Pre-Regional Qualifiying Events

The regional tournaments will remain 16-entry draws in both singles and doubles. That's the same format as in previous years.

However, starting this fall, berths to the regional tournaments will no longer be distributed to conferences, but will be awarded based on pre-regional qualifying events.

So, what are these pre-regionals?

Basically, it's like the qualifying rounds at a major professional event, such as the US Open. Only, instead of taking a full week to play three or four rounds of qualifying, our pre-regional event is one round of play, with the winners advancing to the regional tournaments.

The pre-regional isn't a tournament ... it is one round of qualifying for the regionals. That's by design, as we did not want to obligate coaches, players, and parents to a third weekend of post-season individual play.

So, to summarize, there are three ways for a player (or doubles team) to get to the regional tournament.

• By being in a region with eight tennis-playing schools or fewer, in which case, every school will send two singles and two doubles directly to the regional tournament.
• By being seeded at the pre-regional highly enough to receive a bye, and thus, automatically qualifying for the regional tournament.
• By winning a pre-regional match

How will the pre-regional be conducted?

If a region has eight or fewer tennis-playing schools, then pre-regionals are not needed because the regional field is already at 16 or fewer entries.

If, however, the region has nine or more tennis-playing schools, then the pre-regionals are needed to reduce the field to sixteen.

Each region has been divided into two pre-regional pools, based primarily on geography and, to a lesser extent, conference assignment. Click here for the complete report of pre-regional assignments.

The pools in a given region are roughly equal in size, but not precisely so. If the number of schools in each pool is equal, then each pool will have eight berths in the regional to play for. If the number of schools is not equal, then the sixteen regional berths will be divided between the two pools on a proportional basis. 

On Saturday morning, October 4th, the pre-regional directors will conduct their seeding meetings online, using Zoom or Google Meet. At that meeting, the coaches will seed the pre-regional bracket, seeding one entry for each berth at stake. The unseeded players will be drawn, randomly, to play against the lowest seeded players, with the provision that no one will have to play a teammate. Players seeded highly enough to receive a bye will automatically advance to the regional, and do not have to attend the pre-regional event.

Then, on Monday, October 6th, at 4pm, the teams will gather at the pre-regional site, and the draw will be conducted. The players will play their matches using the state individual tournament format of best two-of-three sets, with the third set played in full, for both singles and doubles. The winners advance to the regional tournaments.

Click here for a white paper on how the regional berths will be calculated, and how the competition is to be conducted.

Who will be the event director and where will the event be held?

The NCHSAA has delegated the pre-regional phase to the NCHSTCA, so the coaches association is running this stage of the event.

For directors, we're looking for experienced coaches who are comfortable hosting an online video call. 

For hosts and sites, we're looking for places which have enough courts for the event to be played in no more than two sessions. We also want to use courts that are in good shape, and which have lights if needed.

We're currently in the process of identifying pre-regional directors and sites, and we're interested in your input. If you would like to volunteer to host or direct, (or both), or if you would like to recommend someone else for those roles, click on this Volunteer/Recommendation form.

Why the Change?

It's all about the realignment. Distributing berths to conferences works great when everyone is a conference of six to eight schools of the same classification, but that's not the world we're living in now.

With the new realignment, the vast majority of schools are in split conferences, with a small number of schools in a given classification.

Seventeen schools are all by themselves! Distributing berths by conference would mean those schools would only get one berth in singles and in doubles ... half of the team is eliminated from competition before a ball is struck, simply because of their geography and conference assignment.

When you have a small number of schools competing for a small number of berths, distortion creeps in. Players from two great teams find themselves fighting each other just to advance to the regionals, even though both sets of players are clearly among the elite compared to the region as a whole. 

And, the reverse happens, too, with players from weak teams advancing by beating someone from an even weaker squad.

Plus, the math associated with distributing berths by conference creates fractions that have to be rounded up or down, and sometimes results in a coin flip when there are, for instance, three conferences with the same number of schools, and only one or two berths left to award.

For all these reasons, the NCHSTCA recommended the pre-regional format, so that the first stage would consist of a larger pool of schools, competing for a large number of berths, making it more likely that the best players in each region will advance to the regional tournament.

The guiding principle was this: Every school, regardless of geography or conference assignment, gets to send two singles and two doubles entries to the first stage of the state championship, with a fair chance of advancing to regional and state tournaments.