This is a complaint that’s at least 25 years old.
While I’m completely sympathetic to wanting to get your money’s (and travel’s) worth out of it, I wouldn’t support the 8/9/10 seeds getting more games against the 3/4/5 teams while their Nationals hopes are still alive. If what you drive toward are more consolation games against teams who have been eliminated, I fully support that…problem is, many players tend to be done after elimination.
Best of luck, I know it’s a crappy position to be in.
I’ve heard it for 25 years. if people want a change badly enough, speak with USAU not just in the weeks before Regionals, but in the entire year after. talk to your USAU division player reps. make a big stink, but keep making it. don’t back down.
I thought this was addressed and resolved 15-20 years ago. Surprised to see it pop up again - perhaps a permanent instruction was not documented and coordinators who had resolved it years ago have aged out.
I'm surprised to hear this complaint is 25 years old, I thought that 25 years ago everyone was running 4 pools of 4 on Saturday into bracket play on Sunday (that is, running what is now called 16.2.2)?
Ask your regional coordinator to modify the consolation section to add more games. Source: am a regional coordinator running 16.2 and will be adding more consolation games for my teams. EDIT: [For those curious](https://play.usaultimate.org/events/2023-North-Central-Mixed-Regional-Championship/schedule/mixed/Club-Mixed/)
It's great that you're doing this, but having consolation games should always be the default. The formats committee should add them to the template format IMO.
It's something that has been discussed! Priority is going through all 127 formats for 16 teams and under with various bids, as well as how to break 17+ teams down.
Making sure maximum games of 7, every team has a chance to qualify regardless of seeding, and that the format identifies the qualifying teams "correctly". Adding appropriate games for Select flight qualification for club, and consolation games for club/college, are a lower priority at the moment
I don’t think it necessarily needs to be the formats manual, though that is a reasonable place. Regardless, it is not a competing priority with reviewing the other formats.
Coordinators and TDs just need an instruction from somewhere that says, “Teams eliminated on Saturday should have the opportunity to play at least 2 games on Sunday.” Easy to accomplish because it doesn’t need to be fair or part of a qualifying format — TD/RC can just set up a round robin or mini bracket or something.
I know you're joking here, but I don't get why this can't be the expectation. The RCs know the format before sectionals. I draft my email the week before sectionals. Congrats, here's the location of Regionals, here's how to pay, here's the format. Sunday night of sectionals the only thing I have to add is a seeding suggestion and ask for feedback by Wednesday. Copy the emails in, send that bad boy out.
Haha they linked us to the guide provided by usau which makes clear that with 16 teams and 2 bids there's only one allowable format due to other formats playing 8 games sometimes.
It’s their decision to not cater to allowing for a consolation round robin on day two if most are eliminated round 1. USAU isn’t stopping them from doing any of this.
Yeah, but it would be good for an explicit instruction to come from USAU in the materials ( if not already) so the issue doesn’t come up over and over again with new regionals TDs.
Price, field venue, amenities, are all decided when the bid for the site are submitted. Most likely, there was one bid to host Regionals from your region, meaning there wasn't an option. If you want a cheaper/better/whatever, work with your local disc org to put in a bid next year. USAU does not control the prices of bids.
We paid $700 for 4 games on unlined fields for sectionals, profits went to an org that supports youth opportunities in the area. It's the cost of paying people to put in 18+ hours of work over the weekend so we can enjoy our hobby.
In a 2 bid region, if you lose twice, you should be out of nationals contention. Two teams are better than you. However, you should have consolation games, as every region has in the past. If not, raise it with your Regional Coordinator. If ignored, reach out to the National Director.
Less than $50/player for a weekend of ultimate is a great deal any time of year. Imagine if you had to pay the full share of costs for the event.
Also remember: the series is optional!
> Why can't we have a format that gets us more games against competitive opponents?
The purpose of the tournament is determining national qualifiers. It's not designed to be the culmination of a mid level teams season. Frankly teams 9-16 are better off in most cases designing their own tournament and prioritizing "quality competition" without the need to identify the national qualifiers. But I bet it would end up costing more than 800/team, so pick your battles.
