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League News

IATC Round 1 2025

Registration and Information for Urban Axes' Round 1 Qualifiers!

2024 Round 1 graphic

Congratulations to our Urban axes league Members who have Qualified for

Round 1 of the 2025 International Axe Throwing Championship!

Through participation in Urban Axes leagues and IATF tournaments, many of our league members have qualified for Round 1 of the 2025 International Axe Throwing Championship! To find out if you've qualifed, you can check the official qualifiers list published yesterday by the IATF.

For those of you who are new to IATC qualification, IATC takes place in two stages: Round 1 on March 28-30th and Round 2 on June 14th & 15th. Round 1 takes place at your home venue and is open to everyone who met the necessary criteria during the past qualifying year, while Round 2 takes place in Toronto, ON, and features 256 competitors who have qualified for this year's tournament via the IATF Tournament Circuit or their Round 1 score.

NOTE: Please be 100% committed to competing in Round 2 in Toronto on June 14-15th before attempting to qualify in Round 1. Round 2 requires a second registration fee of $157.50, as well as the ability to cover your own lodging and travel. Know you can’t get time off from work? Please don’t throw. Round 2 spots are HIGHLY coveted and throwers that receive them need time to plan their trips. This makes it’s very difficult to replace competitors who dropout after receiving/accepting a Round 2 invite, so please don't keep someone else from going by competing for a spot you know you'll have to turn down.

REGISTRATION

To compete in the International Axe Throwing Championship, you must sign-up for and compete in Round 1 at your local venue between March 28-30th. Round 1 registration is open now, and Urban Axes throwers can register AND pay for Round 1 on our webpage, with no need to pay separately on the IATF's webpage. Click here and you’ll be taken to a landing page where you can choose your home venue. You can then select a heat from the available days and times and pay $45 for your registration.

We will add additional heats if all the time slots for a venue fill up, but please contact nathan@urbanaxes.com if you cannot attend any of the currently available timeslots. All Round 1 qualifiers must throw between Friday, March 28th and Sunday, March 30th (IATF mandated), but we will attempt to accommodate reasonable scheduling conflicts if possible.

You may throw Round 1 at another participating IATF venue if you are unable to attend Round 1 at your home venue or another Urban Axes location. If you need to throw Round 1 somewhere other than Urban Axes, you must register for Round 1 on the IATF’s website and declare you intend to throw Round 1 outside of your qualifying club. You’ll then be asked to indicate where you hope to throw so the IATF can alert the respective venue. You can also contact the venue directly to ask on what date(s) and time(s) they will be hosting Round 1, and please copy info@iatf.com and nathan@urbanaxes.com so they may help facilitate.

If you have already registered for Round 1 on the IATF's website but intend to throw at an Urban Axes venue, no worries! View the available Round 1 timeslots for your venue here, and then email nathan@urbanaxes.com with a copy of your IATF payment confirmation and your preferred timeslot. He will then add an Urban Axes Round 1 time slot reservation for you at no additional cost.

COMPETITION FORMAT

Round 1 of the Wilson Cup is a competition hosted at IATF member venues around the world. Qualifying players compete against each other in a unique match format consisting of 75 hatchet throws and 15 big axe throws. Round 1 will be scored using the updated Premier Rules, under which players have the opportunity to score a touch Clutch worth 5 pts or a Premier Clutch worth 7 pts each time Clutch is called.

Please arrive 30 minutes prior to your timeslot for check-in and warm-up throws. We will have a practice arena available only to those scheduled for the next heat. Heats will begin promptly at the scheduled time and should last around 30-45 minutes

Players are divided into heats of up to 4 players. Each player will start on one of 4 targets. They will begin by throwing 15 axes at one target. Players must throw for Clutch on the 5th, 10th and 15th (final) axe.

Following this set of 15 axes, all players will move one target to the right, with the player on the 4th target moving to the 1st target. They will then continue by throwing another set of 15 axes at this target, again, with the requirement to throw for Clutch on the 5th, 10th and 15th (final) axe.

Following this second set of 15 axes, all players will move one target to the right, with the player on the 4th target moving to the 1st target. They will repeat this process of throwing 15 axes and moving to the right until they have thrown 75 total axes.

Once the 75 hatchet throws are completed, each player will individually throw 15 Big Axes. Clutch is available on all 15 throws but is not mandated.

All scores will be recorded in AxeScores. Nevertheless, the throwers and scorekeepers should communicate the total score for each set of 15 axes and the 15 Big Axes to the players to ensure that each set of axes are recorded accurately. It is the responsibility of the throwers to ensure their scores are accurate.

FOLLOWING ROUND 1

Following Round 1, the players with the top scores from each participating IATF member organization will advance to Round 2 of the Wilson Cup, held in Toronto June 14-15th 2025.

