For the 2022-23 season, all teams must attend at least one regional championship to qualify for US Quadball Cup 2023. Additional information below outlines the season structure and qualification process.
Teams will qualify for bids to USQ Cup based on performance at regional championships.
For the 2022-23 season, teams will be allowed to attend any regional championship they wish. To facilitate this process and ensure bids are distributed fairly, college teams will rank their top 3 choices upon team membership registration with USQ. Club teams will rank up to 3 regionals they plan to attend upon team membership registration with USQ. USQ may take steps to encourage teams to go to different regionals by communicating the number of teams attending regionals. Regional bids will be calculated and publicly announced on October 1, 2022, along with the list of teams attending each regional championship. Regional championships will be awarded bids based on the number of registrants by September 30. The remaining at-large bids will be awarded at the end of March.
College teams must meet games, opponents, and event attendance requirements. Club teams will not be required to play a minimum number of games before regionals. For regionals, the official USQ standings will be used to rank teams as needed. All teams that have not yet played official games will be counted as unranked.
Teams must play a minimum number of official games before regionals, as indicated below. For regionals, the official USQ standings will be used to rank teams as needed. All teams that have not yet played the required number of official games will be counted as unranked.
2 weeks before fall regionals, all official teams will be required to:
2 weeks before spring regionals, all official teams will be required to:
To qualify for USQ Cup bids, teams must fulfill season play requirements by March 26, 2023. The season play requirements mandate a minimum number of opponents played during the season, a minimum number of games, and competing at a regional championship.
All teams will be required to:
*Club teams will only be able to fulfill this requirement by competing against other club teams. College teams may use games against club teams to count for these requirements. Cross-division games (college vs. club) will never count for standings.
Teams that do not earn bids for USQ Cup at regional championships must complete expanded season play requirements to earn at-large bids. At-large bid requirements for all teams are listed below.
All teams will be required to:
Alternatively, teams can do the following if they compete against at least one out-of-region opponent:
Teams must meet these requirements by March 12, 2023. Teams interested in the open division only need to attend one event, and are permitted to use regionals to count for this requirement.
If a team believes they will have issues meeting season play or gameplay requirements, they can fill out a waiver here, to have the gameplay team review their season record, expected tournament attendance for the rest of the season, and if approved, will waive requirements based on team need.
The USQ Gameplay Team has worked to create a spreadsheet so all teams can track how close they are to completing their gameplay requirements for the season, whether season play requirements or at large requirements. The sheet is available here, and has also been added to the requirements check menu on the member website. The spreadsheet will be updated periodically as games are entered into standings.
The overall collegiate season structure for the 2022-23 season will be similar to the 2021-22 season. Teams will compete in regular season matches as well as a regional championship. However, teams are not required to attend their closest geographic championship. Please note that collegiate teams will only be allowed to participate in one regional championship*. There will be opportunities for teams to qualify for the national championship at regional events and through an at-large process. The format for the collegiate division at USQ Cup is being adjusted, as outlined below.
*In cases where a regional championship does not have enough collegiate teams, a team may be allowed to attend another regional championship.
For the 2022-23 season, club and collegiate teams will be allowed to attend any regional championship they wish. Collegiate teams may attend any (1) regional. Club teams may attend multiple regionals. Teams will select their top three preferences when creating their team on the USQ membership registration site. Team registration will begin with the regional selection process on October 1. After October 1, club teams that wish to attend more than 3 regionals can email gameplay@usquadball.org to indicate interest.
USQ requires a minimum regional size for the collegiate division. In the 2022-23 season, the minimum will be five teams. If a regional championship does not have five college teams with indicated interest in attending by the October 1 deadline, or if the number of collegiate teams drops below five after that point, USQ Gameplay and Events Department will determine whether a regional for that collegiate division will happen. Similar to the 2021 USQ Northeast Regional Championships, if a region cannot have regionals, dedicated at-large bids will be established based on the number of teams in that region that indicated an interest in that event by the September 30 deadline.
At this time, USQ has not decided to cap the number of teams allowed to compete at US Quadball Cup 2023 (USQ Cup), but instead to divide the tournament into the following divisions, each with its own caps:
*These divisions will have their own schedule and are subject to capping based on interest during the fall.
USQ Cup bids by division will be given out as follows:
If there is any change, an update will be posted no later than 1 week before the first regional championship, currently scheduled for October 29, 2022. If a cap is decided, more information will be released regarding the number of bids and at-large bids. Due to this, the club competition structure for USQ Cup has not yet been finalized. Season play requirements will still need to be completed by March 26, 2023 for all club teams interested in attending.
Again this season, USQ will use the Huntington-Hill method of apportionment in determining bid allocation, which the United States House of Representatives uses to determine its seats. The Huntington-Hill method ensures each region is represented at the US Quadball Cup according to the size of the region.
Of the 40 collegiate competitive division bids, 30 will be awarded at regional championships. These 30 bids will be distributed to the regions using the Huntington Hill method. The remaining bids will be distributed at large.
Using this method, we first determine a standard divisor by dividing the number of registered teams by the number of available event bids (30). We then calculate a standard quota for each region, representing the number of bids each region would receive if the bids accurately represented the region’s size. Unfortunately, ¼ of a team cannot receive a bid to represent their region at the event so, some rounding must occur, which is why using this mathematical method is necessary.
Suppose a region’s standard quota is less than the geometric mean of the integers between which it is located. In that case, a region is allocated the lower of those integers. Suppose the region’s standard quota is greater than the geometric mean of the integers. In that case, it is allocated to the higher integers.
If the total sum of those initial quotas adds to the total number of bids, the initial quotas are used. Otherwise, a modified divisor is used in place of the standard divisor so that the modified quotas sum correctly, and those modified quotas are then used.
In order to allocate each division’s bids to D1 and D2, each region’s quota will be multiplied by 0.6 and 0.4, respectively, to generate the divisional quota for D1 and D2.
You can find further reading on the Huntington-Hill method in the Mathematical Association of America.