The Gym Leaders have been busier than one-eyed cat watching two mouse holes. Gym Leader Joel hoped to post this last week, but could not get free time to do so. With that being said, it’s time to catch up on happenings at The Gym. Yesterday, we hosted a League Challenge in Fincastle, while three of our leaders were battling at a League Cup in Charlotte. Last Sunday (8/12), we had another first-time winner of a Gym Leader Challenge. Let’s get to the details. Continue reading
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We pointed out in an article on his first badge at the Fincastle Pokemon Gym how a trainer at our league, William W, was really diving into the TCG and trying to improve. Improve he most certainly has. At our Expanded Regional tournament in May, William picked up 3 wins in a format that was pretty foreign to what he is accustomed to playing. The only downside to his play at league (which is no fault of his) is that he has challenged Gym Leaders on Sundays that have been right in the middle of some very busy weeks for us. We have not had the time sit down a give a proper account of his last several challenges. We don’t have the numbers in front of us here in Berlin (yeah, I said Berlin… more on that later), but we know that during his last 4 or 5 attempts for badges, William earned 2 more wins. 
As most of you likely saw, Daniel S helped us hit the milestone of our 400th gym challenge completed at the Fincastle Pokemon Gym. We are already on the way to number 500, as we have two more down and a 3rd halfway completed. Those of you that have followed the Gym over the years know that Gym Leader Joel likes his statistics. We don’t know that the numbers we keep have any deep meaning. They do some show trends, such as which leader is tough to beat and which types are harder to take down. Some decks that were once hard to defend have become some of our best decks. Some, like the Dragon type deck, thanks to the random typing of many pokemon that 
with. The first responses to an internet search of “400” lead to explanations of the search error message, “HTTP – 400 Bad Request” (computer jargon informing you that your search ain’t happening). Beyond that, there were some hits on State Route 400 in Georgia and a leap year in medieval times. Gym Leader Marthe even suggested looking up #400 in the Pokedex and lo and behold… it was Bibarel. Really? Talk about a pokemon that’s hard to spin into something cool. I think the last good Bibarel cards was… never. So little to work with, yet the 400th challenge netted one lucky trainer the best gift that we’ve ever put together at the Gym. 
When it comes to the Fincastle Pokemon Gym’s gym leader challenges, there are two things that we promise to those who attempt them. The first is that we will not take it easy on you. We have never embraced the “trophies for everyone” mentality that has spoiled many once-competitive arenas. We take this approach because we know how truly competitive the real world is and have witnessed the effects of not expecting individuals to always put forth their best efforts. Now, with that being said, we know that Pokemon is a “kids” game and that it was created as a fun hobby. Whether you choose to play for fun or tackle the competitive side of the game is up to you. While open play at the Gym is for fun… gym leader challenges are a sound introduction to competitive play. The second promise is that win or lose, we will always help our trainers learn how to improve, if they so desire. Whether it is an improvement to a deck or to a 
As mentioned in our last post, we had quite the array of Gym Leader Challenges going on last Sunday. Gym Leader Marthe successfully defended her Lightning-type badge to start the day off. Gym Leader Logan, who arrived at league later after robotics practice, stepped immediately into a defense of the Water-type badge, which he also was successful in doing. Then there was Gym Leader Joel. When Joel’s day was done, he felt like he needed to call the fire department, as his Steel-type and then Grass-type decks were attacked by two well-built Fire-type decks. 
both about Sunday’s happening. The first is about a New Year’s resolution of sorts. For the majority of 2017, we adopted the schedule of hosting one TCG League Challenge and one VG Challenge each month. Gym Leader Joel thought it’d be a nice addition to post the results of those events to recognize the winners. So starting this week, we will do so. We won’t list descriptions of the matches, mostly because we can’t watch them all. However, for now, we will list the results. Our dream is to video tape both TCG & VG finals and Gym Leader Challenges and connect a YouTube channel to this site (which is not an issue of “how”, but an issue of finding the time to do so). For now, we’ll stick with listing the winners. Speaking of Gym Leader Challenges…. 
The Fincastle Gym Leaders were hoping that we could spark a little interest in our Gym Leader Challenges this past Sunday. That we did. We had a busy day fielding several attempts for badges. We also had several guests from our Lexington league join us, which made the afternoon extra cool. One of Lexington’s young trainers decided to jump into the fray and go after the Grass-type gym badge. We’re not sure who he surprised more, Gym Leader Joel or himself. 
As we have described many times before, the Gym Leader Challenge is a facet of the Fincastle Pokemon Gym that is exclusive to our league. We have single-type decks of each type in the TCG available to test your best decks against. The concept was born to follow the adventure that video game players experience while playing through the story mode of each edition of Pokemon video games. Gym Leader Joel has been brainstorming a bit about how to up the reward for whomever completes Gym Leader Challenge #400 at the Fincastle Pokemon Gym. We hit a new high at #300, where we supplied a fully built, competitive deck to the winner (Plasma Lugia EX). Knowing that we don’t have unlimited funds, we believe he has found a cool way to achieve that. 
perhaps skydiving isn’t for you…”, or “…, try doing what your teacher told you the first time…” or even, “… get a bigger hammer.” What’s lost in all of that wit and cleverness is that the original phrase, penned in the 1800’s by an author and educator named Thomas H Palmer, is perhaps one of the most concise descriptions of The American Dream. If you will it, dude, it is no dream. As you pursue your goals, you are bound to make mistakes and experience setbacks, often having to accept that you have to improve. You have to learn from your mistakes and keep trying until you either get it right or tire from trying and settle for something less. We at The Gym believe that basic principle, so eloquently wrapped up in a single quote, applies equally to any single desire. Whether it is something big like trying to save for a first car, or buying a home, or something small, like a child saving money for a toy, or a gift for a parent, the feeling of accomplishment is the same. The badge won this past Sunday may have been the hardest earned badge to date at the Gym. 