Randomized pools with minimized regional rematches
September 25, 2024 by Keith Raynor and Charlie Eisenhood in News with 0 comments
For the second year in a row, USA Ultimate will be determining the Club National Championships pools by “World Cup-style” random draw! Gone are the prefabricated pools that gave us the 4-5-9-16 Pool D and 1-8-12-13 Pool A. So how does this system operate?
Step 1: Re-run the Rankings after Regionals
This step remains the same: once all of the regional championships have concluded after this weekend, re-run the USA Ultimate rankings to grade teams’ seasons. No adjustments are made for things such as head-to-head matchups, as might have happened in the past when seeding Nationals. This is already done.
Step 2: Identify the Top Seeds
The top four qualified teams in the rankings, in order, are assigned to A1, B1, C1, and D1, respectively. Functionally, they’ll be the top four seeds of the tournament, in order of algorithmic placement. Their results at Regionals will not matter, nor will any specific head-to-head results only their final ranking.1
The top seeds for 2024 are:
- Women’s: #1 San Francisco Fury, #2 Washington DC Scandal, #3 Boston Brute Squad, #4 Raleigh Phoenix
- Mixed: #1 Seattle BFG, #2 Austin Disco Club, #3 Minneapolis Drag’N Thrust, #4 Fort Collins shame.
- Men’s: #1 Chicago Machine, #2 Boston Dig, #3 Denver Johnny Bravo, #4 San Francisco Revolver
Step 3: Group Teams into Pots
The rankings then sort the remaining qualifiers into pots in groups of four, with the next four highest ranked teams in Pot 2, then the four after that in Pot 3, and the bottom four in Pot 4.
Pot 2
- Women’s: San Diego Flipside, Denver Molly Brown, Seattle Riot, New York BENT
- Mixed: New York XIST, Vancouver Red Flag, Michigan Hybrid, Boston Sprocket
- Men’s: Raleigh Ring of Fire, Washington DC Truck Stop, Portland Rhino Slam!, Seattle Sockeye
Pot 3
- Women’s: Portland Schwa, Toronto 6ixers, Vancouver Traffic, Quebec Iris
- Mixed: Huntsville Space Force, Boston Slow, Sacramento Tower, Washington DC Rally
- Men’s: Atlanta Chain Lightning, New York PoNY, Toronto GOAT, Austin Doublewide
Pot 4
- Women’s: Pittsburgh Parcha, Washington DC Grit, Chicago Nemesis, Minneapolis Pop
- Mixed: Seattle Mixtape, Arizona Lawless, Nashville ‘Shine, Montana Moondog
- Men’s: Vancouver Furious George, Raleigh-Durham United, Minneapolis Mallard, Salt Lake Shrimp
Step 4: Randomly Draw from Pots to Place in Pools
Once the pots are created, USA Ultimate will draw teams from within the pots, working sequentially from Pot 4 to Pot 2, a reverse of last year’s approach. A pool will be selected at random, and then the team to be placed into that pool will be selected at random. Once Pot 4’s draw is complete, Pot 3 teams are selected.
However, there is a wrinkle: no more than two teams from the same region can be together in a pool. If two teams from the same region are placed into the same pool (e.g. if Mixtape is drawn into Pool A with BFG), then if a third team (Red Flag in our example) is drawn into Pool A, a new pool will be drawn at random to place Red Flag properly.
Notable Differences from 2023
- The pool draw order has been reversed, starting with Pot 4 and finishing with Pot 2.
- The teams were drawn directly into pools A through D last year. This year, to fully randomize the process, pool order will also be randomized along with the team draw.
- Last year, two bid regions couldn’t have their teams together in a pool. That rule has been eliminated. Now, no more than two teams from a region can be in the same pool.
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Tune in to a special edition of the Deep Look podcast on Thursday, September 26th, at 12:00 PM Eastern to watch the Nationals pool selections happen live on the Ultiworld YouTube channel as USA Ultimate’s National Men’s Director Adam Goff draws the ping ping balls to see where teams end up!
Which, of course, accounts for their Regionals results. ↩
