Each State Championship Division in Kentucky, (Men, Women, Elder, Jr. Boys, Jr. Girls & Jr. Cadets) have to have an opportunity to pitch in our State Tournament for their respective state titles. Unfortunately, on occasion, mainly Jr. Girls or Jr. Cadet, those Divisions end up having a lone competitor. Now with Jr. Girls this year we had two entrants, Courtney at 43.33% and MacKenzie Ferguson at 2.73%. With the gap so great and MacKenzie being a new Junior, it would not be good to have had those to play a together since that would be too discouraging for the new Junior. We had to pitch Courtney somewhere to establish a percentage for here Jr. Girls State Title, so it was elected to pitch her in her competitve percentage range with the B Women. When this is done, she can have no bearing on the outcome of the B Women. All of her games vs B Women would be a win for the B Women. She is a separate Division, so technically she was a "pacer" to the B Women of that class, but Courtney was completing what would be required to claim her Junior Title. Completing a set number of games to establish a percentage. Back in the 90's when Becky Kemper was the lone Junior Girl, she would be placed with the A Women with which was here percentage range at the time. It was listed on the schedule with Courtney having an asterisk to the B Women and lower down Courtney was listed as the lone designated Junior Girl A. Like I said, I do apologize that this was not discussed with the B Women beforehand as to how this worked. I did not mean to upset anyone. Just everyone please realize how much time and effort does go into the state tournament preparation and how things can change from minute to minute, hour by hour with how things unfold. I was pitching in my Class B Men when I was approached with what was going on, so my mind was not completed on each situation that came up. I was asked if we could have a "fill in" pacer for the remaining games when Courtney dropped out, so I asked Tony Wade if he could do that. Some of The B Women wanted every game to try and pitch their percentage higher.
All "pacers" are supposed to pitch last in every rotation when pacing any class, according to the rules. This was my fault for not clarifying this to Tony, not his or anyone else.
We as KHPA Officers and tournament assistants need to get together and see what we can do to get better organized on some specifics in the future to try and limit these circumstances.
thanks,
Robert
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