What is a showcase game?
Games on first night btwn top teams that don’t count in terms of ultimate results.
Why have them? More opportunity to be “seen”?
ODP consists more of scrimmages than an actual tournament, and there is a significant difference in strength between the top six teams and the bottom six. Instead of matching the top seed against the bottom seed, the showcase games create a more competitive first day for the top teams. The overall goal is for USAWP national team coaches to select players for NTSC/National Team. Since those players, by definition, come from the top teams, having more scrimmages among the top teams provides a better setup to differentiate the top players.
In reality, USAWP national team coaches at the Cadet and especially the Youth level already know who they are going to select (90%+) before the first game even starts. They are already familiar with most of the top players from the high school season, JOs, prior pipeline events, and more. The ODP National Championship is primarily about solidifying and refining the list.
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Coastal Blue beat Central Red by 1, so always room for surprises!
PAC Red beat PSW Red 11:6, as expected. PSW Red is a decent team, of course. They beat PAC Blue by 3 but there was no way they could beat PAC Red 
Effectively semifinals this morning in Dev and Youth:
Development: CST Red v CEN Red and SPA Red v Pac Red
Cadet: Likely final SPA Red v PAC Red, 3rd place PSW Red v CST Red
Youth: PAC Red v CEN Red and SPA Red v CST Red
Youth: Central Red punched their ticket into the finals after an overtime win over PAC Red
Development: Coastal Red is headed to the finals after beating Central Red 10-6
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Cadet is as I expected.
SPA RED beat PAC Red 12-8 for Gold
PSW RED beat CST Red 15-9 for Bronze. It was 10-0 @ Halftime.
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Put some respect on the name! That PSW cadet squad came out on a mission and 9 different scorers contributed to the win. Great team effort.
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Below are the finishing places of Girls ODP zones over the past three years with an indicator showing recent improvement.
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What’s up with development pac red and psw blue
Nice to see NEZ growing
Seems like a reasonable way to forecast ODP results. What did it predict for the medal games?
I think the final score CST v PSW cadet was 14-9, not 14-6. But yes it was 10-0 at the half.
Joe,
I am not surprised that you view PAC Dev Red results over the last three years (2nd, 3rd, and 3rd) as a steep decline. By the same metric, Sopac Dev Red stagnation (1st, 1st, and 1st) is also very concerning, right?
Cheers
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Props to Jeff on the call of CEN Red winning Youth!
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Youth Championship game had so much to offer, fun watch hopefully GOLS will post it soon for replay.
CEN came out and jumped on this game (unlike the Fri night battle between these teams where SPA came out hot). In the third quarter SPA came back to tie the game, then taking the lead 12-9 in the 4th. CEN then had to come back again to win 14-13.
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In some ways, it’s hard to assess whether there is really a true decline or improvement. There has been a recent trend of the top players opting out of participation and bypassing the process. This year there were many top/National Youth team girls who did not participate in the program because “they did not need to”. This provides other girls with the opportunity to experience ODP nationals, but it can - and did - make some teams weaker, which may have likely compromised their results. For those teams who allowed or could convince their top players to participate, they enjoyed the benefits of a stronger team and potentially better results. Perhaps the results would be the same if everyone participated, but I don’t think the information above is a complete picture of overall zone improvement.
In this, I could not agree more. It is this year’s results with a some brief historical context to show movement. The hows and whys are missing entirely, but it is a good place to start.