2021 Club Division Guidelines Released

Colorado Springs, Colo. (April 30, 2022)—USA Ultimate released today its 2021 Club Division Guidelines, outlining the details and scope of both a loosely organized regular season and the postseason championship series.

The guidelines were written alongside USA Ultimate’s club division working group – including player-elected athlete reps and volunteer national directors – and reflect a variety of significant changes as a result of the continued COVID-19 pandemic. And while the club season will look considerably different this year, USA Ultimate is excited to return to play and offer a competitive experience to its elite-level athletes.

Notable changes have been made to event attendance requirements, rankings, rostering, and postseason bid allocations. Still, the season is expected to deliver exciting competition and a compelling postseason that concludes with a triumvirate of national champions being crowned this October in San Diego.

In acknowledgement of some of the more significant changes implemented for the 2021 season, please see the outline below.

• There are no requirements for any teams to attend any regular season events this season.

• As a result of a flexible regular season with no event requirements, there will be no byes offered to regionals this season; all teams competing in the postseason championship series will begin with sectionals.

• Without rankings, there will be more flexibility with regards to team rosters during the regular season, e.g. players may play with any team at any point during the regular season. There is also no limit on the size of a team’s regular season roster.

• Roster minimums and maximums have been simplified for mixed division TCT events. Mixed gender matching minimums have be raised to six men’s matching and six women’s matching players for TCT events (five of each for all other regular season sanctioned events).  

• Regional bid allocation will be determined completely by proportional size bids within a particular region.

• Bid allocations to nationals will include one automatic bid per region plus eight strength bids awarded based on a weighted average of the 2017, 2018 and 2019 club seasons.