All throwers will have until April 5th to declare as Advanced or Amateur via their App profiles. Once Season 2 begins on April 6th, NO DIVISION CHANGES CAN BE MADE. The designation must be made before the season starts, NOT before the first game that you play of the season!
Division Changes
With 2024 bringing the new divisions and ruleset, we wanted to give all throwers the opportunity to test out which division would work best for them. To do this, we are allowing division changes between Season 1 and Season 2 of 2024. Once a designation is made for Season 2 (before April 6th),self-select division changes will be closed for the remainder of the year and all division change requests will go through WATL directly. Should a division change be approved, ALL Circuit Points, bids, invites, or entries that were related to the original level are forfeited immediately. Should you switch back to the original designation in the future, those points/bids/etc will NOT be reinstated.
After the 2024 Season 4 has completed self-selection will be available again. Throwers will be required to declare their designation before the start of the 2025 Season 1 and will be locked in for the remainder of the qualifying year.
Once a designation is locked in:
- Throwers cannot move from Amateur to Advanced during an active season for ANY reason.
- Throwers may request to move from Advanced to Amateur during an active season and WATL will review the requests on a case-by-case basis.
- Throwers can request to move divisions between seasons and WATL will review requests on a case-by-case basis.
- If you throw 2 or more seasons as an Advanced thrower, you can request to switch to Amateur but you will not be able to compete in the current year’s Amateur Championship.
- If you are an Amateur thrower who wants to try out the Advanced rules, you do not have to declare Advanced in the App to throw the Advanced ruleset
- Amateur throwers may participate in Open tournaments under the Advanced rules but Advanced throwers cannot participate in Amateur tournaments
All division changes must go through the official Change Request form linked below. This form is also linked on our Qualifying & Tournament Circuit and the Resource pages.
Advanced vs. Amateur Divisions
Hatchet throwers have the choice of competing as Advanced or Amateur throwers. The only difference between the Advanced and Amateur divisions is the distance at which competitors throw the second half of the match. Advanced throwers (or those competing in Open Division* tournaments) must throw the second half of the match from 15’. Advanced throwers may ONLY compete in Open division tournaments.
*Tier 3 tournaments are not required to have a separate Amateur division. If there is no division split, the Open division follows Amateur rules and there is no requirement to throw from 15’.
Read more about the Tournament Circuit here: https://worldaxethrowingleague.com/qualifying-tournament-circuit/
How do I choose?
All players default to Amateur status in the WATL scoring app. Players must manually update their player profile to Advanced if they wish to compete under that ruleset. Once set, the division will not change unless a request is submitted to switch. More information on change requests can be found at the end of this post.
Should you choose Amateur or Advanced?
You should declare Advanced if:
- You are seeking to compete in the World Championship (throwing Advanced is the easiest road to qualification).
- You want to challenge yourself on the ruleset thrown by the “Pros”.
- You find switching distances to be a more fun version of the game.
You should declare Amateur if:
- You want the ability to throw in Amateur-only tournaments.
- You enjoy the sport and competition but aren’t quite comfortable with learning a new distance/throw at this point.
- You want to hone your skills against similar throwers before switching.
- You want to try out 15’ in league to see your scores before making the switch.
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