ASA Needs to Change States and USA Qualifier Deadlines

[default]

Thanks SoCal. Guess I am now off in hunt of Ohio written regulations. Layering the "local option" over a Code that is already difficult to interpret is daunting to me, who makes a living out of interpreting a very complicated federal code that also contains opt-out provisions.

So maybe there wouldn't actually be any ASA rule violation if there were an earlier closing date defined by the number of available fields. TDs could just choose whether to include that provision in their bids, I would think. (However, if a TD chose not to include such a provision but rather opted for closing entries much nearer in time to the start of the tournament, families would still get hurt by the lack of much notice regarding specific Friday play times).

 

[default]

The 7 day rule should not really be a concern...ASA Code states that tourneys can start no earlier than friday...

Article 509 DATES OF CHAMPIONSHIP PLAY. Regional Tournaments, National Qualifiers, and Territorial Gold Qualifiers must be scheduled to start no earlier than Friday and complete no later than Sunday.

So it is solely on the TD to have his ducks in a row so that the tourney doesn't start before friday, and he accepts teams up until 7 days prior to tourney start date. They bid this tourney to make money, so they should know and follow the rules.

Granted you may not know your start date a week ahead of time...but you should feel very confident that you will play on Friday, and plan accordingly.

If they try to start before Friday just contact the ASA commisioner and he will prevent this. I had to do this very thing several years back when they tried to change the format of the 2 pool into DE, TD wanted to make it a regular 3 GG. I contacted Commisioner several days before tourney started and they had to completely rework bracket and times. I wasn't popular but rules are rules.

This Friday-Sunday provision in Article 509 is new for this year and, unfortunately, does not cover local association championships (e.g. States and Metros). I imagine it was enacted to keep hosts from discouraging out-of-the-area teams from entering by scheduling them midweek.

FWIW, we don't have pool games in our SoCal State Championships. We start double elimination play Friday afternoon due to the large number of teams (50-80+), even with 12-16 fields. Consequently, we have an unseeded draw for the brackets and a lot of anxiety over it due to first round match-ups that send strong teams to the losers bracket right off the bat.