How to draft

Bravara's Draft mode is primarily a picking tool for coaches, and a team assignment tool for league admin.

We've talked with over 100 leagues, and realize that everyone is going to have a little different process and regulations for their draft. For this reason, it would be nearly impossible to build a full-service draft tool that meets everyone's specifications. So, Bravara is not a fantasy-style draft tool. It does not run the draft for you. Instead, it is a really good tool for staying organized, keeping the draft moving quickly, and achieving balanced teams, all without mountains of paper to mess with.

Available Players. This is the default view for both coaches and admins. When admin assigns a player to a team in Bravara, that player disappears from all coach and admin devices in real time! No more "Already picked". Everyone knows which players are available to pick at all times. Syncing in real time requires cellular or wi-fi connection. If connection is not available in the draft room, each coach can manually remove a player from the Available Players list as needed. Team assignments can be changed (fix a mistake, or conduct a trade) by admin tapping on Available Players, then choose a team below, then tap on the player to move, then move to another team by tapping the new team, or move to Available Players by tapping "Remove from current team" at the bottom of screen.

All Evaluators average. On the website Evaluators tab, admin can tell Bravara whether to Include or Not Include each evaluator's ratings in the All Evaluators average. Some leagues want everyone's ratings in there, so they would set everyone to Include. Other leagues want only non-coach Board Member ratings to be included. Yet others don't want anyone's in there at all. You customize per your preference, for each division. In the app, coaches have an All Evaluators button. Toggle it On to see the All Evaluators average. When off (which is the default), Coach sees just their own ratings. Admin in the app sees the All Evaluators average for all ratings by default, and there is no button to toggle it on/off. Before Bravara, several leagues would collect coaches' ratings at the end of eval day, manually enter them into a spreadsheet, average them out, then return to coaches....the All Evaluators button saves those leagues hours of tedious work!

Assessed Round is for reducing contention between coaches and admins when it comes to assigning coach's kid to a particular round in the draft. For example, Coach Mike has son Ryan on the team. Admin pulls up Ryan on their device and taps on Scores at the top right. Admin sees Assessed Round is round 2 in the Your Eval column (if you entered ratings; otherwise it will display a dash) and 3 (for the All Evaluators column). Admin can choose whether to assign Ryan to his dad's team in Round 2 or 3, or any other round they choose. Coach's view is similar: tap on a player and see a Your Eval column for that coach's ratings and an All Evaluators column. It is harder for a coach to argue Assessed Round when several other coaches and admins all assess coach's kid, and the average is what is used to make the decision. Assessed Round is based on the Overall Category. If there are 8 teams, then there are 8 first round picks, which are those 8 players with the highest Overall scores.

Overall: A weighted-average of the Outfield, Infield, Throwing, Hitting, Running categories. If we took a regular average of those 5 categories, it would be overweighted on Defense (outfield, infield, throwing) since it has 3 defensive categories while Offense (hitting, running) has only 2. We compensate for this by giving a little extra weight to hitting and running. We also feel that a player who is a strong hitter and runner will be more impactful for a team than one who is good at catching pop flies, for example. This is an effort to help achieve balanced teams the best we can. Pitching and Catcher categories are not included in the Overall, Offense, or Defense categories.

Team Totals: Only visible by admin. A real-time running average for each team, so admin can identify if a coach (typically a newer coach) is falling behind competitively. For example, coach might be prioritizing his kid's friends instead of choosing higher round draft picks. They might end up with a weak team in that case, which is a problem for everyone. Admin notices this at the end of round 2 or 3, and has a quick side conversation with coach to make sure he drafts higher picks moving forward.

CSV Export: Admin can return to the website to download a CSV of the created teams. We could use your help to validate if our current format will be accepted as an import by SportsConnect, or if we need to adjust column headers at all.