IFPA Women’s North American Championship Series Announcement
Now that the 2022 qualifying season has wrapped up, we would like to congratulate all players who participated in the inaugural IFPA Women’s North American Championship Series and to extend our thanks to the organizers who facilitated these events.
We also want to thank all of the organizers/tournament directors and players who provided feedback and suggestions about what worked well and what could be improved moving forward. Based on that feedback, we are introducing some changes for the 2023 qualifying season that we believe will improve the experience for organizers and participants.
Schedule: Feedback was split on whether it was more convenient or less convenient to hold WNACS events on the Sunday directly following NACS events. We recognize that this depends on the size and scope of the pinball community in each region, not to mention the geographical remoteness of available venues. For 2024, WNACS Day will be held on January 21st, which is the Sunday immediately following NACS Day. For people who are organizing in regions where this scheduling presents a challenge, please feel free to reach out to collaborate on potential approaches that can reduce the burden.
Qualification:
Qualifying for the IFPA Women’s North American Championship Series is based on results from any IFPA-endorsed tournament held throughout the year in each eligible state/province. Qualifiers will continue to be drawn from open events and women’s events in each state/province. A state must have 2 or more sanctioned women’s events in order to have a 16-player championship. In states/regions where there are fewer than 2 sanctioned women’s events, there will be an 8-player championship. There will not be “super states” that qualify for 24-player championships based on the total number of players and events held in a state/province for the 2023 qualifying season, but we are evaluating the concept for future implementation.
Beginning with the 2023 qualifying season, there will be a 20-event cap for each “side” of the standings (open/women’s). A player’s best 20 events on each side of the standings will count toward their standing.
All IFPA Women’s North American Championship Series events will be held on the same day. No player will be eligible to play in more than one WNACS event. We plan to have a Women’s North American Championship event that the championships funnel into, and will announce additional details as we have them.
Seeding:
We plan to simplify and automate the seeding process to make it more accessible to organizers/tournament directors and players and to avoid confusion. Our goal is to have a process and infrastructure that more closely resembles NACS. This includes automated seeding and public visibility into RSVPs so that there is increased transparency into which state/province players have declared intent to play in on the IFPA website.
Beginning with the 2023 qualifying season, the following changes to seeding will be enacted:
Qualifiers from the “women’s” side of the bracket will now receive the odd seeds in their respective competitions, and qualifiers from the “open” side of the bracket will receive the even seeds. The goal is to continue incentivizing participation in women’s events even as both types of events remain valuable for the player field.
Players will not be locked into a specific side of the rankings until all participants have been finalized. This will ensure that players who performed well in both open and women’s-only events are afforded the highest possible seed based on which competitors commit to attend.
When organizers/tournament directors have exhausted all potential qualifiers from one “side” of the qualifying standings, they may draw from qualified players on the other “side.” This is a change from the inaugural year, made with the goal of having a full bracket wherever possible. (Note: This applies only for the regions that are eligible for a 16-player championship. Regions without a sufficient number of women’s events will continue to draw 8 participants from the open rankings.)
Fees and Prizes:
The entry fee will stay at $20, to be distributed according to the same percentages as our inaugural year (40% to 1st place, 30% to 2nd place, 20% to 3rd place, and 10% to 4th place). However, any additional cash, goods, or services gathered by organizers can be distributed to competitors based on organizer discretion. Organizers with concerns about entry fees and/or cash prizes related to state or venue restrictions should reach out to the IFPA for guidance.
Communication:
In order to improve communication and to ensure that there is clarity among organizers and players about how WNACS tournaments should be run, the IFPA will provide a shared document that outlines the structure and rules of play well in advance of the tournament date. The goals are to (1) ensure that each tournament is run using the same rules/structure in each state and (2) to ensure that tournament directors feel supported and well informed in orchestrating their individual events.
The IFPA will also provide draft email language for tournament directors to send to players who have qualified/are close to the cutline for WNACS to help alleviate strain on organizers/tournament directors, as well as to ensure that players have the most up-to-date information.
While our primary means of communication will continue to be email and posts on the IFPA website (which automatically go out through our social media channels), we also recently introduced an IFPA Discord channel dedicated to women’s pinball. We believe that this will facilitate additional instantaneous communication among players and organizers and allow frequently asked questions to be crowdsourced to knowledgeable members of the community. Please note that while the IFPA Women’s Board is a part of the Discord server, we cannot guarantee we will see each and every post, so any communication that requires direct IFPA input should still be emailed to ifpawomen@gmail.com. Anyone who organizes or participates in women’s pinball events can join the Discord channel by joining the IFPA Discord Server and adding themselves to the ifpa-womens public channel.
Women’s State/Provincial Representatives:
Beginning this year, we are establishing a set of women’s state/provincial representatives. These representatives will work in concert with their state/provincial representatives to increase the awareness of competitive pinball and to facilitate the state/provincial women’s championships in their respective states. If you organized a women’s championship in this inaugural year, please let us know in the next few weeks whether you are interested in continuing as an IFPA women’s representative for your state/province.