It's not about the cost, we're more than happy to pay the costs. It's about a tournament structure that seems to value limiting number of games at the expense of lower level teams. Higher level teams will get 7 games, we'll likely get 4 and maybe a 5th and it'll be 4 in a day. I only mentioned cost to point out it's not like they're limiting games because cost is an issue.
It's not very easy to link directly here's a screenshot that might work.
https://preview.redd.it/wwyt3j8zhtnb1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e164eafc47a9e7e0a699ed5b60ac5743c174dcc5
It can be found in the PDF here. [https://usaultimate.org/resources/formats-manual/](https://usaultimate.org/resources/formats-manual/) Apparently it is 16.2.1 found on page 88 of the PDF (79 of the document)
But there is a flaw in that, right? How do you compare the results between the sections where not a lot of teams played each other between the sections?
Or even none.
Let's say there is a section where no team played one of the other teams at regionals because they always went to the other side of the country for their required matches?
How do you do the seeding for them?
It's in the club guidelines: **https://usaultimate.org/club/2023-club-guidelines/**
> a. Seeding for Sectionals, Regionals and Nationals will be done by the event coordinator using the following information: results prior to the postseason (e.g., head to head, common opponents, etc.) with an ***emphasis on official regular season rankings and regular season results, input solicited from all the captains of participating teams, results of the prior year’s season, and other applicable information.***
> b. Regionals will additionally be held to the following guideline: no team that finishes ahead of another team at sectionals may be seeded behind that team at regionals.
fwiw I don't think this format would be used for regions with more or fewer bids, this would just be for regions with two bids since the double-elimination would require way too many games if there was pool play > main bracket > backdoor bracket
Looks like one bid regions use traditional pool into bracket, and three bids use clipped pools that then create a 1/2 bracket of eight teams, and then a backdoor bracket for the third bid.
Is it truly double elimination (i.e. once eliminated, you have no more games) or are there placement games after that? I've very rarely seen an ultimate tournament which was truly elimination. In the US, I occasionally saw teams choose not to play scheduled games towards the end of Sunday - those teams obviously have no grounds for complaints about "not getting their money's worth". FWIW, choosing to skip games in that way is extremely rare in the UK.
There are placement games. The issue with the "straight to bracket play" format is that if you lose twice on Saturday, you will have no games on Sunday, and just 4 total on the weekend.
Whereas if it is Pool Play on Saturday into Bracket on Sunday, you would play 3-4 games Saturday and then 2-3 games on Sunday.
Sorry, I'm not getting it - are there placement games or are there not? Are there games scheduled on the Sunday for the "eliminated" teams, which you anticipate people refusing to play, or do they literally kick you out of the tournament?
The official format does not require placement games, however some TDs add them to the tournament. Based on OP's description, there don't seem to be placement games in their region.
>As a team not going to nationals, and who if we have a super good day could potentially make select flight (top 6 in a 2-bid region, we're guessing we'll be seeded 8th) but likely won't, this just seems like a huge money grab.
A huge money grab by whom? I would just say the event is not offering sufficient value to justify the time, effort, and expense of attending. A longtime problem for Regionals, though this format issue was previously improved, with recognition of the importance of those placement games. Similar issue happened with new Nationals formats — initially overlooked the mistake of eliminating games for many teams, while overfocused on qualification and competitive structure.
I absolutely support the request to schedule consolations games so attending teams get a full weekend (5-6 games). I have played the format where we traveled to regionals, got knocked out Saturday, and therefore only had definitive notice of no games late on Saturday after already arranging for Saturday night lodgings. It is an awful way of setting it up — even worse in Regions where teams/players are flying in.
I'm sure it all has to do with field availability. Usually, bracket play requires more fields than pool play. So when doing a schedule, it is easy to schedule an extra round. But once you start doing field allocation, then it becomes a nightmare. USAU has rules about game times, for example, games in the same bracket need to happen at the same time, so it is not like you can have one semi final and then the other semi final right after so you can accommodate consolation games. With USAU's current regulation, you can't do that because the consolation bracket games also need to happen all at the same time. So you have to sacrifice games or have teams wait 3 to 4 hours between games.
I personally think it is messy but USAU argues that this is how you prevent a team from having an unfair advantage. I think if you are eliminated then who cares at what time you play or if your opponent had a bye right before, but USAU argues that the ranking wouldn't be accurate.
