Monday, April 16, 2007

Spring Reign pools released

Almost too many to post! 34 teams, 10 pools, one insanely huge (and awesome) high school tournament. [The UPA Score reporter site]

And then the pools...


Pool A
A1: Crescent Valley High School
A2: Edmonds-Woodway
A3: Monroe
A4: The Northwest School-Coed 9/10

Pool B
B1: Garfield
B2: Lakeside High School
B3: Roosevelt
B4: South Eugene HS Mixed A

Pool C
C1: International Community School
C2: The Northwest School-Coed A
C3: Rick Hansen Secondary
C4: Seattle Academy HS V

Pool D
D1: Ingraham HS
D2: Nathan Hale A
D3: Steveston Secondary School
D4: Bush

Pool E
E1: Bainbrigde Island
E2: Churchill HS Mixed JV1
E3: Nathan Hale B
E4: University Prep

Pool F
F1: Mercer Island
F2: The Northwest School-Coed B
F3: Sheldon HS
F4: The Center School

Pool G
G1: Monroe B
G2: The Northwest School 9
G3: Rick Hansen 9th
G4: Shorewood
G5: Bush Bees

Pool H
H1: Churchill HS Mixed Freshman
H2: Richmond
H3: Seattle Academy HS JV
H4: Nova
H5: Thomas Jefferson


phew! thats a ton of teams. comments and predictions welcome...

16 comments:

Mike Mullen said...

There are another 40 middle school teams and 7 elementary school teams playing at the tourney, all at the same field complex:
http://www.upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=121&id=3196

You will notice multiple middle school teams for each of the schools that were accepted to HS Westerns. (Hale has public schools like Eckstein, Whitman, Salmon Bay feeding it though those players also go to other Seattle Public High Schools.

And these pools aren't offical yet, be they are very close.

Trivia - Can you name the middle school in the tourney that the Suver twins, Sam C-K, Jimmy Chu, Alex Nord, Jeremy Cram, and Phil Burkhardt all attended.

Other stuff. We are doing a good job getting the prep schools and the public schools playing in Seattle but we still only have 1 Catholic school playing and we have a great Catholic School System in Seattle.

Mike Mullen said...

To clarify the A-D pools are in the A division, the E & F pools are in the B division, and the G & H pools are in the C division. There will be no crossover between the divisions but if two teams are obviously in the wrong divisions they might be swapped.

And before someone complains about seeding. Within the divisions the teams ARE NOT seeded. They are split up by region (OR, BC, Seattle coed league, Seattle single gender league) to avoid playing someone from your own region in pool play. Within each pool the teams ARE NOT seeded, they are for the most part lined up alphabetically with a couple teams moved around.

-Mike

Anonymous said...

Mike Mullen wrote: "Trivia - Can you name the middle school in the tourney that the Suver twins, Sam C-K, Jimmy Chu, Alex Nord, Jeremy Cram, and Phil Burkhardt all attended."

NOMS - New Option Middle School

Joe Bisignano was the coach. Home to Discobedient Youth and later, MOHO.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and what do I win?

A roster spot on Sockeye?!

Mike Mullen said...

You named the former name of the school. What is the current name? And to all those former NOMS kids, check you SPS transcripts they probably say the new name.

Anonymous said...

NOMS (my old middle school) is now Salmon Bay Middle School

Harry H.
NHHS

Anonymous said...

Looks like it will be a sweet tournement, anybody have any predictions for championship bracket? Also, what is with Northwest 9/10 being in the A division while Northwest B is in the B division?

Simon M.
Seattle Academy

Mike Mullen said...

Simon,

NWS has four teams playing in HS Spring Reign. Since we play single gender during the season we decided to split our varsity teams by grade (NWS A = NWS 11/12). Even though NWS 9/10 is technically not as strong as our 11/12 we figured they could use the experience playing in the A division.

Coed B and our 9th grade team are JV players split obviously by grade.

We also have 5 middle school teams playing.

See you up there. - Mike

Anonymous said...

why is everyone going mixed

Anonymous said...

Because it is a coed tourney...
Also is last years winner Kitsalano not comeing?
And i don't see Churchill A...are they not comeing either?

