The deadline to register your team for the Fall College Series is Friday, September 24!
September 14, 2021 by in Opinion with 0 comments
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Usually, the start of September is a time for college programs to be recruiting freshmen at club fairs and teaching people the basics of how to throw a flick. But with the advent of an official Fall Series after two straight springs without a college postseason, competitive teams will have to move much sooner and faster than they’re used to. Believe it or not, the Fall College Series will kick off in less than a month and the registration deadline is just two weeks away!
With that in mind, we want to make sure new captains have the info they need to get their teams signed up to play. Follow the instructions below and do not wait — the registration deadline is Friday, September 24 with final rosters due by September 29. You can find more information on the Fall Series on USA Ultimate’s College Guidelines page.
1. Log in to USA Ultimate
You will login into your own personal account. The standard login form provides a link to reset your password if you’ve forgotten, or an address at USAU to email for help.
2. Create a team and add your players.
Scroll down to the bottom half of the account landing page to find the link for My Team Manager Account and click through to setup a team. For existing college teams, rather than creating a brand new team page — which may not be able to be merged with an old team page — you may need to ask a previous captain to roll the team over to 2021 and make you a new team manager. If you don’t know the previous team manager or captain, again, you can email USAU for help with this step.
All players added to the roster will need to sign up for USA Ultimate memberships, and both complete a waiver and pay for membership dues. There’s a special “Fall + Next Year Too” membership option that covers Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 at the cost of $79. They’ve also added a $32 new membership for Fall 2021 which can then be extended to the $79 version by the end of November.
3. Register for your Conference Championships.
Once you have added enough players to your roster to become eligible — a minimum of 10 — and selected or confirmed the correct division for your team, you should see a list of events you can register for, including your Conference Championship. If you do not know which event to sign up for, find the appropriate section based on your school’s geography and reach out to the appropriate Conference Coordinator or Regional Director, listed at the bottom of the USAU College Guidelines page. You must sign up your team by September 24.
4. Get your roster verified by your school registrar.
This is where the majority of teams who miss the deadline get it wrong. The registrar’s verification process will take time. Some schools may take a long time — multiple weeks. If you count on this being a quick exchange and leave very little time between sending your roster to the registrar and the deadline to get a verified roster to USA Ultimate, you may find yourself in a sticky situation.
One way to avoid any unexpected hiccups is to clearly ask for the enrollment status of players before completing this step. Too many teams have run into eligibility issues because a player did not reach the proper enrollment status to compete.
Once you had finalized the list of all players planning to play with the team at any point during the College Series, print out a roster to be verified by your school’s registrar. The printable roster can be found in the Team Manager section of your account. USA Ultimate’s guide provides a hint to “Shrink to fit” before printing.
This Fall’s special roster rules require you to fill out the Graduated Student Form. This must be completed regardless of whether or not you have graduated students. Former students who graduated between April 2020 and June 2021 are eligible to participate in the Fall College Series; if you have a former student who graduated in the summer of 2021, contact [email protected].
5. Send the verified roster to USA Ultimate.
Once you get the roster verified by the registrar, it still needs to get to USAU headquarters. Again, do this as early as you can and plan ahead to accommodate time for mail delivery — all registrar-verified rosters must be received by USA Ultimate no later than 12:00 p.m. MT Wednesday, September 29, 2021.
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Put in the effort to do your part here, and if you have questions, ask USA Ultimate. They want to help you. They are people and you can reach out to them and explain. But don’t expect them to do all the work for you.