The UKU Competition Structure

Ever wondered how all of the different tour events tie together or how they fit into the wider world of ultimate? Well using information that can be found on the UKU website I hope to shed some clarifying light on it.

The UKU Tour consists of three tournaments. Teams score ranking points according to their final position at a given tournament. The UKU Ranking is calculated from each team's total number of points. This ranking is used to determine the Tour winners. This year, UKU Nationals is the third and final round of the Tour.

As of this year, the UKU Tour and Nationals have been separated from the European Ultimate Championship Series (EUCS). The European Ultimate Championship Regionals (EUCR) and the Extended European Ultimate Chamionship Finals (xEUCF) will be run independently in August/September 2009. From 2010 there will be additional sectional events held in different regions of the UK with teams from those tournaments qualifying for EUCR-West.

Qualification to xEUCF 2009 has been taken from the Tour Rankings from 2008 in all divisions. Qualification to WUCC 2010 will be from both the winner of Nationals 2009 and the winner of Tour 2009 (unless the same team already qualified by winning Nationals) as well as the highest ranked UK team at xEUCF 2009 (unless that team already qualified by winning Nationals or the Tour)

Having read around a bit about the various European tournements, qualifications and the differences between, it has become clear that it is not clear.

In other sports, if one were to spend as much time playing as an Ultimate player does on average, you would be expected to know how the competition structure works and maybe even want to know. In football for example you may know how the FA Premier League, FA cup, Football League Cup, European Cup, UEFA Champions League, FIFA Club World Cup, UEFA Super Cup and the European Cup Winners Cup are all tied together and yet you don't spend as much time playing football as you do Ultimate.

In Ultimate we have the:
UKU Tour
Extended European Ultimate Championship Finals
European Ultimate Championship Series
European Ultimate Championship Regionals- West/Central East/South West/ North East
and that's just some of the European events...if you don't fancy checking out the links and having a read, I'll break them down and post about it in the near future.

So next in line is UKU Nationals 2009! Being held in Cardiff on the 7-9 August it is guarenteed to have some pretty good games up and down the tables. I'll be writing more about that next week and I'll also be giving you details about the much anticipated 2nd Ultimate Frisbee and I, Film and Photography Competition! Stay posted.