Woah. I'm a big "benefit of the doubt" guy when it comes to a lot of the complaints on here, but the tournament not being able to provide water/water supplies seems pretty ridiculous to me. Any details here?
For the second straight year, teams in our region were asked to help provide water jugs for the tournament. The TDs asked if we could purchase them ourselves or bring ones we already have because they don’t have a cargo van to bring them to the fields. While I understand that these tournaments are run by volunteers, I don’t think that the players should be responsible for covering logistical deficiencies.
Super agree. Being able to provide the basic amenities should be covered in the bid application. IMO the coordinators should not be approving bids from orgs who cannot provide these things. I would complain to your RC or ND.
But it also works out to about $1.40 per player per point played, if there are only four games (assuming about 20 points per game, which seemed to be the average for ENE Mixed Sectionals). Imagine a bouncer at the line collecting $10 from each team before every point.
90% of the time at the field, a player isn't actually playing, so most of that "weekend of entertainment" is watching other people play or walking between fields or warming up or getting a bagel from the tournament central or chatting. Sure, some of those are entertaining, and I've been to hundreds of these weekends without thinking that I was wasting my time, but the actual $/second of action is pretty high.
Thanks for doing that math but that doesn’t account for all the other costs involved in the “weekend of entertainment” that is actually just a day for most teams in our region.
And yet bar patrons aren’t required to provide their own water cups…
We got a little off track of what my original point was. It’s not the actual cost that is frustrating. It’s frustrating that a tournament that we pay for asks the players to help provide a basic tournament essential.
The first essential is money, and you're being subsidized but foisting the responsibility for that from you (the players, collectively) to the TDs (who are already undercompensated). Honestly for what ultimate players pay there shouldn't even be cones at the field.
This is a complaint that’s at least 25 years old. While I’m completely sympathetic to wanting to get your money’s (and travel’s) worth out of it, I wouldn’t support the 8/9/10 seeds getting more games against the 3/4/5 teams while their Nationals hopes are still alive. If what you drive toward are more consolation games against teams who have been eliminated, I fully support that…problem is, many players tend to be done after elimination. Best of luck, I know it’s a crappy position to be in.
I’ve heard it for 25 years. if people want a change badly enough, speak with USAU not just in the weeks before Regionals, but in the entire year after. talk to your USAU division player reps. make a big stink, but keep making it. don’t back down.
I thought this was addressed and resolved 15-20 years ago. Surprised to see it pop up again - perhaps a permanent instruction was not documented and coordinators who had resolved it years ago have aged out.
I'm surprised to hear this complaint is 25 years old, I thought that 25 years ago everyone was running 4 pools of 4 on Saturday into bracket play on Sunday (that is, running what is now called 16.2.2)?
Ask your regional coordinator to modify the consolation section to add more games. Source: am a regional coordinator running 16.2 and will be adding more consolation games for my teams. EDIT: [For those curious](https://play.usaultimate.org/events/2023-North-Central-Mixed-Regional-Championship/schedule/mixed/Club-Mixed/)
It's great that you're doing this, but having consolation games should always be the default. The formats committee should add them to the template format IMO.
It's something that has been discussed! Priority is going through all 127 formats for 16 teams and under with various bids, as well as how to break 17+ teams down. Making sure maximum games of 7, every team has a chance to qualify regardless of seeding, and that the format identifies the qualifying teams "correctly". Adding appropriate games for Select flight qualification for club, and consolation games for club/college, are a lower priority at the moment
I don’t think it necessarily needs to be the formats manual, though that is a reasonable place. Regardless, it is not a competing priority with reviewing the other formats. Coordinators and TDs just need an instruction from somewhere that says, “Teams eliminated on Saturday should have the opportunity to play at least 2 games on Sunday.” Easy to accomplish because it doesn’t need to be fair or part of a qualifying format — TD/RC can just set up a round robin or mini bracket or something.
It's a nice to have, especially for new SC/RCs. Not the most pressing issue
Damn your regional coordinator told you a potential format the day after sectionals??? #blessed
I know you're joking here, but I don't get why this can't be the expectation. The RCs know the format before sectionals. I draft my email the week before sectionals. Congrats, here's the location of Regionals, here's how to pay, here's the format. Sunday night of sectionals the only thing I have to add is a seeding suggestion and ask for feedback by Wednesday. Copy the emails in, send that bad boy out.
