At every school, the captain and vice-captain of the School Team were generally the two strongest members. Otherwise, the other team members would not accept them.
Liu Bin continued, "Luckily, Senior Xu Ying and Senior Lin Shanshan didn't leave. Otherwise, our school's strength would have collapsed all at once."
Wang Yichang agreed, "Indeed. Xu Ying and Lin Shanshan had already become core members of the School Team during the latter part of last semester."
"If they hadn't lacked a little experience, they wouldn't have stopped at the quarterfinals of the City League."
Liu Bin said regretfully, "It was a shame that we were just one step away in the last City League. If we hadn't misjudged things, we wouldn't have lost."
Jiang Jing had also heard about what Liu Bin was talking about. He often heard people discuss it; that incident had truly remained a sore spot for the school.
The Main Tournament of the Rongcheng City League was divided into two stages: the Preliminary Tournament and the Second Round. The Preliminary Tournament determined which eight of the thirty-two middle schools would advance to the Second Round.
However, Rongcheng had as many as seventy-four middle schools, including both public and private schools.
The strength of the Trainers at those schools varied greatly as well. It would have been far too time-consuming if every school had to compete against every other school.
Therefore, the officials established a Qualifying Tournament before the Main Tournament of the Rongcheng City League. Schools wishing to participate in the Main Tournament had to earn enough points in the Qualifying Tournament.
Those points could only be earned by winning matches.
For example, if the minimum requirement for qualifying was twenty points, then each of the seventy-four schools had to compete against the other seventy-three schools until they