<< NOT SO FAST!! Irmo, James Island, New Orleans Jesuit, Vanguard, Bellaire, Manheim Twp, and State College are just a few of the teams who attend Chip's tournaments. This sounds like jealousy to me. . . >> << As for the basketball analogy, etc., you still don't get it. If we had found out about your tournament prior to NAC, we probably would attend. But we didn't. Thus, since we are happy with NAC, I see no reason to defect. >> Actually, IIRC, Loyola Academy was signed up to compete at the 1998 PACE NSC, but I know you had to withdraw because of bad timing. Anyway, you still have the option of competing at PACE NSC or NAQT HSCT this year in addition to competing at Chip's. It's not a zero-sum game; many programs will play at more than one national. As for Chip: State College didn't compete at Chip's last year; whether they return this year is up to them. Vanguard plays because they can't get funding to go to any of the other nationals other than Lake Forest from their sponsors; the sponsor has intimated to me that he is not really that pleased with competing there, despite how well his team does. Irmo and James Island and Dorman all do play at Chip's, but over the years they haven't played as many good teams from the DC area which according to KMO data are better as a whole during that tournament. New Orleans Jesuit doesn't play outside the state of Louisiana, so it's very difficult to gauge their talent (other than every time they get beat by my alma mater Caddo Parish Magnet). Look at all the former champions of Chip's tournament that don't return: Eleanor Roosevelt, Houston Memorial, Torrey Pines, and Edison (as of this year from my own sources). If you don't even have your returning champions give positive recommendations to other teams to attend Chip's NAC, that doesn't give me a good feeling about it. On the other hand, you can see the field we had for the first two PACE NSC tournaments. And most of the coaches will tell you the fields for both tournaments were perhaps the most competitive fields ever held for a national tournament. And they'll probably tell you the tournament format was perhaps the most grueling ever conceived. :) And I don't need to go into that much detail about alumni of Chip's programs and the majority opinion about his tournament. The distribution of teams geographically that attend Chip's tournament, I absolutely concede is much more national than PACE NSC or NAQT HSCT, but not so much as Lake Forest. Lake Forest has arguably a better field from 1-16 than Chip's does on the basis of talent and competitiveness (or it has in recent years). Believe me, while part of me would enjoy running a monstrous field of 100+ teams and split up into three different weekends, I actually don't want PACE NSC to be that big.
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