Wait, what? More holidays? Well, good news! In addition to a lot of couch time with family you see once a year, that also means another LA Throwback Free Beach Hat tourney. This will be the second annual Get Ho Ho HO! Free Beach Hat, and we look forward to seeing you out there on the Sunday after Christmas.

Registration is free until Friday Dec. 27. You can register here, but please do not register until/unless you’re fairly sure you will come (i.e. don’t register “just in case” you decide to come).

We’ll be playing 4×4 using a format of our own invention called megateam format, which we tried out at Workingman’s Disc and honed at Thanksthrowing, where it worked pretty well. In megateam format, each mega-team consists of two squads, a mixed squad and an open squad. When opponents play, they play two games simultaneously, a mixed game and an open game. Before each round, the team picks who plays on the mixed squad and who plays on the open squad in that round. This format allows everyone who wants to play mixed to have a chance to do so and everyone who wants to play open to do so, while maintaining appropriate gender balance in the mixed game and getting everyone enough playing time. No playing in both games at once, however. In each round you play in either the mixed game or the open game. Your team’s record is determined by what happens in BOTH games in each round. In mixed games there is a required 2/2 gender balance. In open games there is no mandated gender balance (so for example you could have 3/1 on one team and 4/0 on the other). For the final round, after pool play, the mixed and open teams combine back into a single megateam, and we play a mixed 5×5 game with a genzone. We are planning for each team to play 3 games to 13 and one game to 15 (last game of the day, the playoffs!).

As usual, we’ll have lined fields, scoreboards, water and ice, an orange juice press and oranges, a massage table where you can work your friends’ kinks out for them, some pizza or other food after the finals, and prizes for the winners, all on us (LA Throwback). Plus, Peet’s in the Marina is providing coffee, and Suja is providing cold-pressed juice!

Registration is free if you sign up here by Friday Dec. 27. If you don’t register by then, it’ll be $10, with the money going toward the pizza (or other food) we’ll be serving late in the day. If you pre-register and then can’t make it, please let us know…and, we have a favor to ask. Please do not register unless you are serious about coming and playing. We know it’s free up until the Friday before the tourney, but please don’t use this fact just to reserve a spot you aren’t pretty sure you’ll really use. This makes planning very difficult, and leads to a lot of last minute shuffling of players. If you’re not fairly certain you’ll make it, please hold off on registering until you’re pretty sure you will. Thanks!

This will be a random draw tourney but we will distribute players based on survey responses so overall team strength is as similar as possible (this never works perfectly, but a person can dream, right?). We use a random number generator to make the selections. Players will get an email the night before telling them which team they are on and letting them know their team color.

The event will be at the same location as our prior Free Beach Hats, on the beach just south of lifeguard station 28 and the Ashland Ave. bathrooms (i.e. at “South Beach Park”) in Venice (technically Santa Monica, but most people think of it as Venice). Please be there by 9:30 am so first games can start at 10:00 am. We’ll finish up around 3-4 pm.

Look forward to seeing you out there!