A proposal aimed at tweaking the Classic Flight tier to deliver more meaningful seasons
December 13, 2024 by Guest Author in Opinion with 0 comments
This post was written by guest author Austin Cary.
This article attempts to lay out a new regular season structure for the club regular season by reimagining the Classic Flight division of the Triple Crown Tour. The overarching goal is to create a new format for the USAU regular season that’s more fun, less financially burdensome, less injurious, and more encouraging of newcomers to keep playing the game we love.
The current USAU regular season emerged organically from casual tournaments aiming to minimize cost. To put on these events, organizers must make compromises when locating a complex with enough fields at a low enough cost, including:
Location
- Far from participants
- Far from public transportation
- Not in preferred travel destinations
- Not in comfortable climates (e.g. California’s central valley rather than coastal regions)
Scheduling
- Games played at suboptimal times (e.g. early morning, or during peak heat)
- Poorly timed byes (inconvenient, many warm-up and cool-down cycles per day)
- Can’t be played on weeknights
- Too many games, increasing risk of injuries
- Poor parity1
High Commitment
- Full weekend
- Often long drives or flights and car rentals
- Lodging costs
- Expensive field complexes
Scope
This proposal only addresses USAU’s club prime divisions during the regular season. Out of scope of this proposal: age-protected divisions; Sectionals, Regionals, Nationals (the Series); Pro, Elite, and Select flights; off-season; party tournaments.
Current System
USAU currently tiers competition using the Triple Crown Tour (TCT). Teams are divided into four flights:
- Pro Flight – Top eight teams (1st through 8th) based on performance at the previous year’s National Championships.
- Elite Flight – Next eight teams (9th through 16th) based on performance at the previous year’s National Championships.
- Select Flight – 32 teams. Next highest-finishing four teams in each geographic region, after Pro and Elite teams, based on performance in the previous year’s Regional Championships.
- Top Select – Select Flight teams that were the highest finishing Select team from each region (eight total) from the previous year’s Regional Championships. The Top Select team is the team that lost the “game-to-go” to Nationals.
- Classic Flight – All other teams participating in the Regular Season or Postseason of the TCT.
- In practice, the Select Flight Invite (SFI) events usually include some regional level teams that don’t qualify for the Select Flight.
In 2024, here’s the breakdown of the teams that met the criteria for inclusion in the TCT for the upcoming 2025 season.
| Divisions | Open | Mixed | Womens | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total teams | 210 | 265 | 106 | 581 |
| Classic Flight teams | 162 | 217 | 58 | 437 |
| Classic as percentage of division | 77% | 82% | 55% | 75% |
Overall, 75% of club teams don’t play in the TCT.
One of the guiding principles of USAU’s strategic plan is to grow membership. USAU board member DeAnna Ball reiterated this in response to the new USAU CEO: “Kevin [Erlenbach]’s experience will allow him to come in and immediately support our strategic plan with an emphasis on growing our youth, local and grassroots communities.” Ultiworld Editor-in-Chief Charlie Eisenhood echoed this sentiment when he recently wrote “steady (membership) growth will need to be the absolute #1 goal.” Any growth would directly add to the size of the Classic Flight.
USAU currently puts disproportionate effort into the experience for the top three flights, only 25% of club teams, specifically in the form of the TCT and the Olympics push. Most Classic Flight teams don’t participate in the postseason series beyond sectionals. The regular season should have meaningful stakes and attainable goals for Classic Flight teams beyond improving their win-loss record and placing a couple spots higher in the postseason.
Proposed System
Within each region, create skill-delineated divisions similar to the English Premier League. Each season, teams would get promoted and relegated based on their performance. Teams would then play fewer games each outing, in more desirable locations, against closer rated competition. Games would be more competitive, more fun, and higher stakes.
Pro, Elite, Select Flights
By definition, there aren’t many teams that can play at the highest level. These teams must travel to play against strong competition. The existing Triple Crown Tour events serve these teams well.
