reporting Tournaments to WPHPA Statistician

Since we have a few new tournament directors this season, we thought it would be a good idea to do a little refresher on how to correctly report tournaments to the WPHPA Statistician. If anything explained below is unclear, please let me know and I’ll help explain it to you. Enjoy!

Part I – Reporting Tournaments via Paper Report

• You will have received these blank report sheets in your packet. These are fairly self-explanatory and easy to fill out.
• Make sure that the pitchers of each class are in the FINISHING ORDER. This means you should not fill out these sheets until your tournament is completed, so you can place the pitchers in the correct winning placement. It’s also helpful if the classes are in order as well (A, B, C, etc)
• The most important item on the report is CARD NUMBER. If you spell someone’s name incorrectly, don’t worry because I have everyone’s name in a database. However, the card number must be correct, because that is what I use to pull the Name, State, and Category of the pitcher.
• After you have your sheets filled out, simply mail them to me.

Part II – Reporting Tournaments via Digital Report

• I have made up a WPHPA Tournament report file in Microsoft Word that you can also use for your reporting needs. To report your tournament this way, you will need three things – 1) A computer, 2) Microsoft Word, 3) Basic knowledge on how to use Microsoft Word. An internet connection makes things easier as well, but it’s not required.
• The benefits of using this digital report instead of the paper report are that you can type your results instead of writing them down. (I, for one, can type 500 times faster than I can write ^_^)
• After you input all your results into the file, you then save it with a new name on your computer. Then, you can either email the file to me, or mail it to me on a 3.5 floppy disk.
• Anyone who wants to report in this manner can get in touch with me – I’ll then send you the file.

Part II – Reporting Tournaments via Stats99 Program

So you’ve used Stats99 to run your tournament. Now how do you get the results out? You should have another instruction guide enclosed that will explain step-by-step how to make a text file of your tournament results.

After you create the text file, you can then email it to me, or mail it to me on a 3.5 floppy disk.

Mostly everyone that uses Stats99 to run their tournaments mails me print-outs of the results. This is perfectly acceptable, however it is much easier for me if the above text-file process is used. I’m assuming that no one has used it before, because they didn’t know how to do it. Hopefully, the enclosed instructions will help. If you have any problems, please let me know.

Importance of Reporting Tournaments in a Prompt Manner

So why do we have to report tournaments as soon as possible? Well, there are a number of reasons. Here are the most important ones:

• New pitchers that do not have many tournaments may improve their pitching very quickly as they start pitching in tournaments. If we do not report the tournaments quickly enough, they will be placed in a class that is far below their real average. This is also true for pitchers that change categories, or anyone that happens to be on a hot or cold streak. The sooner we report the averages, the more current the percentages will be
• Pitchers that pitch in State and World tournaments need to pitch in so many NHPA sanctioned tournaments to be eligible to enter. Some pitchers may need your tournament to count towards this requirement, so it is imperative that the results are submitted ASAP.

So how’s it all work?

Wondering what happens to your tournament results after you send them in? Read on!

After I receive a report from a tournament director, I process it depending on what format it is. However, every tournament report will look the same once I get finished with it.

The first thing I do is create an ASCII text file, which is what I send to the NHPA NatStat center in California. This file is simply the results, separated by commas, with each pitcher on their own line. Here is a sample of a line in an ASCII file:

39-03-007,3/2/03,395076,170,252,Von Kleist,Kurt,PA,

There are 9 fields to the ASCII files – Sanction number, Date, Card #, Ringers, Shoes, Last Name, First Name, State, Category.

Next, I create a word document file of the tournament results, which I keep for my records and also send to the WPHPA Secretary/Treasurer.

Finally, I create an HTML version of the tournament, which I then upload to the WPHPA Website for everyone to see.

I hope these guides are helpful to your in making up your tournament reports. Please feel free to contact me with any questions you might have.

Thanks,

Steve Morris