TOURNAMENT FORMAT
Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines! The road to the 2021 national fast pitch Wiffle®Ball title starts now.
The 2021 United Wiffle®Ball National Championship Tournament will follow a similar four-stage format to the 2020 event. Teams can once again speed ahead to the 3rd or 4th stage by performing well in the 1st stage and the middle stages again provide comeback opportunities for those who are slow to accelerate. The wrinkle is that this year, [limited] tournament performances prior to October’s big event and the top performances from last year’s tournament will factor into the 2021 NCT in a unique format that allows player & teams to take different but equitable paths to Sunday’s championship round!
STAGE #1:
ROUTE 1
Are you a wiffler that plays all year long but not with your NCT team until October? Is your team a veteran one and limited to just one or two tournaments per year? Then jump on Route 1!
The 32 at-large teams in the NCT - that is, every team other than the top four finishers from 2021 and the eight 2021 Linked Tournament winners - begin their journey here.
This round is very similar to last year’s Contender’s Bracket Round. Like last year, teams will be matched up with a team with the same record as they advance through this stage. The only difference from 2020 is that 1-2 teams and 2-1 teams will play an opponent the same record in a fourth prelim game.
Summary
3-0 teams (x4) - advance to Stage #4 on Sunday (Final 16)
3-1 teams (x6) - advance to Stage #3 (12 team, one-game elimination round to advance to the Final 16)
2-2 teams (x12) - advance to Stage #2 on Saturday evening (“second chance” 3-game pool play)
1-3 teams (x6) - ELIMINATED
0-3 teams (x4) - ELIMINATED
STAGE #2:
ROUTE 2
The top 4 teams from the 2020 NCT and the 8 beneficiaries of the 2021 Linked Tournaments will start their journey on Route 2. CLICK HERE TO LEARN HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN A 2021 LINKED TOURNAMENT.
Route 2 is no shorter than Route 1 - the minimum number of games needed to win the tournament is 7-games regardless. The 12 teams starting their tournament on Route 2 are joined by the 12 “2-2 “ teams from Route 1 that have gone a little off course and been forced to detour over. The 24 total teams will be split into 6 pre-slotted groups of 4-teams each, to play a 3-game pool play round. Each 4-team group will include 2 teams starting their tournament and a pair of 2-2 teams. The top 4 teams from 2020 will be put in four different groups.
The two Route 2 starters in each pool are grouped based on (1) geography (six northeast tournaments/teams, six non-northeast tournaments/teams) and (2) competitiveness of the linked tournament to balance the pools. The top 4 finishers from 2020 are considered the #1-#4 “seeds” and matched up with the lowest seed from the opposite geographic group.
The six pool winners will avoid having to go to the Bridge Round and will instead head straight to the Final 16/Championship Round. The six pool runners up will head to the Bridge Round where they’ll need to win a single elimination game in order to reach the Final 16.
TIEBREAKERS:
Route 2 (Pool Play) record
Total tournament losses (Route 1 + Route 2 losses)
Head to Head
Runs Allowed
Note: In a 3-way tie, tiebreakers are used to determine the Pool Play winner first. After getting the pool play winner, the tiebreakers start back at the top to determine the 2nd place team.
STAGE #3:
BRIDGE ROUND
This stage quite literally bridges together the two routes with every team’s hopeful destination point - the Final 16!
The 6 runners up (3-1 teams) from Route 1 and the 6 runners up (2nd place pool finishers) from Route 2 battle to see which 6 teams make it to the other side & the Final 16!
STAGE #4:
CHAMPIONSHIP BRACKET
All roads lead to to Sunday’s Championship bracket!
There are no second chances here. This is a 16-team single elimination round that ends with the crowing of the 2021 fast pitch national championship team! The 16 teams that make it to this point of the journey will have earned it and you can rest assure that every game in this round will be highly-contested. The team left standing after this four-game stage will live in infamy as a fast pitch national Wiffle®Ball champion.
The top 10 teams (four 3-0 Route 1 teams + six Route 2 pool play winners) will be re-seeded based on records (3-0, 2-1, 5-2, 4-3) starting with the 4-3 teams (if any) as the lowest seeds (i.e. 10th seed) and working down to the 3-0 group. When there is more than one team with the same record, teams are randomly drawn within record group (i.e. if all ten teams have 3-0 records, those teams will be randomly drawn into the #1 - #10 spots).