Competition, compassion and cooperation

I won’t go so far as to say I’m surprised to see kindness in the world, but I’m certainly encouraged when I see it, especially in places where it’s not expected.

I’ve written before about my children’s involvement in Pokémon and perhaps even about my oldest son’s goal to go to the World Championships this coming summer. He’s decided he wants to go–he has no delusions about winning, but he would love to just experience the whole thing for himself.

But to do that requires the accumulation of a certain number of points, earned through success in varying levels of tournaments. The lowest level is a League Challenge, which is a formal competition at the local club. The number of points earned isn’t high, and you can only count your best six finishes toward your final total. A first place win in a league challenge is worth 15 points, and you can only count six, for a best total of 90 points. My son’s been doing okay there, having accumulated 82 points thus far (there may be a few more chances to improve on some of those lower point wins).

The next level up is City Championships. You can count a total of four, but each of those is worth up to 50 points. If he were to win four tournaments he’d have well over the 250 points required to qualify for Worlds in his age group. And there have been 8-10 championships around the region. Piece of cake, he thought.

Not so much.

What we noticed pretty quickly was that while a few of the local faces may change from venue to venue, there are three or four other committed players who show up to every tournament. And at least two of those can beat my son a majority of the time. One has placed fourth nationally before. For the first half of the City tournament “season” the best Walter could manage was third or fourth. And unfortunately the number of places that get points depends on how many show up for the tournament. Many of the tournaments lacked the numbers for anyone other than first and second to get points. And no matter what, Walter could never seem to break into the top two.

He got frustrated. He kept changing he deck, trying to find a better combination. He nearly gave up on his goal for this year (those consistent top-two finishers will move up to the next age group next year). But he realized that whether he actually made it or not, he should keep going to the tournaments so he could get more practice playing against that level of competition. And he found surprising support from the very people who were beating him week after week. After one particularly frustrating tournament the usual first-place winner took him aside and told him about his own experiences and how he’d nearly given up himself. He encouraged my son to keep going.

The fact is none of these regular players are jerks. They’re good kids, and good sports. But we had no idea just how good they could be yet.

By the time we got down to the last two tournaments The Other Three all had their invitations to the World Championships. Walter still only had two third-place wins under his belt and still over a hundred more points to pick up (one of his wins somehow got eaten by the computer and we’re still trying to resolve it).  Yes, there are still upcoming state and regional championships, but there’s no guarantee those would go any better for him. He’s good, but perhaps not good enough to rank high enough to get the rest of the points he’d need.

Then on his next-to-last tournament he got a couple good breaks and took first place. Suddenly he was back in the running. There was still a chance.

We went to the last City Championship we could attend last Saturday. He got off to a good start, winning his first match in the qualification rounds. But then he went up against one of The Other Three in the second round. He won his third match to go 2-1, but his fourth match was against another of The Other Three who was 3-0 and the only undefeated player at that point. Then came an unexpected kindness. That player conceded to Walter so they could both be 3-1 and guaranteed slots in the finals. And once he was in the finals he was guaranteed at least some points (they had enough players this time). That was a big relief.

For the first round of the finals, however, he was paired against the third of The Other Three, whom he has never beaten. Oh well, them’s the breaks, I figured. At least he got more points. But then that player conceded to Walter, too. He already had his invitation, and one more opportunity to get more points the next day (we avoid matches on Sunday), so he decided to let Walter advance and get even more points. Walter ultimately lost in the final round (close games, though!) and took second over-all. But now, even if they don’t resolve the mystery of the missing points, he stands a good chance of picking up the last 20-30 points at State and Regional Championships.

Neither of the boys that helped him were being encouraged to be kind by their parents–at least not that I could see. They were certainly under no obligation to be nice. But evidently they feel a certain camaraderie with the other regular competitors and want to see each other get their chances, too. The same player that conceded to Walter in the finals evidently also conceded to one of The Other Three in their qualifying match to make sure he got into the finals, too.

I afterwards went up to the boy that conceded to Walter in the finals, thanked him for his generosity, and told him he was a good guy. That’s the first time I’ve seen him smile in eight tournaments. I take it teens don’t get many compliments from adults.

I hope my son is paying attention, and I’m fairly sure he is. Next year he will be one of the two remaining of the Top Four in his age group, and he’ll likely have opportunities to pay it forward. I’m looking forward to seeing him rise to the occasion after the good examples that have been set for him.