Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 1/21/16
From Press Release
The inaugural I-95 Cup, a face-off team tournament involving four major Mid-Atlantic regions, will be held Feb. 13 at Maple Zone Sports Institute.
The event, co-hosted by the Philly Faceoff League and the Face-Off Academy, will feature Philly’s top face-off specialists vs. elite teams from Maryland/DC/Virginia, New York and New Jersey.
The I-95 Cup is not your ordinary face-off tournament. It’s the ultimate challenge to see which AREA of the country has the most talented face-off midfielders. The teams will feature its 10 top face-off specialists in an intense, never before seen style tournament.
Rosters for the tourney will be released next week.
The Philadelphia team was chosen by Philly Face-Off League co-founders John Bodnar and Mike Dolente and Mike Gurenlian of the Philly FOA.
Faceoff Academy directors Greg Gurenlian (New York), Chris Mattes (Maryland/DC/Virginia), and Jerry Ragonese (New Jersey) are the head coaches of their respective regions.
Greg Gurenlian – a Springfield-Delco and Penn State graduate who is a perennial MLL All-Star and the face-off specialist on the US National team – runs a daily face-off combine in New York City, Mattes runs his in Maryland, and Ragonese in New Jersey.
How is this tournament going to work?
Each team will have to play each other once in order to determine playoff seedings. When a matchup between two regions has started, it’s a 10 round best of 7 face-offs. At the start of each round, there will be a coin toss. The losing team has to send out their first face-off guy. This gives the other team the opportunity to see who they are sending, and the coach of that team will choose who will face him.
For example, New York is playing Philadelphia in the first round of the day. New York loses the coin toss and therefore has to send out their first face-off guy. Philadelphia sees who they are sending and sends out somebody who they feel is a strong favorite to win. Let’s say the New York player pulls the upset and wins his best of 7 with a score of 4-2. Because the NY player won, he is automatically awarded 3 extra points. Therefore the final score is 7-2. This score then gets reported to the scorekeeper, and Philly then has to send out its next player for the second matchup. Whoever loses that next matchup will have to send out the next player, and vice-versa until all 10 players have faced each other. Whatever team has the most points at the end of the 10 face-off battles wins.
This format continues until every team has played every team. After all 3 rounds, the total points that each team scored in every matchup will be counted and the team with the most points will be the #1 seed. In the playoffs, the #1 seed will play the #4 seed, and the #2 seed will play the #3. The winners will play in the championship and the losers will fight for 3rd place.
Again, this is NOT an individual tournament; it’s all about winning for your AREA. This is strictly bragging rights for a whole year until next years I-95 Cup!
For more information on trying out for the Philly Team please contact John Bodnar at phillyfaceoff@yahoo.com.