The HWSA Board has made a few changes to the tournament format, Q-round seeding and tie-break rules, to take effect with the 2025 Homeschool World Series:
- “D3 direct” registration option: Returning Division III teams who finished 2nd or lower in the 2024 tournament have the option to register for “Division III direct” participation in the 2025 tournament. If they elect this option, the team would bypass pool play, and instead have a practice/warmup game on Opening Day vs. another team who chose this option.
- D3-direct teams would not have a path to the National Championship, but would be seeded at the bottom of Division III, in order of their previous D3 finish, when that bracket opens play on Tuesday.
- D3 teams choosing this option will play fewer games than teams registering for “full tournament” participation, and will therefore have a $200 credit on their team registration fee.
- If an even number of teams choose this option, each will be matched up with another team in the group for a warmup game on Opening Day.
- If an odd number of teams choose this option, we will coordinate across the teams to determine whether team(s) will play a double-header of warmup games on Opening day, play a single warmup game, or have field access for a team practice.
- Teams which did not compete in the previous year’s tournament, or which finished in 1st place in D3 or better, may submit a request to the HWSA Board to be considered for D3-direct participation.
- Q round seeding matchups: At the conclusion of pool play, two groups of 8 teams will be ranked separately, and the 8 Q-round matchup games will feature opponents drawn from each pool: A#1 seed vs. B#8 seed, A#2 vs. B#7 seed, etc. In this way we will ensure that teams from the same pool do not face each other in the Q-round.
- Seed ranking within each group will be calculated using the new seeding/tie-break criteria – see below.
- Q round group seeding & tie-breaker criteria: We are changing the seeding & tie-break criteria for the tournament to the following:
- team record
- head-to-head record
- game-capped* run differential
- runs allowed per inning
- runs scored per inning
- coin-flip.
* Note: The cap on run-differential is limited to +/- 10 runs per game (i.e. there is no seeding advantage gained by winning a game by more than 10 runs).
This criteria will be applied to all situations requiring seeding and tie-breaks in the tournament:
- 3-team pools ending pool play in a tie
- Qualifying “Q-round” seeds within each group
- Seeding Division III teams which played in pool play
- Determining final Division III finishes in round-robin formats