How do people feel about the movement in WGI to allow all Open and World guards to automatically advance to finals, while keeping A guards (1) out of finals and (2) out of regionals due to this rule?

Is it apporpriate to allow a guard to advance to finals without a qualifying score? Or am I misunderstanding WGi's rule of past years where it requires a score to advance and not a classification?

TO me this feels as if they are stepping all over A guards - from which Open and World guards feed and whic feed the circuits and WGI bu growing in skill and advancing (properly - not by bumping themselves just to make finals) into the next higher class.

Somethins just doesn't feel right about this decision.....anyone else with thoughts?

that does seem really unfair.i know if that happened to the guard at my school there would be alot of fighting.best of luck to u guys.

I can understand where you're coming from cause it doesn't seem like one group should be cut down while others are not. But like Ms. Nikki said...there are SO many A guards out now, especially since Champs are in San Diego this year, it would be nearly impossible time-wise to accomidate something like that. But I think that it helps to go through the groups and obviously pick the bests of the bests at regionals. Regionals help to determine championships. There's a pro and con side to it all...but it should be also understood that it's only being done to provide the best experiences to everyone performing. Just work as hard as u can..and the see what comes from it. Good luck to you all!!!

I'm going to have to go with WGI's decision on this. Yes it is unfair for WGI to allow all Open and World class groups to move on to finals regardless of score. Although in someways you can say WGI is giving them an added incentive for going to the regionals they go to because most of the Open and World groups do go to WGI Championships. In no way am I saying that A class groups who go to regionals don't go to Championships but so many of the A class groups who go to regionals don't go to Championships because of it's location.

This year we're lucky enough to have WGI be in California, but we all knew what that would mean in terms of Championship participation. Most of the California groups in the World and Open classes have been going to Championships consitently over the past couple of years. If you go to the WGI website and look at the groups registered in A class for Championships, it's a tremendous amount, and many groups are from California who are going for the first time.

By WGI limiting the number of A class groups in regionals (both pre-lims and finals) The really competitive A class groups have a better chance of seeing where they stand going into WGI Championships. Like cgmime32 said, the best of the best.

To shed some light:


Until this year the top 15 Scholastic A Class groups moved forward in Regionals, not sure how many IA class groups moved forward. Beginning this year for Regionals, both Independent and Scholastic A class groups must earn a score of 15 points below block to make finals, so just because you're an SA group who was 10th place you may not make finals because you didn't meet the mimimum score. Note that the block score increases as the season progresses. WGI Championships uses a different process for A class.

This is why regionals such as Hayward, Las Vegas, and Riverside capped the entries to 70 instead of 90, due to the amount of Open and World class groups that move on to finals.

Even though regionals set enough time during finals to accommodate all guards in open and world, there is often the case that a group does not achieve the minimum score to make finals, and are discluded. Open and world guards in most cases still have to achieve the minimum score for their class to compete in finals.

I think that, since there are so many A guards, that kind of measure needs to be taken. Finals really would last a long time. I think also if there were so many open and world guard they should make the same rule for them too but since there's not, it's just not needed.