Tournament Directors can begin to submit requests to host tournaments any time after September 1 for the new season (Tournament Sanction Request Forms can be downloaded from here). Requests are not necessarily accepted in the order received, but the earlier requests are received the better chance we can assign a tournament to the host (especially if they are flexible on which divisions they can host).
We changed how sites are assigned before the 2014 Season. We received overwhelming response on the changes and have continued the assigning process outlined below for the current season.
Past feedback has overwhelmingly supported having 4-team pool tournaments as much as possible. This will give a consistent round-robin tournament play format and shorten the tournament day from other formats that accommodated more teams. This season, we will continue the process which will allow us to have 4-team pools at most sites, but it will mean that we will not be able to notify teams what site they are playing until after the TWO week entry deadline. We have moved all tournament entry deadlines to TWO weeks. At the entry deadline, we will cut off late entries (unless we have withdrawals and there is room to make additional tournaments 4-team pool formats). We will then assign teams that submitted an entry for that weekend to sites in 4-team pool increments using the Standings from the Tournament System. For example, if the first site has THREE courts, we will assign the top 12 teams that entered that weekend to that tournament. If the next site has TWO courts, we will assign the next 8 teams by the rankings to that site. And so on, until all teams that entered that weekend are assigned to sites. The last site(s) assigned may not have all 4-team pools (it will depend on the total number of teams that enter any given weekend) but the majority of sites will. Sites that do not have all 4-team pools will use either 3-team pool formats or a modified 5-team round-robin pool format (5-team pool will only be used if only 5 teams remaining to assign to a stand-alone tournament).
It will be critical that teams that want to play a given weekend, enter by the two-week deadline. Once teams are assigned to sites it will be much more difficult to incorporate late entries (as we will have 4-team pools at all sites). We thank everyone for their patience while the sites are assigned. We will also work to continue to move teams around so they are not going to same sites, but since the assignments are now going to be based strictly on the Rankings and some sites request to host their club team(s), it will be impossible to guarantee individual teams won’t be assigned to the same sites from time to time.
For more information on the assigning process, view this document.