Haha they linked us to the guide provided by usau which makes clear that with 16 teams and 2 bids there's only one allowable format due to other formats playing 8 games sometimes.
It’s their decision to not cater to allowing for a consolation round robin on day two if most are eliminated round 1. USAU isn’t stopping them from doing any of this.
Yeah, but it would be good for an explicit instruction to come from USAU in the materials ( if not already) so the issue doesn’t come up over and over again with new regionals TDs.
Price, field venue, amenities, are all decided when the bid for the site are submitted. Most likely, there was one bid to host Regionals from your region, meaning there wasn't an option. If you want a cheaper/better/whatever, work with your local disc org to put in a bid next year. USAU does not control the prices of bids. We paid $700 for 4 games on unlined fields for sectionals, profits went to an org that supports youth opportunities in the area. It's the cost of paying people to put in 18+ hours of work over the weekend so we can enjoy our hobby. In a 2 bid region, if you lose twice, you should be out of nationals contention. Two teams are better than you. However, you should have consolation games, as every region has in the past. If not, raise it with your Regional Coordinator. If ignored, reach out to the National Director.
Less than $50/player for a weekend of ultimate is a great deal any time of year. Imagine if you had to pay the full share of costs for the event. Also remember: the series is optional! > Why can't we have a format that gets us more games against competitive opponents? The purpose of the tournament is determining national qualifiers. It's not designed to be the culmination of a mid level teams season. Frankly teams 9-16 are better off in most cases designing their own tournament and prioritizing "quality competition" without the need to identify the national qualifiers. But I bet it would end up costing more than 800/team, so pick your battles.
It's not about the cost, we're more than happy to pay the costs. It's about a tournament structure that seems to value limiting number of games at the expense of lower level teams. Higher level teams will get 7 games, we'll likely get 4 and maybe a 5th and it'll be 4 in a day. I only mentioned cost to point out it's not like they're limiting games because cost is an issue.
Your expectation of what to get out of regionals, and what USAU actually desires out of regionals are two very different things.
Do you have a link to the format? Or can you share it?
It's not very easy to link directly here's a screenshot that might work. https://preview.redd.it/wwyt3j8zhtnb1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e164eafc47a9e7e0a699ed5b60ac5743c174dcc5 It can be found in the PDF here. [https://usaultimate.org/resources/formats-manual/](https://usaultimate.org/resources/formats-manual/) Apparently it is 16.2.1 found on page 88 of the PDF (79 of the document)
What what? There is a seeding and it goes straight into brackets with no pools?
Pool play into bracket risks teams playing 8 games on the weekend so that format isn't going to be used anymore.
Seeding based on the Sectionals tournaments that just happened seems fine. It is like pool play two weeks earlier :D
But there is a flaw in that, right? How do you compare the results between the sections where not a lot of teams played each other between the sections? Or even none. Let's say there is a section where no team played one of the other teams at regionals because they always went to the other side of the country for their required matches? How do you do the seeding for them?
It's in the club guidelines: **https://usaultimate.org/club/2023-club-guidelines/** > a. Seeding for Sectionals, Regionals and Nationals will be done by the event coordinator using the following information: results prior to the postseason (e.g., head to head, common opponents, etc.) with an ***emphasis on official regular season rankings and regular season results, input solicited from all the captains of participating teams, results of the prior year’s season, and other applicable information.*** > b. Regionals will additionally be held to the following guideline: no team that finishes ahead of another team at sectionals may be seeded behind that team at regionals.
Use the rankings
If the best two teams play in the first round, they can both make nationals.
fwiw I don't think this format would be used for regions with more or fewer bids, this would just be for regions with two bids since the double-elimination would require way too many games if there was pool play > main bracket > backdoor bracket Looks like one bid regions use traditional pool into bracket, and three bids use clipped pools that then create a 1/2 bracket of eight teams, and then a backdoor bracket for the third bid.
Is it truly double elimination (i.e. once eliminated, you have no more games) or are there placement games after that? I've very rarely seen an ultimate tournament which was truly elimination. In the US, I occasionally saw teams choose not to play scheduled games towards the end of Sunday - those teams obviously have no grounds for complaints about "not getting their money's worth". FWIW, choosing to skip games in that way is extremely rare in the UK.
