USA Badminton has announced new structure for Junior tournaments which will be implemented from 2017 - 2018 season (July 2017). The structure was first announced here on 8/25/2016. There was a modification made on 11/10/16. After that, USAB seeked further feedback and after reviewing the feedback, modified the structure. They published this structure here on 1/24/2017.

Please sign this petition to show support for USAB to implement the new structure from 2017 - 2018 season. To sign this petition, you must be 18 years or above. Below are some of the advantages of the new structure when compared to the current structure. New structure might not be the perfect one, but it is better than the structure we currently have. We can continue to work with USAB to make the new structure even better.

• New structure makes the ranking more fair and more realistic. Play-up points stay up. Eg: If a U13 player plays up in U17 in one tournament, those points will be in the player’s U17 bucket and won’t be counted in U13 when the player plays U13 in a tournament. This makes the ranking system and the draws more realistic. This ranking system is also more streamlined, more simple and in-line with BWF ranking system
• Consolation draws are optional. This gives regions and the tournament hosts the flexibility they need. If many players sign up for a tournament, the referee can increase the event cap and remove the consolation draw. This will allow a lot more new and upcoming players to get in to USAB tournaments. If sign-ups are not too many, tournaments can still have consolation draws
• Ranking points from only the best 4 tournaments will be counted. Top ranked players may only play 4 tournaments in a season if they wish to and can focus on their training. New and upcoming players can play more than 4 tournaments if they want to.
• New and upcoming players will have more tournaments that they can play now. Current structure has only 3 Super Regionals. New structure has 1 CRC and 6 ORC’s which a player can play. In addition, each region has 2 OLC’s of 10% each. This is another 12 tournaments that they can play if they wish to.
• New and upcoming players are guaranteed to get in to CRC tournament as this tournament doesn’t have any event caps. Since cons is optional in ORCs also, new players have more chance to get into ORCs as draw sizes will be bigger.
• Smaller clubs which have 8 courts or so, can also now host bigger tournaments since consolation draw is now optional
• Introduces the concept of regional champions via the introduction of CRC tournaments.
• Increases the significance of Junior Nationals by distinguishing itself from rest of the tournaments. Junior nationals will be 100% weightage vs the 40% weight of CRC and ORC tournaments. This is a 60% difference. In the current system the difference between a JN (100%) and a SR (70%) was only 30%.