The Central Zone Invitational runs 23-24 January 2027, a Saturday and Sunday, at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis. Play is in Exhibit Hall A-K, the venue forecasts 20,000 attendees, the hosts are Capitol Sports Center and Circle City Volleyball, and the divisions cover 11s to 18s.
Entry is $600 a team
Registration opened 15 September at noon EST through OttoEvent. The entry fee is $600, payable with a completed entry form by 11/01/2026. No refunds are given after 1 November or after a division fills, whichever comes first. The organiser expects divisions to close well before that date, so four teams commits $2,400 before a room is booked. USAV, JVA and AAU teams may enter.
Rosters close Thursday, check-in is Friday night only
Rosters must be complete in AES by Thursday 21 January 2027. Check-in runs 3:00 to 9:00 PM on Friday 22 January at the Convention Center in Hall F. All teams must be checked in before playing, and the organiser publishes no late check-in on Saturday morning, so Friday is a travel day by rule. Group and multi-team check-in is preferred.
Housing is part of the entry
This event runs under the Tournament Advantage Program, TAP. Every out-of-town team must reserve through the designated housing company, Integrated Tournament Solutions, and a booking made directly with a hotel does not count toward the participation requirement. The event page carries the badge 5 rooms / 60 mi, the room ratio and commuter distance published for this weekend.
TAP publishes its exemptions. Commuters inside the posted distance qualify on proof of distance, and military, government-rate and qualifying loyalty-point bookings may qualify. A full-team exemption needs advance written approval from the Tournament Director.
One rooming list, one attribution per room
Housing opened 1 September at 9 AM Eastern at the ITS event page. The route is event, then hotel, then club, team and affiliation, so that every room in the block is attributed to the correct team. Teams can hold a block or book individually.
The fee is a flat $12 per reservation, non-refundable, and does not change with the length of stay. Seven parent bookings across two nights cost $84, where one club block reservation costs $12. The housing desk answers on (800) 476-0060, extension 118.
TAP also guarantees the rate. A lower publicly available rate for comparable room types must be removed, or the whole group block cut to match, within 48 hours.
What the block looks like, and how fast it is moving
The block lists 107 properties, with event rates from $115 a night. Published downtown rates for the 23-24 January window include Holiday Inn Indianapolis Downtown at $139 for a king, Staybridge Suites Downtown at $147, Tru by Hilton Downtown at $167, Westin Indianapolis at $172 for a double/double, Hyatt Regency at $180 and JW Marriott at $197.
An availability flag sits beside each rate. On 22 September 2026 every room row but two read "None left": Conrad Hilton Downtown Indianapolis at $312 with 30 rooms left, and Signia by Hilton's Club Signia Suites at $583 with 6 rooms left. The page carried a sold-out label on 104 of its 107 properties, and closed properties offer a waitlist.
Read the live page on the day you book. Four months out, the downtown block is picked over, and the fortnight stays tight. The venue forecasts 1,500 for a Youth Rally and Mass Service on 20 January, then 2,000 for the Dot Foods national business meeting on 27-29 January and 8,250 more across the gymnastics, sales and royal-weekend events closing the month. Nothing else shares the 23rd and 24th at the venue.
Two nights, and the arithmetic on one squad
The block's default window is the single night of 23 January, and an extra night, the 22nd, can be added when you book subject to availability. A full stay is Friday 22 and Saturday 23 January, checking out Sunday 24.
Twelve athletes and two coaches, fourteen people in seven double-occupancy rooms across two nights, is 14 room-nights: $2,408 at the Westin's published $172 double/double and $2,086 at Holiday Inn Downtown's $149 queen/queen. Four to a room brings it to four rooms and eight room-nights, $1,376 at $172. With entry, the weekend is $3,008 in rooms and registration at the Westin rate, before travel.
The Sunday return cannot be fixed yet
Play runs Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 January. The organiser's start-times tab lists 8 AM for the Open divisions, 8 or 11 AM for the Premier divisions, and a 2:30 PM line with no division named, and the schedule carries no closing time for either day. A 2:30 PM Sunday start rules out an early afternoon departure, so book the room nights, hold the Sunday flight until the schedule lands, and treat Friday evening in Hall F as the fixed point of the weekend.
Downtown, on foot
The Convention Center publishes 7,100 downtown rooms, 4,700 of them skywalk-connected, 200 restaurants within walking distance and 15 minutes to the airport. The block puts Hyatt Regency at 0.0 miles from the venue, Embassy Suites Downtown at 0.1, and Signia by Hilton, Omni Severin, Tru by Hilton and Holiday Inn Express Downtown City Centre at 0.2.
Four questions to put in writing with the request
No source publishes the bed configuration your squad will be given, the breakfast opening hour, coach and trailer parking with its charge, or a single-floor policy. Ask all four with the block request, rooming list attached.
bookMyTeam publishes 103,857 hotels across 46 states, one request to 50 or more hotels per destination, responses within 24 to 72 hours, group rates 15 to 40 percent below rack rates and no fee to submit. Those are the platform's own figures. Price the block rate against them, and read the $12 per reservation fee into the difference.
