UVA Men's Club Soccer's Ride to Nationals

UVA Men’s Club Soccer is going to the National Championship for the third year in a row! The event will be held in Foley, Alabama, within the next two weeks. We’ve been able to achieve this feat without any coaches, while many other club teams do have coaching staffs, as we are a completely student run organization. In the meantime, our team is hard at work training for the big event. Recently, however, we have been running into a problem of our two new players forgetting to carry the ball bags to and from practice, leaving our seniors with the task of picking up their slack. This is a small task that every new club team member has had to do for years and their failure to do so can be explained by a Prisoner’s Dilemma.

Each new player has the same choice: they can either carry the ball bag to and from practice or they can leave, knowing that someone else will pick it up. Clearly, both players would pick the dominant strategy of not carrying the ball bag. Neither player would be worse off from not having to do their simple task, leading to the pareto inefficient equilibrium. Since we do not have a coach to ensure that they do the pareto inefficient team policy, our seniors will have to keep doing the work the new players are supposed to do, not allowing us to reach the desired pareto efficient equilibrium.

Since this is a pride issue, I don’t think a coach will ever be managing the men’s club soccer team.

Player A/ Player B	Carry the ball bag	Don’t Carry the ball bag
Carry the ball bag	(13,7)	(4,10)
Don’t Carry the ball bag	(17,3)	(6,6)