A5 Family Makes History at First-ever Southern Region Bid Tournament

 

The Southern Region has offered two divisions -- Power and Club -- in its Regional Championship Tournament for at least the past 15 years.  When they proposed bifurcating the Bid division from the Power division, I was an opponent, as I was under the impression that virtually all of the teams playing in the Power division would also want a bid to USAV Nationals.  But I was wrong, and I believe the three divisions -- Club, Power and Bid -- are here to stay.

 

The A5 organization has led the country in bids earned for 7 of the last 8 years, and it looks like the same will be the case this year.  We entered Regionals with 13 bids in hand (not including 14 Boys/Kip), and as of this writing we have added another 11 bids to our haul, for a total of 24. Moreover, we expect a few more bids to come our way through the reallocation and/or at-large selection process that will be ongoing this week and next. The World Record for our organization, by the way, is 24 bids - achieved in 2016

 

It is important to remember that only the best teams in the region were competing in the Bid division.  Thus, for example, A5 South's 13-JD team's 3rd place finish out of the 10 teams entered in the Bid tournament was in reality a third-place finish out of the 112 U13 teams in the region.  Pretty stout. Take a look at the region's make-up by age division:

• U12             86 teams
• U13           112 teams
• U14           195 teams
• U15           157 teams
• U16           155 teams
• U17           101 teams