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Co-ed, All genders, spring, elementary, Tournament

2014 Spring Jam elementary tournament

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Registration is open for another week if you’d like to put in a bid for the 2nd annual Spring Jam co-ed elementary tournament.  The competition will take place on Saturday 5/31 from noon until about 3pm in Lower Woodland Park (field #02).

This year the tournament has an exciting new format — 5 vs 5, instead of 7 vs 7 — and if it is well-received the same reduced team size may be used next year in the 2015 Spring Elementary League.  While the primary intent is to ensure that each player gets more contact with the disc per point, an added benefit may also be reducing the likelihood of collisions/injuries between players who are just beginning to play the game.

Register by next Thursday, May 29 at noon for $65/team  here — http://www.discnw.org/events/springjam/ — but note that bid acceptance is on a first-come-first-served basis.

Another great twist in the normal rules for this age is to allow the offense to choose the nature of a 3:2 gender ratio.  After each point is scored, the incoming offense can choose to field 3 girls and 2 boys, or 2 girls and 3 boys.  The defense must match by gender for that point.

Other details:

  • Fields will be abbreviated (70 yards long; 25 yards wide; 15-yard end zones)

  • Games will be hard capped at 60 minutes (no soft cap).

  • Games are to 11 points or until the hard cap, whichever comes first.

  • Teams each have one 90-second timeout per half, regardless of overtime (different from USA Ultimate rules).

This should be a fun experiment for youth ultimate in the Seattle area.  Overall, this portends a great direction for Spring Jam, an event that from 2010-2012 was aimed at novice and intermediate high school players who wanted to try a single-gender tournament.

Here’s hoping this format and location works well for the growing number of elementary teams in the greater Seattle area.  Maybe it will work so well that it will become the Spring Reign for elementary players, allowing Disc NW to use the limited field space in Burlington to accommodate more middle and high school teams in the future?