2019 National Tournament: Cornell University

[SOPomo]

If a Churchill type team is that strong, shouldn't they win their state? Otherwise, you have someone like Kennedy winning. It might be easier to have a team like Daniel Wright or Solon compete in the west and also compete in the east, so that teams can compare. This lessens the cost for more teams, but there's less comparison. I think that the idea of competing with higher level teams on a more regular basis would improve your team greatly. Maybe a good idea would be that you go to more invitationals in NorCal. As for the other competitions out west in Washington or Colorado, I think that California is a really competitive state, and going to those invitationals will definitely make you better, but I'm not sure if it would make your team good enough to beat Kennedy or Churchill.

Churchill normally did win their state until Kennedy got better than them. That doesn't mean they've been anything less than a top-5 nationals team, but nobody will get to see that but us as long as Kennedy is the best in the nation and we only get one team. There's a reason that Solon and Community got so many 1st place votes, they've been more visible over there on the east coast.

As for the 'compete in more invites' comment, we went to six this year including hosting our own for the first time, that Kennedy and Churchill both came to. The only ones we went to that didn't have 3+ of Kennedy, Churchill, Miller, Kraemer, and Jeffrey Trail was Christensen (not allowed) and Ukiah (strikes and ski weeks messed with several team schedules).

Our goal isn't to be as competitive as Kennedy or Churchill, as we don't have the coaching or the student buy-in on the kind of time it would take. But at the same time, it's nice to hear your school's name called a few times, and that doesn't always happen with that many big guns (and their B teams) in attendance. That's why it would be fun for us to get outta the state, see what a less competitive area would be like. It'd be fun for Churchill/Kennedy/Kraemer for another reason, because they'd get a nice benchmark on the competition before Nationals if they went to one of the big east coast ones. That's where money becomes an issue for those teams, though. They don't have a 'me' fundraising for them. I put almost $6,000 in award money into ours this year so that every student with a top-five finish also got a $10-20 GC at Amazon. I didn't have to do that.

[SOPomo]

I think the question becomes, can you have a successful season without making nationals? For me, the answer is yes, you just have to set different competitive goals for your team. Most frequently, this takes the form of benchmarks at state tournaments, like "be top 10", but I'm intrigued by the idea of a team making one long trip to an invitational and treating that almost like a "nationals" trip, because then you can see how you measure up against teams from other areas. So, for example, a California team could go up to one of Washington's invitationals, or something in the middle of the country, like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, or Missouri. I would recommend Texas as well, but most of their major invitationals seem to be very early in the season, which might not be useful for these sorts of purposes.

Ya for us we've always really considered it a successful season, especially this year winning trophies at a couple (less attended) invites and having multiple state medalists, and our high school team qualifying for states in their first full season. We're just not at a level that the top ten in CA are, which is fine with me.

I'm just curious as a coach where we would be in another state, since every invite we go to in CA (six this year, and we skipped one or two possibilities) has several teams that could get top ten at nationals (Kennedy and Kraemer alone were at most of the six, and then you can add in Churchill, Miller, Jeffrey Trail, at least). In a state with three or four teams that places in the high 50s at Nationals, we would probably win, but what about a mid-range Nationals team? Maybe I'll get my answer this year.

[TheCrazyChemist]

If a Churchill type team is that strong, shouldn't they win their state? Otherwise, you have someone like Kennedy winning. It might be easier to have a team like Daniel Wright or Solon compete in the west and also compete in the east, so that teams can compare. This lessens the cost for more teams, but there's less comparison. I think that the idea of competing with higher level teams on a more regular basis would improve your team greatly. Maybe a good idea would be that you go to more invitationals in NorCal. As for the other competitions out west in Washington or Colorado, I think that California is a really competitive state, and going to those invitationals will definitely make you better, but I'm not sure if it would make your team good enough to beat Kennedy or Churchill.

Churchill normally did win their state until Kennedy got better than them. That doesn't mean they've been anything less than a top-5 nationals team, but nobody will get to see that but us as long as Kennedy is the best in the nation and we only get one team.

I think that you're bringing up the nats bid discussion again. Other states understand that California is really competitive and there are many teams that deserve to go, but NSO is more interested in preserving the diversity of each state rather than letting the national tournament be taken over by several very good teams from very competitive states. So unless NSO changes their interests, then the bids from California will not be changing. But Churchill could make an appearance on the national stage if they get better than Kennedy (and then have the potential to win the whole thing) or if Kennedy gets dramatically worse, in which case Churchill will go to nationals and show everybody how good they are.

Sidenote: There a lot of teams who are very good and could perform very well on the national level who can't go because of the bid rule. Examples are: SSA and Bay Academy. These are just off the top of my head and not necessarily the only ones.

[NSCDS3RdCaptain]

Agreed. Coming from IL B, one team that deserves to go (if they get a bit more consistency) is Woodland. They got a 204 at IL State compared to Marie Murphy's 111 and Daniel Wright's 84. They also bombed Roller Coaster (getting 44) and presumably bombed Battery Buggy (getting 30). Note: I am not from Woodlawn, so I am not sure if they bombed these events or if these were just their weak events.

[Name]

Agreed. Coming from IL B, one team that deserves to go (if they get a bit more consistency) is Woodland. They got a 204 at IL State compared to Marie Murphy's 111 and Daniel Wright's 84. They also bombed Roller Coaster (getting 44) and presumably bombed Battery Buggy (getting 30). Note: I am not from Woodlawn, so I am not sure if they bombed these events or if these were just their weak events.

That's still a pretty massive gap between MM and Woodlawn, and isn't even made up for even if they took first in roller and buggy.

