How will two courses at Regionals work?

We were just as excited as all of you when we heard the plan of two courses for Regionals this year! This immediately brought up the question of how to accomplish both courses in the same amount of time over the two weekends. We put a lot of thought on how to give the athletes and families the best experience by considering the following:

• • How much time in between the athlete runs, and finding the sweet spot of enough time but not too much time
  • Not sacrificing course length and time on the courses to fit both courses in
  • How much overall time to be at the competition
  • Fairness to all athletes by having every athlete perform the courses in the same order

What we came up with is outlined below. Every Athlete will be given a Wave start time for Course A, and Course B will follow after half the wave has completed Course A. We have the space in the gym to have both full-length courses fully set up to achieve this.

Example: Saturday, May 25th Preteens Wave #1 8am-11:45am – 30 athletes

• • 7:30am – Athlete Check-In
  • 8am – Course A Ref will ask the athletes and coaches if there are any questions on the walk-through rules video for Course A (Challenge format of longer course)
  • 8:20am – First Athlete will begin Course A
  • 9:30am – Half of the competitors (15 athletes for this example) will have run and move on to Course B. Those 15 athletes and coaches will then have the opportunity to ask the Course B Ref any questions they have on the walk-through rules video for Course B (Flow format of a speed course). The other 15 athletes will continue to run Course A until they have all completed it. *This time is approximate, but Course B will always follow once half of the wave completes Course A.
  • 9:45am – The first 15 Athletes will begin running Course B
  • 10:25am – The other 15 athletes will be done running Course A and move on to Course B. These 15 athletes and coaches will then have the opportunity to ask the Course B Ref any questions they have on the walk-through rules video for Course B
  • 10:40am – The other 15 athletes will begin running Course B
  • 11:45am – All of the athletes from Wave #1 will have completed Course B

Hopefully the schedule above meakes sense! We will be creating a video as well to help explain this since we know it’s different from any other competition format. Also, we are taking these additional steps to help the process run smoothly:

• • Large monitors to display the run orders for both courses
  • Large monitors to display the walk-through rules videos
  • White-board run orders to clearly show which athletes are in the first half of the wave and which athletes are considered the second half of the wave
  • A dedicated staff person to move the athletes from Course A to Course B to keep them organized

Below Information is per the WNL Website:

Run Order process for Regionals

Run orders at Regional Competitions will be determined by the total season points earned from each of an athlete’s best 12 competitions. Athletes will be sorted from lowest to highest by total season points from their best 12 competitions. In the event of a tie between two or more athletes, the athlete with the higher power score will be placed later in the run order.

Scoring and qualifications:

All Tier 1 Regionals will consist of two courses. Athletes will receive points based on their placements on each course (1st Place = 1 Point, 2nd Place = 2 Points, etc.) and the best combined score will win the Course Overall title – and the Regional Championship.

At the end of each Regional, 16 athletes (or the top 35%, whichever number is bigger) will qualify for the Tier 1 Championships in each division!

Below are the tentative start times of the waves. This will change according to the number of sign-ups in each age division.