I’m working on the 12u Girls bracket, but it is going to be weird and almost certainly wrong. It is a 52-team bracket which likely means two groups of eight instead of two groups of six, but that is a guess. Only Baba knows what he’s going to do with it.
A quick correction for 14u girls. From last year’s finishes #31 Norcal is from PAC and not NEZ. PAC cannot fill this slot ( the zone’s allocations run out by that point) so there will be a shift. Also, #35(?) finish Rose Bowl A is from Coastal and not PAC. Likewise. Coastal has used its allocations so there will be another shift.
The longer answer is there are most often two classes, Championship and Classic, with Championship containing the platinum and gold divisions while Classic contains silver and bronze. Any team seeded anywhere in Championship can, in theory, win the top place in platinum or finish as the last team in gold. A team finishing in platinum or gold depends entirely on their play during the first day of JOs. A team in Championship that wins two games on day one of JOs will be in platinum. Teams in Championship that win only one or zero games on day one, will compete in gold.
Getting into Championship or Classic depends on how well the team plays in their zone JO Qualifiers on a scale of the number of seeds their zone received. If a team finishes as the fifth best team in a zone that has four Championship spots, then that fifth place team would fail to make Championship. If instead, the zone received six Championship spots, then the fifth place team would get into Championship.
Relative strength of the regions is not a factor in applying the allocations, as was recently discussed elsewhere on the forum allocations are based solely on USAWP membership numbers.
So whether those teams are “top ranked” or not might be incorrect. The SPA region might have more depth than other regions and less allocations so in your example Socal might be far better than any other team in Classic and see blowouts all the way through JOs gold.
This is my best guess at the 12u Girls Championship bracket, but it is a guess. I’ve never seen a 52-team Baba bracket. This bracket is based on the 50-team 12uB Classic bracket from Session 1 last year.
It is very unlikely that Socal 14u girls would have won the Gold division. I do not know what happened to the club on the girls side but it has definitely seen better days. Just look at Socal results at recent tournaments. At the San Diego Cup they lost all their games, in particular to PAC Premier 3:9 for the 23rd place. BTW, PAC Premier finished 11th at the Coastal JO Quals and will be seeded pretty low in Classic. This is not to say that Socal 14s do not have some good players- I am sure they do…
Bottom line. It is not often that teams from the big zones that are “ forced” to play in Classic would have a good chance of medalling in Gold. It does happen, just not as often as one might want to think
