North Central Regionals Preview

By Justice Feelgood Marshall, Last updated Thu Sep 17 2009 2:40am

ST. PAUL, MN -- The four weeks of WFTDA Regionals continue up North this Friday, September 18, as the Minnesota Rollergirls host the second event in the cycle, the North Central tournament -- a/k/a the Brawl of America.

After years of a binary East / West structure, WFTDA has split into four regions, meaning it'll take four tournaments to determine who goes to November's Nationals this year. 10 teams from each region will go to the tourneys this year, as opposed to the 12 from last year. In another change from previous years, only the top three will advance to Nationals -- in 2007 and 2008, the final four from each region went. This has the effect of making the third place bout much more meaningful, as only the winner will get a trip to the final showdown in Philly.

In this ten-team structure, the 7 through 10 seeds will have to play an extra bout at the beginning. The winners of those bouts proceed to the eight-team quarterfinals. Only the teams that win in the quarterfinals and advance to the final four remain alive for a possible Nationals slot -- the teams that advance to their regional championship bout are guaranteed to go, while the teams that lose in the final four get one more chance in the third-place game. While there are consolation games for all teams to determine a comprehensive 1-10 by the end of the tournament, any team that loses its first bout is definitely out of Nationals, and the 7-10 seeds must win their first two games to stay in the hunt.

For a visual bracket with start times and consolation games, see the official Brawl of America website. All start times in this preview are Central.

Tournament debuts for a significant number of rapidly improving teams and closely matched teams make the North Central picture particularly intriguing.