NCA All Star Nationals 2017 – Insights into Division Splits

Coaches,

On or before next Tuesday, the Block Schedule and Final Team Listing will be released. Since there have been several questions lately in regards to division splits, I wanted to clarify NCA’s process. Throughout this entire journey, we’ve remained compliant with the USASF mandates, as well as our own internal philosophies and processes. We’ve also tried to be very transparent and go out of our way to communicate with everyone during each stage of the process. Below you’ll find insight into Division Splits.

Registration

The USASF mandates that we offer the standard division listing. For example, that is why the forms you filled out did not allow you to register for a Level 2 Small Junior D2 Division. The only option it gave you was a general, “Level 2 Junior/5-32 members” Division. It did not include Small or Large and it didn’t include D2. Divisions for D2 teams at NCA All-Star Nationals are NOT guaranteed. In some instances, Small/Large splits aren’t either.

Initial Small/Large Splits

USASF mandates that we can split a division (i.e. Level 2 Junior/5-32 members) based on size into Small (5-20 members) and Large (21-32 members) once we have enough registrations in-house to warrant a split. With the size of NCA All-Star Nationals, that was easily achieved in most potential divisions.

Team Listing Emails

During the week of January 22nd, Rachael Alexander sent a personalized email to each program to verify divisions, participant totals and crossovers. On January 26th, I sent out the first Team/Division listing with most Small/Large splits to review. I sent out another updated Team/Division listing on January 30tth.

A/B Splits

Given the prestige and reputation of our event, coupled with our desire to have DEEP divisions at Nationals, we decided to only split divisions with 16 teams or more into A/B or D2. For a division to split into D2, there must be at least 16 teams in a division with at least 5 eligible D2 teams. Once D2 splits are complete, we look at the remaining teams and consider A/B splits.

• Divisions with at least 16 teams are split into A/B.
• Divisions with at least 25 teams are split into A/B/C.
• Divisions with at least 36 teams are split into A/B/C/D.

We use a snapshot of enrollment on the official Split Day of February 1st to make final splits. We do not further split L5 and L6 Worlds divisions, as Worlds Bids are up for grabs and most teams that travel across the world to compete against the best at NCA would be disappointed to find out some of their favorite competition ended up in a “B” division instead of their division.

I know that understanding this side of the sport is complicated and confusing at times. We’ve tried to remain as consistent and transparent as possible in our processes leading up to these splits. For us, it is a challenge to balance NCA’s goal of providing every team a fair chance to be competitive with our mission of retaining NCA All-Star Nationals’ reputation as the most prestigious competition of its kind in the industry.

We know many of you choose NCA for that reason, because people that think NCA is the ultimate – where winning means something because you competed against the best of the best. I’ll be back in touch soon!

Justin Carrier