This week is the final week of the Fall Session for all Open 8 Ball and 9 Ball divisions. The playoffs will take place over the next two weeks after that, taking us to the Christmas and New Year’s holiday break. The playoff structure is based on division size and below is how those playoffs break down. Please read this entire newsletter for important league news!
Divisions of 5 teams will feature 1st place in the standings hosting the wild card and 2nd hosting 3rd. The two winners in the first week of playoffs will square off against each other in week 2 at the highest ranked team’s host location for the playoff championships.
Divisions of 6 to 11 teams will feature 2nd place hosting the wild card and 3rd hosting 4th. The two winners from that match up will play the following week at the highest ranked team’s location for the playoff championships. The 1st place team in the standings gets an automatic berth into the Blast and is declared the Division Champion.
Divisions of 12 to 16 teams have two separate playoff brackets. The 1st place in the standings is automatically advanced to the Blast and is the Division Champion. In playoff bracket #1, 2nd place hosts Wild Card #1 and 4th place hosts 6th place. In playoff bracket #2, 3rd place hosts Wild Card #2 and 5th place hosts 7th place. The two remaining teams in each playoff bracket play each other the following week at the highest ranked team’s location in each bracket to be declared the Playoff Champions.
Every division playoff has a wild card and every team that didn’t earn a playoff spot is eligible for the wild card draw provided they meet all of the eligibility requirements. Those requirements are that they are in good standing with the league office, have no more than 5 individual no show forfeits on their team for the session, are all caught up on league dues and all required matches have been played. The wild card draw takes place in the league office the day we post the playoff schedules to the web site. Those dates are December 6th for Sunday and Monday divisions, December 7th for Tuesday divisions and December 10th for Wednesday and Thursday divisions. Please do not call prior to the posting of playoff schedules with questions regarding your team’s standings. If you have concerns about the accuracy of the standings once they are posted, please do not hesitate to contact us.
In the event of ties in division standings, we use the APA team manual tie breaking procedures to break all ties. The standings listed on the web site don’t always list the correct order for teams that are tied. The tie breaking procedures can be found on page 41 of the APA team manual.
All Division Champions and Playoff Champions will be advanced to the Fall Session Blast, which will take place at the Hungry Stick on the weekend of January 26-27.
If the message “Your team has not registered for the next session” is still printing on your score sheet, it is because you have not informed us of your intentions for the Spring Session. Please take a moment to announce to us your intentions so that we can get a head start on the schedules for the upcoming Spring Session. For those of you playing in in-house divisions, we highly recommend you get your team registered so that you don’t lose your spot in these usually full divisions.
The Spring Session will begin on the week of January 6th. For those of you that miss out on the playoffs this time, have a safe and happy holiday season and we look forward to seeing you in 2013. The Spring Session is the last chance to qualify for the 2013 APA National Team Championships.
Starting in 2013, APA will start mailing out every APA member’s membership cards through the mail rather than through the APA team packets. The 2013 membership card will more closely resemble a plastic credit card. While yearly membership dues are still required to stay active as a member, these plastic cards will likely only be issued once every 5 years. There are bigger and better plans being made with these new plastic cards, so we look forward to your feedback. Members can already pay membership dues for 2013 through member services, but only through member services.
Because these new membership cards are being mailed to you, it is extremely important that you have all of your address information completely up to date with the APA. You can go online and update it yourself through member services or you can update it through us with a phone call or email. APA DOES NOT HAVE MAIL FORWARDED if you are no longer at the address. It gets returned to APA. So please update your info as soon as possible. APA’s web site address is www.poolplayers.com. All captains are urged to share this newsletter with all of their league members so that they don’t miss out on this important news. There will be a Playoff Captain’s Log in next week’s packets with all the special stuff you need to know about playoffs. Good luck and Happy Holidays! Thanks for another great year of APA. We are proud of our league and all of its members and we hope you all feel the same way about us!
Shoot Pool Good!