APA Ratings Policy and Guidelines
If you have any questions regarding your APA rating, contact Jamie Zito– Ratings Chair.
Player Ratings Policy
Objective: To establish fair and timely ratings throughout the zones to improve seeding of teams and competition.
- Players should be rated at a minimum of every year that they play in a sanctioned tournament.
- Raters should be APA members for at least 3 years. They should be fair, unbiased and follow the criteria to the best of their ability. Raters should be able to justify changes to a player’s ratings.
- There should be a rater for every 24 players in a tournament.
- Ratings Chair and Zone Rater in conjunction with Tournament Organizer will assign Raters.
- Ratings Chair will update ratings and address any inconsistencies noted with Tournament Raters. Ratings Chair will have final say on updates to ratings.
- Score sheets from tournaments should be scanned and forwarded to Ratings Chair within 3 days of tournament completion.
- Ratings Chair will develop opinions on ratings from multiple sources that may include score sheets, Tournament Raters, experienced player’s opinions and performance appraisals.
- Players can submit a request for a rating by email to the Ratings Chair who will inform the Tournament Raters.
- Players who have been consistently playing for 3 or more years will be rated at every tournament they attend.
- No player should go to the National Championship unrated. If unrated: the coach, club president and Zone Rater should recommend a rating which will be in effect for seeding teams for the tournament and reviewed for accuracy after the tournament results.
- No ratings should be officially changed within 6 weeks of Nationals except for Unrated and 0 ratings.
- At all times raters should take into account how that player is performing against their peers. Performance ratings shall take precedence over skills evaluation and numbers of penalties.
Player Ratings Guidelines
- A player is rated on ability only, not the length of time they have played or age or gender. Every player gets rated on ability and ability alone.
- The lowest rating is 0 out of 20.
- The highest rating is 20 out of 20. It should be noted that 20 out of 20 does not mean the player is perfect; it only means that the player belongs to the group of best players currently playing the sport at the highest level.
- Minimum rating rules are used to prevent under-rating. This is achieved by setting a minimum mandatory rating once a player can perform a predetermined skill. An example of this is: “Consistently pick a ball up at a gallop: If a player can do this they are to be rated no less than a 8”.
- To accommodate varying degrees of proficiency, skills are to be assessed against three levels of proficiency. Raters should circle the top 3 to 5 proficiency levels on the ratings chart applicable to the player and assign the rating closest to the average (unless that rating is lower than an applicable minimum rating rule; in which case the player is given the rating assigned to that rule). For example:
- The Skill: Can consistently pick the ball up at a gallop.
- The Proficiency: Sometimes or Mostly or Almost Always.
- The point of implementing these guidelines is to more easily be able to appropriately rate lower level players, which will better affect ratings up through the highest rankings.