Defining the Hat Tournament Player

Hopefully you're familiar with the idea of a Hat Tournament.

Fairly unique to Ultimate and part of its friendly and spirited atmosphere, hat tournaments involve everyone registering as an individual, and a Tournament Director and cohorts pulling names 'from a hat' to form teams

In reality, because tournaments a more fun and challenging when teams are relatively even looking, most hat TDs will do at least some tweaking of their random results.

This tweaking can be a challenge if you don't know a lot about the players (or alternatively, aren't really confident in making these decisions). So most hat tournaments ask players to make a self-assessment of their ability when they register.

Typically, this involves putting yourself on a scale of say 1-5, 1-7 or 1-10, with some descriptors on the side, ranging from "1- I'm a complete newbie" to "10 - I play for Australia".

A common problem though is people being too humble (or too ego driven, or too inexperienced) and getting the estimate wildly wrong - leading to TDs pulling out their hair as stacked (or unstacked) teams suddenly appear before them.

Without wanting to make things too complicated for organisers though (because really, they've got enough to worry about), I think it would be more useful to, rather than just ask for a simple estimate on a scale, provide two pieces of information - throws and fitness.

So the options for self classification are something like:

Throws
a) I've got all the throws, complete reliability and can hit most parts of the field
b) I've got all the throws and complete reliability
c) I've got all the throws
d) I've got a good backhand and a working forehand
e) I've got a backhand or will have one by the end of the tournament

Fitness
i) I'm uber-fit and fast - can play all day at high speed
ii) I'm pretty fit - can play a few games without much of a break
iii) I'm ok - can play a few games but need a good rest after (or lots of subbing through a day)
iv) I'm not real fit and/or somewhat slow and/or carrying injury - can hold up my end but may cut the day short or take it easy
v) I intend to spend the tournament mostly on the sideline drinking beer/sleeping

This gives TD's something they can work with if they want to have 8 teams but have 13 gun a-i players to spread around - patch up the other teams with an extra a-iv and a d-i to cover a missing a-i, and so forth.