Again I don't completely disagree. Academic Decathlon is replete with state directors and national directors giving away divisional titles based on school size as well as the "feel good" medals to students based on GPA range. I admit that it's all great feel-good substitutions, but all that matters is that you win the last trophy of the night for the national championship. The rest doesn't matter (except for scholarships). A tournament win to me is a tournament win, regardless of what tournament it is. Gaining experience in pressure situations in game situations is going to be important later on when the same pressures arise again at the nationals. It's better to learn that if the younger kids have opportunities to gain that experience in these invitationals in the first place... so that they can develop into better players down the road and perhaps have the bravado to say they can shoot down the consensus #1 team at a national. But put them in situations to gain confidence. Short of that, reaching whatever goals you set is the way to eventually get that competitive drive. Sure, if the goal is to win a national championship, you have to set your preparation up to meet that challenge and consider all the side titles as distractions. But some programs actually take solace in meeting their goals to be best Div 1 undergrad or Div 2, for whatever reasons we have. But just because some of us have those reasons doesn't mean that we are any less desiring to win it all. But realistically only a handful of teams have the talent and the experience to do it; parity has not struck qb to the point that a Depauw B (for example's sake, sorry) can realistically say they can beat the top Michigan team. What I don't want is to develop such a cutthroat atmosphere than anything short of winning the big title means the entire season was a failure. That attitude breeds the unsportsmanlike attitudes that I've seen in many competitions and leads to burn-out and team fragmentation (if others don't agree with your goals). Back to Decathlon, a team that won second place a few years ago left their second place trophy at their awards banquet table. Now this team has been in the top 3 for each of the last 12 years in a field that consists of around 25-35 teams. To say the least the other teams that have never broken into the top 5 could not understand why such a prize would be so taken for granted and go unappreciated. They also failed to shake hands with the team that did beat them (by only 100 points out of a possible 60,000 max) and showed no honest sportsmanship at all when it came to the awards. If they all broke down and cried in anguish, that would be one thing and it would be understandable, but to just "turn their backs" on the winning team as they did... that's not what is going to expand the game. (I won't mention how they're also snide, petty winners either, but I will say none of you can even compare with their attitude.) Winning can be everything or even the only thing to some people; that's fine... but it's not like we're going to be rewarded with scholarship money if we win any of the nationals. Most of us do this for fun. Yes, we like to win, and we want to win all the marbles. But some of us have to deal with what talent we have and develop them with what tools we have. In the end, only one team can win it all; let's make sure that when that one team wins, we're all happy for everyone from the top to the bottom teams. That's what makes tournaments fun and makes this game worth playing.
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