2011 USA Ultimate College Season Updates

2011 USA Ultimate College Season Updates

Barely two months removed from the exciting climax of the 2010 USA Ultimate College Championship Series, event organizers and college teams around the country are already starting to think about the 2011 college season. The winter and spring of 2010 marked a number of exciting firsts for the USA Ultimate College Division, including the first official regular season, first in-season strength bids, first College Series with over 700 participating teams, first official Division-III championship, and an exciting brand change for the organization in conjunction with the 2010 USA Ultimate College Championships. The upcoming 2011 college season will continue to build on the foundation and excitement of 2010. Here are some updates to help players, teams, and organizers with preliminary planning and to get participants and fans of the division fired up for the coming year.

Eligibility

The College Eligibility Rules for the 2011 season have been released with one major revision from previous years. Players who participated in USA Ultimate sanctioned or championship events while in high school will no longer have their 5-year window for college eligibility start based on their high school graduation date. Instead, all players’ “eligibility clocks” will start ticking when they participate in their first post-High School/Youth Division event (see rules for specific details). This change is not retroactive to players who graduated high school prior to 2010. This change was made in recognition of the trend towards a large number of incoming college players being introduced to the sport in high school and to encourage those players’ participation in USA Ultimate-affiliated events.

Competitive Restructure

USA Ultimate continues the evolution of the college competitive structure in 2011. Here’s a quick rundown of some important things that will stay the same from the 2010 season and some exciting changes for the 2011 season.

Same as 2010:

- Only results between teams made up of college-eligible teams at USA Ultimate-sanctioned events from January 1 through April 3, 2010 will count towards official regular season rankings.

- Eligibility of rosters from regular season events will be back-checked against the official, registrar-verified College Series roster for each team. Academic and 5-year eligibility will be checked, and any participation by non-eligibility-verified players during the regular season will nullify the team’s results for the event in which those players participated. (Note: Please include all players who participate in official regular season events on your official College Series roster.)

- Official USA Ultimate College Rankings will be used to determine strength bids from Sectionals to Regionals and from Regionals to the College Championships.

- Regardless of participation or performance in the college regular season, teams may register to compete in the 2011 USA Ultimate College Series, which will consist of Sectionals, Regionals, and the College Championships (20 teams per division).

- Division III College Championship tournament will be held the weekend prior to the College Championships.

New for 2011:

- Boundary redraw/bid allocation – In order to reduce travel times, optimize the size of Series events, and increase meaningful competition, the geographic breakdown of teams and bid allocation process will be revised as follows:

o College regions will be redrawn and increased in number from eight to ten. One automatic bid to the College Championships and Division III College Championships will be awarded to each region in each division (Open, Women’s). The remaining 10 bids to the College Championships will be awarded through strength wildcards.

o Regions will be further broken down into sections/conferences with an emphasis on maintaining relatively stable sizes (optimally 6-12 teams) and moving towards grouping teams based on both geography and similar qualities. Where team densities make it possible this will include school size and BCD team groupings. Bids to Regionals will be based on a mixture of automatic and strength bids based on regular season rankings.

o Some areas of the country will be organized slightly differently than other areas, based on the density and characteristics of teams in each area. All areas will move along a similar developmental track towards consistency as the number of teams grows.The size of regional events may be dependent on the number of teams participating in the College Series from that region. This will serve to create more meaningful competitive opportunities while still providing incentives for participation and growth, in light of moving to all strength-based bids. Total post-season playing opportunities will still be increased based on the offering of more regional tournaments for the various divisions.

o A preliminary breakdown of the new regions and sections/conferences will be released to college teams and the Ultimate community for comment by September 10, 2010. Feedback will be collected through the USA Ultimate message board as well as through surveys of college teams.

- The College Series team registration deadline will be moved earlier by one week relative to the first weekend of Sectionals. The registration deadline for 2011 will be Friday, March 25. (The application process for formal extensions due to school schedule conflicts will be outlined in the 2011 College Series Guidelines, to be released prior to the start of the 2011 Regular Season. )

- Teams will be required to submit their complete roster by the College Series team registration deadline. It will no longer be possible to add players to a roster after this initial deadline. The deadline is the same for all teams regardless of when their sectional tournament takes place and will allow adequate time to check regular season eligibility and verify results and final rankings to be used in awarding strength bids.

- The regular season will be extended by one weekend relative to the team registration deadline. Official regular season events may take place through the weekend of April 2-3, with results of those events counting for official regular season rankings.

- There will only be two weekends designated for Sectionals (April 16-17, 23-24), followed by two weekends for Regionals (April 30-May 1, May 7-8).

- In areas where there is a high enough density of Division III-eligible teams, Division III sectional and regional qualifying events will be held to qualify teams for the Division III College Championships. In other areas, final Division III rankings will be used to award bids, but will only use results and rankings up through the end of the regular season(unlike in 2010 when sectional results were included).

Keep an eye out for more information about restructuring. Additional information regarding competition/officiating rules and uniform requirements for the 2011 College Series will be released on the USA Ultimate website and sent out to team contacts by September 30, 2010.

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What are your thoughts on these changes to the College Eligibility Rules and Competitive Restructure? Are you interested in sharing your views with the rest of the Ultimate community? Discuss on the USA Ultimate Message Boards.