Making Regionals Never Felt Better

So this past weekend we had sectionals, and lemme tell you, never have I had to work so hard to make a regional tournament. First, we lost about 1/2 of our best players either due to injury or personal issues. Korber's on his honeymoon, Linneman broke his collarbone, Saipher moved to San Francisco, Jake Alter tore his ACL, Jordan tore his labrum, the list goes on.

However, what I really wanted to write about was how different regions are across the country. I can only talk of the 2 that I have played in and I will make some conjectures about some other ones. First, the southwest. The southwest has 2-3 really good/elite teams at both the college and club level. Bravo and Condors are always up there and so are Mamabird and Black Tide. UCSD sometimes makes a run as did PBR/SD United. UCLA is coming along and Monster has made a name for itself recently. However, outside these 3-4 teams, thats about it in the whole region. Now there are some teams that could beat mine (Colt 45) in these regions that I didn't mention but lets take a look at the sectional tournaments. First you have the Rocky Mountain section, ok, bravo is gonna sweep and they did. But come on there are only 9 teams at the tournament and 6 make it to regionals, are you kidding me? They should just try and figure out who doesn't make regionals and save everyone else the trouble. Then you have the desert section. It only has 4 teams. I don't know how many make it out of there, but its gotta be at least 2. So thats 8 teams from 2 sections leaving only 1 section left, southern california. So if you want to have a standard 16 team regional tournament, there are 8 bids left that can come from SoCal, but there are only 12 teams in the socal section. So if you think about it, 6/9, 2/4, 8/12, thats 16/25 teams making regionals or 64% of teams in the region make it to regionals. Wow, how many other regions are like this? I don't want to go into all the details, but the college sectional/regional system out of the southwest is also more or less the same. Except that there are even fewer Colorado college teams making it even easier to make regionals.

Ok, so the southwest is kinda kooky, so what? The northwest is the same thing. All the northwest sectional tournaments have been played and its the same story. You have the Washington/BC section (albeit the toughest section, but just because of 2 teams) which had 9 teams at their tournament and 6 make it to regionals. Oregon and the bay area are more of the same. 4 of 5 (basically) teams make it out of oregon and 5 of 8 make it out of the bay area. So once again, for a 15/16 team tournament you have 15 teams making it out of 22, or 68% of teams in the region are at regionals. College is a bit more complicated becasue there are a lot of schools in the bay area. But the washington/BC sectionals as well as orgeon sectionals in college are pretty analogous. OK so who cares?

Well, if you are on the west coast, you probably think that this is standard series ultimate. If you are an east coast, you are thinking (as I am), what the hell? why do I live in New England. I can't comment on the midwest/south/atlantic because I have never played there nor do I know any close friends that do. Feel free to comment.

Now, lets take a look at New England. First and foremost, you have 4 sections instead of 3 like the N/SW. You have my sectional tournament, Metro NY/South New England. In Open, there were 8 teams that played at sectionals but only 3 get to make it to regionals. Now, in the west new england sectionals there are 5 teams out of 6 that get to make it, ok thats a lot. There are 2 sections left, East NE and Upstate NY. East NE has yet to play (and I don't know how many teams are coming out of there) and Upstate has probaly somewhere around 3-4 teams coming out of there out of 6. This means that 3 come out of the south, 5 come out of the west, probabaly 3 out of Upstate NY and 5 out of boston. If you look at the UPA score reporter, there are 9 boston teams (excluding colleges like Harvard, Tufts, MIT, and Northeastern) that will be at sectionals meaning that there are at least 29 teams competing in the NE series and only 16 get to make regionals or 55%, but it will actually probably be a smaller % in reality.

Ok so whats my point? All these teams and all these tournaments make it really tough to make regionals. For some it is easy, like the west sectionals, but if you look at the upa score reporter, of all 35 teams that are listed in the NE region 23 of them have recorded at least 10 games or more as a team, thats 66% of teams actually putting together a season besides the series. In the Northwest, out of 30 teams, only 14 have recorded 10 games or more. And most perplexing, in the southwest, out of 12 teams, only 7 have recorded 10 games or more.

So what does this all mean? I guess what I wanted to say, is that I now have an appreciation for what it means to make regionals. When I was at UCSD our B team always made regionals and sometimes our C team as well. Now that I am at Yale, we have to fight tooth and nail just to grab the last spot to college regionals. You also don't see a lot of B teams at regionals in NE. Then again, I guess Texas-B, Wisconsin-B and UCLA-B were the only B teams to make regionals in the country. I guess thats an interesting indication of how tough your region is. I suppose its all boils down to how many more colleges there are in NE than other places. More colleges means more teams, which means more club teams which means more competition, but skilled players are much more spread out.

I also find it interesting that of these regions where it is pretty tough to make club regionals, ie NE, there aren't that many elite teams (making at least quarters at nationals). You have Boston, ok they are good, and Goat might be as well, but Boston will probably be happy with quarters and be very lucky to make semis. Goat on the other hand will probably be just happy to be in sarasota. From the southwest, Bravo will make quarters and the new condors might as well. From the NW, there will probably be 3-4 teams in quarters and at least 1 in semis. i want to comment on the South, the Mid Atlantic, and the Central but I just don't know enough. My overall point is that despite not having a lot of top tier teams in NE, it is not easy to make regionals. And conversely, in the west, despite having several dominat/elite teams, it is much easier to make regionals. So, for those people that think sectionals is a formality (cuz believe me, I thought it was), you are wrong. There are folks out there that work really hard and don't make regionals. Take a look at a team like "7-10 split", good team, good bunch of guys. They played 20 games this year, they went to 4 tournaments, went 2-3 at sectiopnals and couldn't make regionals. However, you have a team like Reed College, who only played at club sectionals, went 3-4 (beating the same team twice and one team that didn't show up for sunday) and they are going to the toughest regional tournament in the country (toughest meaning most elite teams). I think it poses an interesing paradox.

Another thing that I want to write about, and you can stop reading now if you want, is what its like to play without your best players. This past year I could not make my college sectionals make up tournament because I was out of town. I was by far the oldest/most experienced player on the team, but despite my fears of us not making regionals because myself and some other really good players were not gonna be there, Yale still stuck it out and we made regionals, awesome. This club series, I got to see the other end of this. Colt 45 sustained huge injuries and personal issues that bascially eliminated 5-7 players from our team that made semis at White Mountain Open. Having lost Korber and Linneman and a few others really made the prospect of making regionals pretty bleak. However, we stuck it out, clawed tooth and nail and managed to make it. And not only did we make it, but we beat the team that knocked us out last year. This was a great feeling and I think it should be felt by everyone across the country. In this game, it is easy to rely on marquee players. Every team has their superstar and its nice to be able to depend on them. Getting the D or the score is nice, but if you don't odds are, your headliner will. However, when given the chance to play without your superstars, you really see what your team is made of. As, a former team mate (jake branzburg) told me, everyone on the team feels the pressure and the drive to make a play because if they don't there is no one else to bail them out. This is good motivation for a team because it gives everyone on the field a purpose, a role and that is really important in this game. I suppose this is the rational behind the "faceless army" technique and while I don't entirely agree with it, I think it is very useful. Now, going into regionals, we will have Korber back giving us not only hope because he is our best player but excitement for the future because we know what we can do without him. In any event, it is not good to rely on your top players. It is good to play without them sometimes. It might make you realize you are actually a better player than you thought.

Just my thoughts.

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