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Sectionals Qualifiers

USA Ultimate
#1

To The Greater Ultimate Community,

I am writing this post to see how you, my fellow ultimate players and enthusiasts, feel about the how USAU handles sectionals and what can be done to improve them.

The inspiration for this topic is fueled by my most recent and least favorable experience at sectionals. From what it seems, any group of people can throw together a team, submit a payment, and be accepted to compete in sectionals (as long as all of their members are USAU registered). Within the past year, I had moved and become a new member to a club team. We had practiced all year and had a team goal of advancing to regionals. However, when sectionals came around, I quickly glanced over the other teams and didn’t recognize one. I dug further and found that this team hadn’t competed in ANY USAU sanctioned events in the past two years. Long story short, we show up to sectionals, played in the game to go against this team and lost. Our regionals bid was taken by some team who hadn’t participated in any recognized event and our season was over.

After sectionals, I was left with a pretty sour taste in my mouth towards USAU for allowing this to happen. How is it fair for teams that have been putting in the work all year to have their goals shattered by some team that a bunch of random players that got cut from other club teams? Not saying this is the case that happened to me, but that’s the way it feels.

Overall, I think that there needs to be some sort of a qualification rule so that this doesn’t happen to other teams. Simply make it mandatory that for teams to qualify to play in sectionals, they must have competed in one previous USAU sanctioned event.

Thoughts, opinions, feelings, hugs? All appreciated.

#2

Sounds like your question(s) boil(s) down to whether sectional championships should continue to be intro level (all interested teams can play, regardless of previous competition results), which is a very interesting question. One very simple reason that this is the case is that it’s always been the case (I’ve been playing since 1998, but my understanding is that it’s literally always been the case that any team can play at sectionals, if they meet the registration deadlines). And that’s not a strong argument for that to continue to be the case. The club “regular season” was first implemented in 2012 (I believe, maybe 2013) and it was intentionally designed to be an optional addition (minimal negative disruption) to the vast majority of teams, outside of national qualifiers. There is the incentive to participate and gain bids for your section to regionals (and region to nationals), but there is no true compulsion. I’m also curious if others feel like some sort of participation should be REQUIRED by USAU for all teams that wish to compete in sectionals. From several angles (other than those who literally only want to start up a team for the postseason series), it would certainly be nice, not just for those teams who do participate only to be unable to beat the series startups, but it would also remove an option that has LONG existed and obviously continues to be utilized. The main argument that I can identify is that while USAU is committed to providing a sectional tournament/coordinator for every section in the country in the men’s, women’s & mixed gender divisions, the regular season events exist and are located completely at the whim of local organizers responding to local demand, with no current way to ensure that every team will have regular season tournaments located and timed in such a way that ensures availability. That seems like a significant concern/challenge.

Who else feels strongly that ALL teams should be required to play in the regular season in order to qualify to play at sectionals? And why? Or who feels strongly that letting all comers play at sectionals continues to be the best thing for the sport/division? And why?

#3

Maybe it’s just from my particular experience, but something else to consider is how to deal with Canadian teams at sectionals and regionals. Canada has it’s own bylaws and organization which guides them for Canadian Sectionals, Regionals, and Nationals. HOWEVER, US teams are not allowed to compete. Yet, Canadian teams have their own free will to come down and compete in our (When I say our I mean USA’s) sectionals. Why is it such a one way street? Why aren’t we invited to play in Canada?

Maybe it should be a rule that Canadian teams have to come down and compete in one USAU sanctioned event in order to be allowed to compete at sectionals.

Just trying to be more thought provoking. Not trying to hate on Canadian teams by any means.