The 2014 PACE National Scholastic Championship, to be held on May 24 and 25 at the Hyatt Regency Reston in the Washington, DC metro area, is now seeking standby teams.
Teams with standby status must commit to showing up to the tournament and being ready to play if a registered team fails to appear on Saturday morning for any reason. Standby teams play on an as-needed basis for no charge. Standby teams are responsible for arranging and paying for all of their own costs associated with attending the tournament, including travel and lodging, just as if they were regular teams in the field. The recompense for being a standby team is the possibility of playing the tournament for free, and does not entitle any team to any reimbursement from PACE for its attendance expenses. There is no guarantee that any spots will open for standby teams to play.
Teams applying for standby status need not have qualified for the 2014 NSC, and may be B-teams, C-teams, etc. of teams already in the field. However, all members of any such standby team must plan to be in Reston on the morning of May 24th regardless of whether they get to play.
To apply for standby status, please fill out the Google form at this link [note that this is DIFFERENT from the original registration form]. In the event that spots do open up, PACE reserves discretion in selecting which standby teams fill the vacancies, though barring extreme circumstances it will do so in a first-come, first-served order based on the time at which teams filled out the form.
The list of teams with standby status is not the same as the official wait list for entry into the tournament. An announcement about the wait list policy for the 2014 NSC will be coming shortly, if and when PACE receives payment from the 96th team and the official field closes. Teams on the official wait list may also apply to be standby teams. We will be maintaining both lists on our website on the “Registered Teams” tab, along with the list of registered teams proper.
For further questions about the standby team process, please contact PACE VP of Outreach, Matt Jackson, at outreach@pace-nsc.org.