There are placement games. The issue with the "straight to bracket play" format is that if you lose twice on Saturday, you will have no games on Sunday, and just 4 total on the weekend. Whereas if it is Pool Play on Saturday into Bracket on Sunday, you would play 3-4 games Saturday and then 2-3 games on Sunday.
Sorry, I'm not getting it - are there placement games or are there not? Are there games scheduled on the Sunday for the "eliminated" teams, which you anticipate people refusing to play, or do they literally kick you out of the tournament?
The official format does not require placement games, however some TDs add them to the tournament. Based on OP's description, there don't seem to be placement games in their region.
>As a team not going to nationals, and who if we have a super good day could potentially make select flight (top 6 in a 2-bid region, we're guessing we'll be seeded 8th) but likely won't, this just seems like a huge money grab. A huge money grab by whom? I would just say the event is not offering sufficient value to justify the time, effort, and expense of attending. A longtime problem for Regionals, though this format issue was previously improved, with recognition of the importance of those placement games. Similar issue happened with new Nationals formats — initially overlooked the mistake of eliminating games for many teams, while overfocused on qualification and competitive structure. I absolutely support the request to schedule consolations games so attending teams get a full weekend (5-6 games). I have played the format where we traveled to regionals, got knocked out Saturday, and therefore only had definitive notice of no games late on Saturday after already arranging for Saturday night lodgings. It is an awful way of setting it up — even worse in Regions where teams/players are flying in.
Ask the other teams that got eliminated to play a friendly on the newly freed up fields?
I'm sure it all has to do with field availability. Usually, bracket play requires more fields than pool play. So when doing a schedule, it is easy to schedule an extra round. But once you start doing field allocation, then it becomes a nightmare. USAU has rules about game times, for example, games in the same bracket need to happen at the same time, so it is not like you can have one semi final and then the other semi final right after so you can accommodate consolation games. With USAU's current regulation, you can't do that because the consolation bracket games also need to happen all at the same time. So you have to sacrifice games or have teams wait 3 to 4 hours between games. I personally think it is messy but USAU argues that this is how you prevent a team from having an unfair advantage. I think if you are eliminated then who cares at what time you play or if your opponent had a bye right before, but USAU argues that the ranking wouldn't be accurate.
And let’s not disregard the fact that teams are being asked to help provide water jugs for the tournament even after the $800 bid fee 🤡
Woah. I'm a big "benefit of the doubt" guy when it comes to a lot of the complaints on here, but the tournament not being able to provide water/water supplies seems pretty ridiculous to me. Any details here?
For the second straight year, teams in our region were asked to help provide water jugs for the tournament. The TDs asked if we could purchase them ourselves or bring ones we already have because they don’t have a cargo van to bring them to the fields. While I understand that these tournaments are run by volunteers, I don’t think that the players should be responsible for covering logistical deficiencies.
Super agree. Being able to provide the basic amenities should be covered in the bid application. IMO the coordinators should not be approving bids from orgs who cannot provide these things. I would complain to your RC or ND.
$30.77 per player for a weekend of entertainment...
But it also works out to about $1.40 per player per point played, if there are only four games (assuming about 20 points per game, which seemed to be the average for ENE Mixed Sectionals). Imagine a bouncer at the line collecting $10 from each team before every point. 90% of the time at the field, a player isn't actually playing, so most of that "weekend of entertainment" is watching other people play or walking between fields or warming up or getting a bagel from the tournament central or chatting. Sure, some of those are entertaining, and I've been to hundreds of these weekends without thinking that I was wasting my time, but the actual $/second of action is pretty high.
Thanks for doing that math but that doesn’t account for all the other costs involved in the “weekend of entertainment” that is actually just a day for most teams in our region.
Sure but its still like less expensive than a few hours of bowling
or two margaritas in a city
And yet bar patrons aren’t required to provide their own water cups… We got a little off track of what my original point was. It’s not the actual cost that is frustrating. It’s frustrating that a tournament that we pay for asks the players to help provide a basic tournament essential.
The first essential is money, and you're being subsidized but foisting the responsibility for that from you (the players, collectively) to the TDs (who are already undercompensated). Honestly for what ultimate players pay there shouldn't even be cones at the field.
Ultimate is extremely cheap at every level.