Club 7s Teams, Pools Set for Coming Weekend
Club 7s Teams, Pools Set for Coming Weekend
The teams and pools are set for the USA Club 7s Championships, which is presented by the Washington Athletic Club and held at the Starfire Sports Center in Tukwila, Wash.
A tournament that is often a showcase for American collegiate players who are transitioning to club play, this tournament has a few changes, namely a bit of an invitational aspect because some teams are still swimming against the COVID tide. The tournament also has more than one bracket. This was so clubs could plan better, and in addition provided teams that maybe weren't as strong as they thought with something to play for.
Often a club that has aspirations for the summer and then suffers a couple of early setbacks might find numbers and interest slacking. But if that team has a Silver Cup to play for at Nationals, they might simply redirect their plans. That is what has been happening. In addition, often a club will have so many good players it can enter two teams to try for Nationals. The multi-bracket format allows for this.
So, in the future there might well be a Signes Cup (the top tier) for women and a Silver Cup for women also. However, this year there were only enough competing teams for the top tier, the Signes Cup. For the men, there are two tiers, with 16 playing for the Signes Cup and 14 for the Silver Cup.
Here is the list of teams:
| Women Signes Cup | Men Signes Cup | Men Silver Cup |
| ARPTC | Atlanta Old White | Belmont Shore II |
| Boston | Austin Huns | Beltway |
| Chicago Lions | Belmont Shore | Chuckanut Bay |
| Life West | Chicago Lions | Dallas Reds II |
| North Shore | Dallas Reds | Detroit Tradesmen |
| Northern Virginia | Denver Barbarians | Grand Prairie |
| Optimus | Life West | HTX |
| ORSU | Mystic River | OMBAC |
| Rocky Mountain Magic | NAV | Optimus |
| Santa Monica | Northern Virginia | Oregon Sharks |
| Scion | Oceanside | ORSU |
| Tempe | Old Blue NY | Santa Monica |
| Washington Athletic | Schuylkill River | Silicon Valley Ronin II |
| St. Louis Bombers | ||
| Washington Athletic Club | ||
| Westside Ronin |
The Women's Signes Cup and the Men's Silver Cup both have been formatted to have two pools of four and two pools of three.
After that, however, they will be formatted differently. For the Women, the top two teams of the three-team pools (Pools C and D) will play off (#1 vs #2), with the winners playing the #2 seeds from Pools A and B, and the losers playing the #1 seeds from those pools. From there it will be a straight quarterfinal-semifinal-final sequence. A similar seeding game will occur for the 3rd-place teams in the smaller pools.
For the men's Silver Cup, the 3rd-place teams from the smaller pools and the 3rd- and 4th-place teams from the larger pools split into two pools of three. Those pools will play round-robin and then the top teams will play for 25th, the 2nd-place teams for 27th, and the third-place teams for 29th.