[builderguy135]

Agreed. Coming from IL B, one team that deserves to go (if they get a bit more consistency) is Woodland. They got a 204 at IL State compared to Marie Murphy's 111 and Daniel Wright's 84. They also bombed Roller Coaster (getting 44) and presumably bombed Battery Buggy (getting 30). Note: I am not from Woodlawn, so I am not sure if they bombed these events or if these were just their weak events.

That's still a pretty massive gap between MM and Woodlawn, and isn't even made up for even if they took first in roller and buggy.

Agreed, bombs just happen and either 1) make them more consistent (which is completely possible with more work put in) or 2) make the other events better to "make up" for those bombs

bombs happen to everyone and just because a team is 100 points away even with bombs doesn't make them any more deserving to the teams who get screwed over because of the nats bid system lol

[sciolyperson1]

Agreed. Coming from IL B, one team that deserves to go (if they get a bit more consistency) is Woodland. They got a 204 at IL State compared to Marie Murphy's 111 and Daniel Wright's 84. They also bombed Roller Coaster (getting 44) and presumably bombed Battery Buggy (getting 30). Note: I am not from Woodlawn, so I am not sure if they bombed these events or if these were just their weak events.

111 and 204 is quite a large gap... even for a competitive state like Illinois.

[NSCDS3RdCaptain]

I wanted to clarify what I was trying to say. I can see how you thought that I meant that I meant that I thought Woodland was deserving this year, and I should have tried to make my post clearer. What I was trying to say was that I think that Woodland can pretty much be neck and neck with Marie Murphy next season. They are a new team, and they have been improving rapidly (reference their wiki page https://scioly.org/wiki/index.php/Woodl ... dle_School). They first qualified for state in the 2017-2018 season, and they got 16th at state and first in Division A (see the IL wiki page https://scioly.org/wiki/index.php/Illinois). In the 2018-2019 season, they were moved to Division AA and got 3rd overall (93 pts behind Marie Murphy and 120 pts behind Daniel Wright). This is an INSANE accomplishment for a school in its second year at state! I go to a school that has gone to state for 21 years and has never gotten higher than 4th. I think that they will keep improving at an astounding rate and could possibly be as good (or better) than Marie Murphy. However, I perfectly understand if you disagree with me, and my predictions have turned out to be MASSIVELY wrong before. Note: I do not go to Woodland.

[dholdgreve]

It's hard for a lot of teams to come east because of how expensive it is, the 7 hour flight from cali, the time difference, just for an invitational - especially if the team needs to spend a lot of money to go to nationals the same year.
Those difficulties apply to East Coast teams as well. It's still the same amount of time for a flight to California. The time gets shifted back, which can also be difficult, and the expenses apply to East Coast teams as well. (Also, maybe this is just me, but last time I went to California, everything there was more expensive than the East Coast's variant.

It's something I've considered doing with my team. We're a middle-third NorCal B team, but I honestly don't know what that means compared to other states so I always toy with the idea of fundraising enough to go to another state that's a middle-third Nats competitor and getting away from all these CA powerhouses for a tournament. Awards can sound pretty monotonous at times when it's "Miller, Kraemer, Churchill, Kennedy, and a B team of those four for 5th place" and so I'd like to see somewhere else. Washington placed 17th this year, Colorado 27th... maybe there's an invite there we could make. The Vegas one is only C this coming year. I don't think it'd be much more than the multi-day charter bus / Six Flags trip we do to SoCal each year.

Anyway, I agree that most schools don't have a powerhouse fundraiser like me working their teams. Would be nice to see more cross country competition. If for no other reason than because SO will never let a 3rd team go from a state so nobody gets to see just how strong a Churchill type team really is except for us Californians.

Pomo,
If you are looking for some relatively stiff competition outside your home state, save up a little $ and head to Dayton Ohio, home of the Centerville B & C Invitational. It is the level of Nationals or above.

[TheCrazyChemist]

It's hard for a lot of teams to come east because of how expensive it is, the 7 hour flight from cali, the time difference, just for an invitational - especially if the team needs to spend a lot of money to go to nationals the same year.
Those difficulties apply to East Coast teams as well. It's still the same amount of time for a flight to California. The time gets shifted back, which can also be difficult, and the expenses apply to East Coast teams as well. (Also, maybe this is just me, but last time I went to California, everything there was more expensive than the East Coast's variant.

It's something I've considered doing with my team. We're a middle-third NorCal B team, but I honestly don't know what that means compared to other states so I always toy with the idea of fundraising enough to go to another state that's a middle-third Nats competitor and getting away from all these CA powerhouses for a tournament. Awards can sound pretty monotonous at times when it's "Miller, Kraemer, Churchill, Kennedy, and a B team of those four for 5th place" and so I'd like to see somewhere else. Washington placed 17th this year, Colorado 27th... maybe there's an invite there we could make. The Vegas one is only C this coming year. I don't think it'd be much more than the multi-day charter bus / Six Flags trip we do to SoCal each year.

Anyway, I agree that most schools don't have a powerhouse fundraiser like me working their teams. Would be nice to see more cross country competition. If for no other reason than because SO will never let a 3rd team go from a state so nobody gets to see just how strong a Churchill type team really is except for us Californians.

Pomo,
If you are looking for some relatively stiff competition outside your home state, save up a little $ and head to Dayton Ohio, home of the Centerville B & C Invitational. It is the level of Nationals or above.

Rustin is also pretty competitive, although it's farther than Ohio. Its usually where most of the competitive northeastern teams go as well as lower tier northeastern teams.