Looking at the results, one story is that PSW had all 3 clubs finish in the top 10 and PAC Zone showed up big with 6 teams in the top 15 and all 8 in the top 24.
Lot of talk of parity between clubs among 18U coaches. Many very close games (1-2 goals) that were a lot of fun to watch in Platinum and situations where Team A beats Team B, Team B beats Team C, Team C beats Team A.
MTN (North Irvine) and NEZ (Greenwich) were the only Zones outside PSW, PAC, SPA, CST with a Platinum/Top 24 finish.
Of Note: looking at the allocation table Marco posted. SWZ, CEN and MDW have the same number or more allocations than PSW, but no teams in the top 24.
PSW manages to find a way to get competitive matches over three [edited: it’s actually four] days. For 18u, for example, two groups of 5 playing round robin. First place gets a bye to semis, 2A plays 3B, 2B plays 3A with winners moving on to semis and losers playing for 5th place.
So if you’re in the top three in your group, you can play into Semis and have a shot at our zone’s allocation of . . . three (!) teams to Championship bracket (if sarcasm is detected, please note that it’s intended).
Oh, and the results for next summer quals will be kinda odd: PSW qual finishers 1-3 get seeded 1, 6, and 7 in Championship Division, while 4th place gets seeded 8th in Classic.
I don’t think SPA would have trouble running two extra games for quals, with 6th place playing 7th and possibly even 5th place playing 8th.
But that’s not my circus and those are not my monkeys.
What if every year the bottom four in gold are swapped with the top 4 of classic. So sort of a relegation for zones so better zones get more spots over time.
Just collude with Team Vegas and skip quals. North Irvine does it annually. USA Water Polo has shown they are fine with it. Call Team Vegas next year and make a better offer for their one of their rental allocations.
I strongly resent unfounded allegations against Team Vegas. Yes, some remark that having zero kids from the Mountain zone on the rented team spots does not grow water polo in the zone but this is very shortsighted. Now every kid playing polo in Vegas knows that there is a very straightforward path to JO glory- just move to OC or Florida.
I don’t think there’s any allegations against Team Vegas. What happened, happened and facts are facts.
This was disorganized, if teams were set ahead of time that’s one thing, these rosters were put together last minute, maybe the black team was established. But the red was made up heavily of Crean Lutheran players and Northwood players who hadn’t played since HS season and had to get a usawp# just for this event…no practices, just a few scrimmages and bam, Let’s raw dog the most prestigious USAWP tournament, JO’s in the championship brackets and compete with the best in the country who had to actually qualify in their own zones to be there.
They were the sacrificial lambs of the Championship bracket.
In terms of kids moving to OC or Florida, It looks and sounds like that’s already the case. If there’s a Vegas Team made up of NO ONE from vegas, kinda says no one in Vegas wants to play through their “rental allocations”, that or water polo as a sport in MTN zone is not growing. We’ve seen some great talent coming out of MTN is that era coming to an end?
It was obviously my poor attempt at sarcasm. In the grand scheme of things, one or two back door entries to the Championship do not make a huge difference, even though I agree it is not fair.
I think the worst effect could be on Vegas kids but I know nothing about the club to have any firm opinion.
I quickly put together an overall club ranking based on finishes across the championship age groups, 12U through 18U, for boys, girls, and combined. I did not give additional credit for multiple teams from the same club in an age group, such as Blue and White teams.
I weighted the age groups as follows: 12U = 1x, 14U = 2x, 16U = 4x, and 18U = 6x. The top-finishing team in each category receives 48 points before applying the age-group multiplier. For example, the Dons 18U boys received 48 × 6 = 288 points.
I’m sure there are many other ways to weight the results, but this gives a simple way to compare overall club performance across age groups.
I think that this is firmly tongue in cheek. The joke is that to play for Vegas, you must live outside the mountain zone. Sad but true for their two 18UB Championship level teams. I’m with those who think USAWP has to put a stop to this. What is this doing for the MTN zone? Nothing good, is my guess.
One would think that, with some luck, Vegas water polo could be at a very respectable level, say almost Clovis- like. Henderson has good schools. LA/ Orange County is a reasonable drive away so it should not be a problem to enter good tournaments at SoCal…
Just as a historical reference, I replicated the same table for the 2016 JOs, a decade ago. It’s interesting to see the new top clubs that have emerged over the years, those that have been able to maintain their excellence, and those that have declined over time.
Very interesting. In looking at the top performers, as per the “performance score” graphic, not a single athlete on that list played for a team finishing in the top-5. Only one of them played for a team finishing in the top-10.
