Southwest Series 2023 Survey Feedback

A massive shoutout to each and every one of you who took the time to fill out our Southwest Series 2023 feedback survey. You are amazing! Your input has been like gold to us, and we’ve been busy bees buzzing around, cooking up some exciting changes based on your awesome ideas and feedback.

We wanted to show you our appreciation by addressing some of the feedback and ideas raised and we are excited to share with you some of the changes we’ll be making based on your valuable input:

Event set-up and communication

We heard you loud and clear about the need for smoother communication and tournament set-up. To tackle this, this season we are making sure that we have more staff available to help with the set-up of the events, as well as making sure the tournaments schedules are released in advance. We have also created a Fireball Events Spond where you will be able to see all pre-event communication, registrations, seedings and rankings updates. This is also the perfect place to connect with fellow players, find partners, and sort out travel and accommodation. 
Join us on Spond via this link https://group.spond.com/ABGCX .

Pricing

To address concerns over the pricing of our events, we are introducing Early Bird and Student discounts to make our events more accessible.

Seedings, Rankings & Awards

Although we are keeping the same format on the SW Series Rankings, with the winner of the Men’s, Women’s and Mixed getting a nice prize at the end of the season, we are implementing a new seeding index for non-UKBT events. This season, the seeding will be based on a ranking index which will be the sum of your best four results from the season. We are also improving our awards process, where you will be able to vote on the different categories at the tournament or via Spond.

Tournament format

You spoke, and we listened! We will be running UKBT 2 and 3 star events throughout the Summer, as well as mixed non-UKBT events. Although we will not be running King of the Court format for the SW series, we will have a full weekend of this format in Croyde, more info will come out soon.  Following the positive feedback, we will continue to have self-refereeing for pool stages.

We are introducing a new Fun 4’s Fancy Dress Tournament in Croyde to spice things up. Also, while we’re exploring ideas like a multi-sport beach day, others, like night time volleyball, are a no-go for now due to safety concerns.We are not running a random pairs event this season but there is a potential for next season.

We will also be looking at organising some after-tournament player’s dinner which will be communicated via Spond.

Merch and prizes

Get ready for some fresh new merch which will be available to buy on
the events and via Instagram.

We are also improving our tournament prizes, with this being a combination of Medals and Merch Vouchers!

In addition, we will have a few surprises for our most committed players.

South West Finals

The SW Finals will follow a similar format to last year’s. We will have 2 divisions, with single gender on Saturday and mixed Fancy Dress on Sunday, and our classic awards dinner.
However, following your feedback, this year the finals are not going to be UKBT so we can be more flexible and fair on the seedings process, whilst appreciating the commitment of our regular players.

Tournament venues

We are currently exploring the possibility to introduce a new venue to our SW series – keep your eyes open!

Dates and Links

Finally, to add that our SW Series dates are now out and you can start registering your teams at https://fireballbeachvolleyball.com/series/southwest-series/ .

Don’t forget to also add yourself to our New Spond at https://group.spond.com/ABGCX .

Thank you once again for your passion and support for Fireball Beach Volleyball. Together, let’s make the Southwest Series 2024 our best season yet!