Classic Flight Division Boundaries
The Classic Flight should be divided into divisions according to skill level and location, where location boundaries would mirror existing regions. Divisions should be geographically large enough to include enough teams and small enough to reduce travel times. Ideally in some regions this wouldn’t require overnight stays, enabling single-day mini tournaments or one-off games. The skill range within a division should be narrow enough that the best teams aren’t blowing out the worst. Small sections like Big Sky might only accommodate one Classic Flight division. Larger regions, such as Southwest mixed with 29 ranked teams, could divide into three divisions, as shown below.
Regular Season Tournament Format
Rather than attending two or more huge tournaments each regular season, teams could organize more frequent single day round-robins with a handful of games against local competition. Each event wouldn’t require nearly as much time or financial commitment, leading to fewer clashes with non-ultimate events like weddings. Players could miss a weekend without missing a third of their regular season.
Local disc organizations could also run weekly league-style USAU games, combining the convenience of league with the competitiveness of club. This would also serve as a showcase of high-level ultimate, aiding recruitment of league players.
Promotion and Relegation
An algorithmically generated rating would determine promotion and relegation (e.g. frisbee-rankings.com) as teams accrue games. This algorithm could be weighted to encourage playing teams in the same division. Currently, teams can gain the most Elo points by blowing out poor competition or performing better than expected against stronger opponents. While this produces a more accurate measure of their skill, for the purposes of division placement, a separate rating would encourage battling closer-rated competition. Teams could still travel and play versus teams from different regions in equivalent divisions. A portion of slots in each division would be awarded based upon regular season and a portion would depend on the postseason.
Mechanically, this would work as roughly the top two teams in each division getting promoted and the bottom two teams dropping. During the postseason series, if a team significantly outperformed their divisional expectations, they could vault up to higher division for the next season.
Newly formed teams would start in the lowest division. If a new all-star team assembled, they could choose to not play within their division, instead skipping to their appropriate division in their first postseason.
Sample Season
Teams currently play 10-30 games in a season at two-five tournaments.
Using these example disc organizations:
- Seattle – Disc NW
- New York – Disc NY
- Madison, WI – MUFA
- San Francisco Bay Area – BADA
- Los Angeles – LAOut
In condensed locales (NW, MUFA, BADA), teams could play nearby foes two to three times a summer in league-like gameplay. This would sum up to 5-15 games alone. They may opt to travel for larger regional tournament each year to round out their season against less familiar adversaries.
In broader locales (LA, NY), uniting on weeknights might be infeasible. Each team could participate in 3-5 single-day round robins each summer, amounting to 9-15 games.
Finally, in regions with sparely populated competition (Big Sky, Texas), larger tournaments would still remain the most effective way to manage a season. Power pools2 or division-divided tournaments within the tournament could increase parity in these events.
Critique and Responses
- It wouldn’t be fun to play the same teams in my area repeatedly.
Teams would have the option of playing games outside their region against closely-rated competition to contribute to their regular season rating. In this way, teams could customize their season to their preferences.
- What if a team’s skill level changes dramatically during a single season?
Teams could self-relegate to lower divisions. Assuming good spirit, teams wouldn’t use this to sandbag. Strong teams could skip events against their division and instead advance in the postseason.
- This doesn’t change much for the teams in the TCT, so why does it matter?
USAU currently focuses on the best teams to the detriment of the lower-rated teams that roster most active players. Recently, USAU has put a renewed emphasis on youth development, but the entry point from league to club play is neglected. This proposal would make the sport more fun at a lower level, driving player development which would trickle up to the game’s highest levels.
- Would it really be cheaper or less of an organizational burden to host a greater number of smaller tournaments?
Smaller tournaments would only require one or two fields. Local disc organizations could help organize these, similar to leagues. The full support of a snack table, bathrooms, and a tournament central wouldn’t be necessary. Public parks often have adequate space and bathroom facilities. USAU could still provide legal liability and insurance coverage. Sanctioning costs should also have a lower, cheaper tier for small tournaments. Tournament director certification (manual) should similarly have a lower tier or sufficiently small events shouldn’t require certification at all.
Power pools format helps, but why do the teams need to be at the same tournaments in the first place? ↩
The “power pool” format immediate pits the top seeds against one another in pool play. Teams face closer skilled competition at the expense of each team not having a fair route to a first-place finish. ↩
