CoachWynnTHS

Long time listener first time caller a couple things here on warm ups 1. You are allowed 21 match games and 3 tournaments (can also do 23 games and 2 tournaments and a few other combinations but no one does that), how many games you play in a tournament doesn't change anything. You can play 6 or you can play 3 and it still counts as a tournament. Jamborees or showcases or whatever you want to call them count as one of your 21 games. The UIL changed this to 21/2 or 19/3 about ten years ago and then changed it back after a year or two due to coaches not being happy at all with the change. Not even sure what the original reasoning was for the change to be honest. 2. The warm-up era was huge when the UIL switched from allowing 2 teams to 3 teams to make the playoffs in the late 90's I think it was. At that point in time (most of the 00's) if you won district you had a first round bye which meant not playing for a week and a half and that was felt to be too long by most coaches, so that is when you saw the warm-up game really take off. Once the UIL allowed 4 teams to make it now there is only a week between games and you started to see less and less warm up games. I also think the mandatory UIL one game suspension for an ejection has played into this as well. Now not only are you risking injury with only a week between games you are also risking the potential of having a first round suspension due to an ejection, so that plays a small role as well. In my opinion (just one coach others may feel totally different), the only real value in warm up games now are like what you see with Coach Sutherland at EC and as mentioned above is you lose so many games to the football team making the playoffs and you have an opportunity to make one up because you didn't even get close to your game limit. Also, if you are a massive powerhouse like Silsbee and you more or less ran through your district without any close games at all like they did several times in the last decade, you don't want to go into the playoffs without having played a close game in a month and a half, so going and playing high level competition in a warm-up game adds value. Also think that if the UIL flips to what they did with volleyball ( and rumor is it is probably going to happen) and the regular season ends on Friday and the first round of the playoffs starts on Thursday/Friday the following week, which would leave Monday/Tuesday as your warm up game options, in my opinion the warm-up game is completely dead at that point.