8.0 over 40 Mixed Nationals - You Wont' Believe This One

I'm a little late on this one but I was trying to do some behind the scenes research.  Didn't get many insights but its a crazy story nonetheless. 

Texas was represented by Fort Worth at this national event.  However, as some of you already know, Fort Worth didn't actually win sectionals.  Dallas won it.  There were some intervening grievances filed with the DTA and Fort Worth ended up representing Texas.  I'm sure someone could probably write a book on what happened on the court and off regarding the grievances and the subsequent rulings, but I don't know enough to really address it.  Luckily, I have no doubt that several anons will be able to shed some light on what happened.  If anything I've heard about the grievances is true, that part of the story is actually relevant to the nationals story.  So what happened?

Fort Worth heads out to Nationals and wins its flight.  And it was a really tough flight.  As has been a pattern this year, Texas was in with Caribbean again.  They also had NorCal, Midwest and Northern.  Having two tough teams and the five team flight, FW still managed to get through at 4-0 (10-2).  However, the other three flights were showing advancing teams that were all undefeated and just as dominant. 

The semis pitted FW (10-2) against Florida (8-1) and also saw SoCal (7-2) against Mid-Atlantic (8-1).  As you may know by now, FW lost to Florida 3-0 - swept.  For me, that was hard to imagine.  Granted, all three lines went to third set tie breakers so it couldn't have been any closer but I never imagined this team could be swept.  The other half had SoCal defeating Mid-Atlantic 2-1.  Then FW played the 3 versus 4 match and lost again.  It's true that many people can tell you how hard nationals really can be, and some years are tougher than others, but this had to be an extremely tough year.

If your thing is to get on here and disparage individual players (I'd suggest you might want to take up a new recreational hobby), you'll at least have to look up the individual results yourself.  But the story does get stranger.  I guess this is a new thing, or at least I've never heard of it before, but guess who won the sportsmanship award?  Yes, Fort Worth did.  As I understand it, this is voted on during the course of flight play and awarded late Saturday.  But it is voted on by the players at Nationals. 

And here's where you guys or girls will have to help me out on the background, but if I understand it correctly the grievances were based on unsportsmanlike conduct and winning too much.  I'm sure there's more to it, feel free to fill in the blanks.  But with that back drop, somebody lost twice and was on the team awarded the sportsmanship trophy by their fellow competitors.  You're making this stuff up, right? 

I win enough and lose enough that those aren't my biggest issues.  But when I heard FW won the sportsmanship trophy I nearly fell over laughing.  Not because I felt them undeserving, I'm sure they're very nice people and isn't FW always nicer than Dallas anyway.  But to see this saga come full circle was too ironic to almost believe.