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Tennis League IV
This article is about a site sanctioned Poop Tennis tournament.
This article is a work in progress and so may not be ready for public viewing, and content can change at any time. You can help by contributing to it and discussing on its talk page. The Tennis League IV is a currently ongoing Youtube Poop Tennis Tournament hosted jointly by dewmann, Gamebop, TheChutley and trepmaws, which began on December 19th, 2014. Like the Tennis Cup IV and the Doubles Cup II before it, it is a reprisal/continuation of an older tournament, with this in particular being of the oldest form of competitive tennis to have historically occurred on the site. The Tennis League I dates back as far as 2007, while the Tennis League II and Tennis League III both date back to 2008. It is also the longest gap of time to occur between two of the same form of competition.
Development
Discussions for what would contribute towards the next tournament began occurring frequently in late October 2014, in the closing weeks of dewmann's Multi-Way Tournament. There was heavy interest amongst the present staff members in addition to many of the present regulars, old and new, of revisting many old ideas of the course of the next few competitions, in addition to individual ideas that had existed for some time. Initially, talks of a second Tennis Season were the first to emerge out of this discussion, primarily between trepmaws, Gamebop and dewmann, in which many suggestions for ways to update on the first one were presented and discussed, including new varients, abilities, and a proposed entirely new layout of teams/matches. Around this time also, TheChutley became aware of the reduction of size that the tennis community had experienced between his previous departure and recent full-fledged return, and began to question as to why this was. A thread was created in Poop Talk inquiring to the regulars there why more of them weren't tennising like back in earlier days or for those there that did have a history of tennis, why they weren't tennising anymore. Out of all of the collected general answers, many of them seem to hold the common misconception of tennis being nothing but "colors and rape" and thus beyond their own individual elements, a notion which the staff and most of the regulars staunchly opposed and clarification/explanation of this became a semi-regular occurance for a few weeks. This was further emphasized in the Multi-Way Tournaments closing with Ashcrement's unexpected revelation that he felt that this final match was considerably the most boring match he had ever participated in, due to a lacking in creativity from his opponants which more or less to him seemed to further serve the trope of tennis being "colors and rape". The desire to disprove people of these inherited beliefs and to introduce more to the emphasized fun of the game became a key point of focus, and would greatly influence the decision making to happen subsequently.
On October 17, dewmann would as a complete experiment make a serve and challange "the ENTIRE Poop Talk section" to individual games of tennis, for the primary goal of getting something stirring amongst those in the section and in the tennis section inself. He got up to about 15 total responses, including some from tennis regulars themselves, making the experiment to him seem like a success. To follow this up, dewmann would lobby in future discussions for the possibility of there being actually a Tennis League IV to capitalize on the ongoing "campaign for revival" as it would be the perfect competition to introduce players into the game this way, as well as competition itself. In a skype call between a number of staff and dewmann himself, the layout for presumably the next three tournaments to occur in the future was set, with the League IV going first, then a proposed Cup V, and very possibly a Season II to occur way later. Tournament ideas from both Gamebop and BSP666c would also be suggested, with the idea that these would be hosted within the Interim between these tournaments. An idea for a "rare video editor" Tournament would also be thrown into the pool of ideas around this time, also by dewmann, who volunteered to be the League IV's host on the basis that he would be able to stick around for the full run this time as well as be it's main advertisor to Poop Talk, of which it in part was aimed toward. Discussion would take a rest for the next month, as the tennis section took a well deserved rest from competition, resuming once again in December 2014.
Now in a separate place, the main planning for what would become the Tennis League IV in its finished form went into full swing. Several changes were made and updated to the previous versions to make them more manageable to present standards, including the removal of source limitation (which Mycro is credited to have started in The Three-Way Tournament), and the doubling of the turnover time from 36 hours to 72. The voting system was also adjusted to supply the Olympic system as used in the previous tournament so that players would be judged once again by an overall added score, which match points left unaltered along with this. Penalties would be adjusted from vote weight to a total average percent weight, with 10% put toward every breach of offense of the rules, with repetitive extension being a new penalty worthy offense added in order discourage players in taking too long with each round, since this was a style of match that notably had to keep within a balanced schedule of sorts. Also for the first time in over 3 years the tournament would see the creation of a new Host account to be used for the voting, under the name of "Comrade Ebola" with a humorously Nazi-centric avatar of George Harrison. TheChutley's main role in this tournament would be the management of this account.
On December 19th, 2014, Dewmann officially open the signups thread, at 4:15 PST. The rules given left two weeks for signups, but in an unprecedented move 12 players were already signed up within the first hour. This led to some discussion as to whether or not the maximum number of players should be expanded, and while the idea was decided against the signups still continued to grow at an entirely unexpected rate. At the speed they filled, all 36 slots managed to be filled within 26 hours, the final player to sign up being ImmaCornflakes.
While there was some uncertainty at the beginning as to whether or not the tournament would actually attract people from Poop Talk as intended, that uncertainty was crushed in the end as an unprecedented half of all players were first-time competitors, including notable poopers such as ThemOldaBoys, Peskeh, and NationOfOranges696. Many people were invited to the tournament by their friends, an example being Soucisse Verte and NataliaHTTPS, European poopers invited to play by LaVie CestLol. A sizable handful of these people persuaded to join were done so also by InLivingTuna, who himself was a newcomer to the competitive tennis scene. On December 29th, dewmann published a blog article advertising the new League and its players, which would mark the first time in 5 years that a tournament recieved attention that could be seen by the whole forum.
