Scobel Wiggins Photography

The Emerald City Classic has historically been the strongest tournament, for both the Men's and Women's divisions, in the world (outside of the UPA Series). Started by Josh Monaghan of Sockeye and Sara GR of Riot, the ECC organizers have catered to the top teams, creating small, round-robin tournaments with long rounds, high quality games, and great fields for every team. Patagonia has been the tournament title sponsor in the past (not sure if they were this year).

While the 'title' of strongest tournament was arguably passed back and forth between Labor Day (in Santa Cruz) and ECC in several of those years in one division or another, it is clear that Labor Day has risen to the forefront this year as World's in Vancouver prevented the formation of the Men's tournament and limited the number of teams that were willing to travel for the Women's division (this is the first year that I can remember with no East Coast teams). This is totally understandable...the question is, rather: Will ECC regain it's status next year, or fade out as tournaments like Chesapeake, Colorado Cup, and Labor Day siphon away the top teams and their precious traveling dollars?

2002 saw the beginning of the demise of the Kleinmann Eruption in Portland as a top Open/Women's tournament on the West Coast [due to Worlds in Hawaii on the same weekend]. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, especially if someone (the UPA, some other party) attempt to investigate a 'regular season' format. This idea was tossed around in UPA strategic planning, and most brainstorms seemed to include a series of tournaments like ECC/Labor Day in which top teams competed for points and an eventual champion overall, before the normal UPA Series.