Walpole Contends for Best HS Team in the World, Gets Snubbed

Laxpower.com: LaxPower is proud to introduce the National Online Lacrosse Tournament, the first-ever virtual national high school lacrosse championship. Sixty-four teams qualified for the 2009 NOLT, with the following schools receiving berths.

• The top-ranked team in each state* and the top team in the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council, according to LaxPower's final Power Rankings (PR) for the 2009 season
• The 24 highest-rated teams remaining in the country based on their final Power Rankings for the 2009 season, with any ties broken based on strength of schedule
  
• Winners will be determined based on votes from a panel of LaxPower experts and LaxPower's computer Power Rankings

Sounds like a pretty legit idea, I suppose. Assemble a national tournament of the best teams from around the country. Square 'em up and let one group call themselves the best team in the nation by some bushleague formula. Fine. But here's where it gets a little salty. Just two days after announcing the bracket, the first "games" were "played." Here's the results from Walpole vs. Ithaca, NY:

(8) Walpole Rebels (MA) 98.85
(9) Ithaca Little Red (NY) 98.79
1: Ithaca - Excellent game, but good goaltending and D wins out.
2: Ithaca - Strong leadership and goaltending allows the Little Red to advance.
3: Ithaca - The key to the postseason is good goalkeeping, so I give you A.J. Fiore.
4: Walpole - The Rebels have too much talent at both ends of the field
Computer: Walpole

So, to sum it up the three out of four analysts picked the Little Red to beat the Rebels. However, analyst number 4 (Eric Smith) works for Laxpower and is the only one covering the Northeast. So he is obviously more qualified to be "covering" this "game" than these other clowns. Walpole was also a higher seed by the computers because they were better, and the computer calculated Walpole would have won . So three schmos votes swayed this "game" when the expert and his highly intelligent machines were denied from was rightfully theirs.

To remind you, this was a simulated game, about 2 high schools, that really means absolutely nothing, and really involves no one reading this. But, it still is just one more reason that Walpole is still top dog around these parts for all of the haters. Because the likes of teams like Duxbury, Medfield, St. Johns, Reading, Marshfield, and all these other towns that get the pub didn't even come close to making it into the most important, fictional, meaningless, national tournament in the world.