Mike Mullen said...

Indeed it is a coed tourney. I think this is the 10th or 12th year of the tourney or something like that. Spring Reign was at one point the most important HS/ youth club tourney on the west coast, maybe even west of the Mississippi. Now it is for the most part similar to Potlatch in that the best teams are single gender squads that join up to form coed teams. The teams that play in the HS coed league generally don't do that well in the A bracket of SR, but there are a couple of teams this year that might.

Middle school in Seattle is all coed and always has been though it did take some time for youth coed in Seattle get to an enforced 4/3.

Four years ago a few Seattle high school teams decided to leave HS coed and go to single gender for various reasons. Before that everything on the west coast was coed. Since that change you can see the places that added single gender to the mixed have flourished (Eugene & Seattle) while places like British Columbia have not.

As Kitsilano showed last year there are some great youth players in BC but they just don't have the depth to do well in single gender. And over the years there have been some amazing youth teams from BC (Prince of Wales, Kits, Yale Secondary). Kits was mostly seniors last year so I don't know if they have a team this year. And the border crossing is much more difficult since 9/11.

Luke will probably respond but I think Churchill couldn't get all their varsity kids up because of conflicts. And keep in mind that Churchill and South Eugene are 350 miles away and they have already been up for two college tournaments and will be up for Westerns. That is about 3000 miles worth of driving for the four tournies. And Luke is bringing middle school squads too. That is amazing dedication. If there were more coaches as dedicated as Luke in this country, youth ultimate would be huge.

-Mike

Anonymous said...

It's awesome to hear how west coast scenes are thriving (in Seattle, Oregon, etc). It's too bad, however, that there's little cross-country competition? Hopkins is the only west coast team playing east coast teams, correct? At Paideia Cup, right? No Seattle teams have plans to play at the Amherst Invite, right?

So in other words, the best of these two worlds will never see each other until they reach college.

Anonymous said...

I beleive that Northwest and Souht Eugene both got invites to play in Paidea but said that the trip was to expensive....but there should be a tournament were the top 4 in Westerns get to play the top four in Easterns

Hurt # 75

Mike Mullen said...

Indeed I don't believe that any Seattle teams are going to AI nor or any East Coast teams coming to Spring Reign to which everyone has an invite to participate.

It is not just a case of cost but also of time. NWS is in the middle of a two week spring break right now. The reason we have two weeks is that there are a lot of foreign language trips that go out for three weeks. After spring break there are grade level trips during different weeks in early May that go out. The junior class goes and does a "Habitat for Humanity" type thing at a migrant farmworker camp every spring. With all of that we don't have a full team more often than not, except for the first week of the season and Westerns. Our school is nice enough to schedule prom for a weekend that is not Westerns.

I do see how everyone would love to see the top teams play but logistically it is almost impossible. YCC is the true national championship and the teams that win that tourney deserve their crowns.

And sooner or later Westerns and Easterns are going to be broken up into smaller regions so that will disappear and someone will say "Why don't the top HS teams for all the regional tournaments play?" And the answer will still be the same.

Of course ultimate is not going to grow if this current crop of high school players don't get out there and grow middle school and high school programs when they get to college. I don't know if U Pitt is going to do anything at the College Championships this year but it looks like that program would win an award for having the most players coaching different HS teams. In time that might become a feeder program that makes U Pitt a national power house.

-Mike

Anonymous said...

Churchill A is not participating in Spring Reign because:
1. The fact that it is a mixed tournament right in the middle of our open/women season, along with the fact that we have plenty of other tournaments around it, made it not worth the effort.
2. In past years we've had trouble dealing with the needs of all the different teams we take. This set-up allows the high school coaches from the A team to go only as coaches and make sure the middle school, freshmen, and jv teams are all provided for (there are 4-5 of them, with 2-3 middle school teams coming).


On a different note: while I agree that YCC is the appropriate place to have competition between the top players from the east and west coasts, it's worth noting that the bids are awarded based on the presence and size of leagues, not ability. I'm not complaining, just saying that it might not quite be a complete national championship at this point.

Collin Smith
Churchill HS #3

Anonymous said...

does anyone have any spring regin pics up?