Players are ranked in Round 1 by highest total score of the 75 hatchet throws. Ties are broken by the highest total score from the 15 Big Axe throws. Qualifying season averages from each player will be used to break any ties not decided by Big Axe score.

Players' tournament seed in Round 2 is also determined by their Round 1 score. This means the IATC Champion, Tournament Circuit Winners, and Regionals Winners must register and compete in Round 1 to be seeded in Round 2.

Invitations to Round 2 will begin on Thursday, April 3rd. Invitations are sent via email, and you must respond to the IATF promptly to either accept or decline your invitation after you receive it, as your spot will pass to the next thrower in the rankings if you decline.

Round 2 Spot Allocation

Round 2 will include 256 thowers, with spots awarded by the IATF through a combination of tournament winners and venue representation. 67 spots are reserved for winners on the Integrated Tournament Circuit (Grand Slams, Majors, Regionals), last year's IATC Champion, and the winner of Close But No Cigar 2025. Each IATF member organization that had a player qualify from their leagues is then guaranteed one spot for a total of 62 spots this year.

The remaining 127 spots are then divided among IATF members with qualifying players. The number of spots each member receives is based on the percentage of the total qualifying player-seasons their leagues made up. A player-season is one player in one season, i.e. the same player in three seasons will produce 3 player-seasons for the host member. So a member with 1,000 of the total 20,000 IATF player-seasons made up 5% of the total player seasons and would receive 5% of 148 spots, or 6 spots, in addition to the 1 guaranteed spot.

The IATF has published an approximate number of spots that will be allocated to each venue. Urban Axes has initially been allocated 18 spots, though this number will not be finalized until after Round 1 is completed. As such, this number could rise if other venues do not use all their allocated Round 2 spots. Though 18 spots is lower than in years past, it is due to an increase in the number of spots reserved for IATF tournament winners and IATF member organizations. 12 more spots were reserved for tournament winners than last year and 9 new IATF member organizations are participating, reducing the number of spots for allocation by 21.

Urban Axes chooses to follow the IATF's lead and allocate it's Round 2 spots proportionally to each of our 5 venues based on their percentage of our total league participation. As a result, each Urban Axes venue has its own pool of Round 2 spots for which to compete, and throwers will only be ranked against other throwers at the Urban Axes location in which they qualified. The current venue allocation is shown below:

2025 round 2 spot allocation

This allocation is preliminary and is based on the initial 18 spots provided to Urban Axes by the IATF. If we receive more Round 2 spots after Round 1, we will adjust this allocation accordingly and ensure any additional spots are awarded to each venue proportionally based on their percentage of our total league participation

The players with the top Round 1 scores at each Urban Axes venue will advance to Round 2 of the Wilson Cup. For example, the top 3 scores from Urban Axes Austin will advance to Round 2. If any player declines their invitation, it will pass to the next thrower in the ranking and so on until the Round 2 spot is claimed. If any venue exhausts its list of Round 1 competitors without filling its spots, those spots will go to the next highest Round 1 qualifier across all Urban Axes venues.

Urban Axes league members that qualified for Round 2 through the IATF Integrated Tournament Circuit are not included in their venue's allocated spots. Round 2 spots awarded via the Tournament Circuit are reserved separately, so these throwers will not be included in their venue's ranking and will not claim one of the 18 spots allocated to Urban Axes. Tournament Circuit and Regionals Winners must still register and compete in Round 1 though, as their Round 2 tournament seed is determined by their Round 1 performance.

IATC Round 2 2025, June 11-15

Round 2 of the International Axe Throwing Championship takes place in Toronto on June 14th & 15th. The IATF hosts multiple additional tournaments from June 11-13th leading up to IATC, including Big Axe, Doubles, women's, & average-capped tournaments. Click here to view the full schedule for IATC 2025 and purchase tickets when they go on sale.

  • THURSDAY, MARCH 13TH AT 6:00PM EST - 50% of all tournament registration (excluding Round 2 and Close But No Cigar) will be released. 50 Homecoming tickets be released.

  • THURSDAY, APRIL 3RD AT 6:00PM EST - All remaining ticket will be released, including Round 2 and Close But No Cigar. All Homecoming tickets will be released.

Only sign-up for Round 1 if you are willing and able to attend Round 2 of IATC in Toronto on June 14-15th. This event is intended to be the first round of the tournament, and it is difficult to notify those that qualify and finalize registrations in a timely manner if multiple competitors back out after qualifying. We understand that circumstances may change following Round 1, but please confirm you have the time, funds, and desire to compete in Toronto this June before you sign up to compete in Round 1. You can learn more about IATC 2025 here.