We will once again host both Open and Club Divisions. Open is the higher level and will be played in the AM wave (8am-2pm). Club will be played in the PM wave (3pm-9pm). Please select the division you would like to play.

The Competition Committee will be responsible for seeding the field of teams and will assign teams to Open or Club based on their results through the first week of May. If you are placed into one division and would prefer to play in the other division, please contact us and we will try to accommodate your preference.

This year we will again offer the following divisions:
18 Open - 32 teams (AM)
16 Open - 40 teams (AM)
14 Open - 24 teams (AM)
18 Club - 32 teams (PM)
16 Club - 40 teams (PM)
14 Club - 24 teams (PM)

Every year we receive more entries than we have capacity to accept. We expect this year will be the same. We will hold registration open until Jan. 15, 2010, when we will close registration for all divisions that are full. We will then select teams to accept based on the following criteria:

Strength of Field
Geographic Diversity
History of Attendance
Number of Teams per club

We will notify all teams whether they are accepted or not no later than January 31, 2010. All teams that are not accepted will be offered a spot on the wait list and we always have teams drop between February and May.

Registration is now open at www.signuptoplay.com.

Hotel Sponsors
Please contact our hotel sponsors to arrange for your stay. We have negotiated great rates at several hotels that help sponsor our tournament. Please visit the hotel page for more details and a link to each of our sponsor hotels.

Rental Car Discount
The Emerald City Classic has negotiated special discounts for rental cars and vans with Enterprise. Use Customer number 45c1113 and PIN# EME when you reserve online.

Mini-Volleyball Division
For the first time ever we hosted a demonstration tournament of Mini-Volleyball in 2009. This variation of volleyball was played on a court measuring 20' x 20' with the net height set at 5'-6". There were four players on at a time and the players rotated as soon as they sent the ball across the net. If there were players off the court, they rotated onto the court as their team sent the ball across the net. Play was initiated by the coaches alternating free balls to each side.

The biggest change to full-sized volleyball rules was to allow the players to catch the first two of three contacts in order to emphasize hitting and blocking, which there was plenty of. We played the first two sets to 15 with a deciding set to 7. Matches were scheduled every 20 minutes.

We ran two 3-team pools and then a single elimination bracket. We crowned a champion and had the entire tournament complete within 4 hours using just one court.

Congratulations to the winners of the mini-volleyball division, Team 1! This team consisted of Hannah Rehnfeldt, Krista Titus, Kayla Self, Samantha Drechsel, and Mikaela Mitchell.

If you have any questions regarding the Emerald City Classic tournament, please contact our the tournament director by email at ecc@wvba.org.