NationStates

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This, too, is happening.
(I've asked Cass and she's perfectly fine with me doing this... another understatement.)

Commend Cassadaigua
A resolution to recognise outstanding contribution by a nation or region.

Category: Commendation

Nominee: Cassadaigua

Proposed by: Tinhampton

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THE SECURITY COUNCIL:

INTRODUCING [nation=Cassadaigua] as the only nation to have won all of the following five major single-sport competitions:

• the football World Cup (WC) at its 50th and 51st editions;
• the World Baseball Classic (WBC) at its 14th, 16th, 19th and 50th editions;
• the gridiron World Bowl at its 8th, 22nd and 40th editions;
• the International Basketball Championships (IBC) at their 13th edition; and
• the World Cup of Hockey (i.e. ice hockey) at its 11th and 39th editions;

RECALLING that, while neither the first or the last to have done so, Cassadaigua remains one of the most successful nations to have fielded all-female teams in international competition (most notably their seven victorious squads in the WC, WBC and IBC); especially given its excellent yet ongoing progress towards achieving gender equality in a matriarchal framework, which has been spurred largely by a long-running non-violent movement known as Male Equality Now;

AWARE that many of Cassadaigua's iconic sportswomen continue to inspire women and girls everywhere to this day, including but by no means limited to:

• Courtney Ferguson, who captained the Cassadagan football team from their debut in 30th Baptism of Fire until their group stage exit at the 45th WC - delivering leadership without which Cassadaigua may well have been a nondescript and much-forgotten sporting nation - before serving as Nethertopia's assistant manager as they came third at the 51st WC;
• Jessica Schanke, a quietly confident player whose winning goal in the final of the 51st WC consolidated her reputation as perhaps Cassadaigua's best striker in their early years of success;
• Rachel Schanke, Jessica's granddaughter, who has captained the national football team since the 86th WC - where she scored three in their epic semifinal defeat to Nephara - and remains one of Cassadaigua's most prolific players of recent times;
• Hannah Ranucci, who started for Cassadaigua after its return from a years-long absence from football at the 78th WC, took over the captaincy before the start of the 81st and remained dangerous in front of goal until her retirement after the 84th WC; and
• Stacie Houston, who not only won the 7th series of the NSSCRA (the multiverse's leading stock car racing championship), but also established an eponymous Foundation which seeks to provide essential and targeted support for people with disabilities of all ages;

APPLAUDING the tireless work not only of the Concord Heights Times' journalists (Chelsea Dufresne foremost among them in recent years) but also, on many occasions, the blogs of many Cassadagan sportspeople themselves for helping to deliver to the multiverse unabashedly opinionated yet highly informative tales of Cassadaigua's triumphs, tragedies, successes and failures since time immemorial;

RECOGNISING that Cassadaigua has successfully organised many enjoyable and well-run sporting events, most prominently:

• an astonishing six WBCs - second only to Newmanistan - with almost no outside help whatsoever: the 18th, 26th, 40th, 43rd, 45th and 50th;
• four WCs: the 54th (co-hosted with The Babbage Islands), 67th (with Equestrian States, now known as Equestria), 84th (with the Commonwealth of Baker Park) and 88th (with Chromatika);
• three Cups of Harmony, for the best football teams to have missed out on the WC: the 57th, 73rd (both co-hosted with Equestria) and 79th (with Northwest Kalactin); as well as
• hosting and helping interested nations sign up for the 9th Volleyball World Expo by themselves in 2020 - a tournament which had not been held in three years but which is now consistently being run for the first time since 2011-12;

NOTING that dedicated and reliable Cassadagan administrators have also served as:

• World Cup Committee Vice-President from the 55th to the 57th and then from the 61st to the 63rd WCs; where they oversaw host votes involving bids from the Presidents' home countries in each term, thus helping to prevent conflicts of interest that could have damaged trust in the Committee; and then
• WBC Council President from the 44th to the 46th and then from the 50th to the 52nd WBCs; where they distributed WBC signup forms, organised host votes, oversaw the induction of nations into the WBC's Council and Hall of Fame, and established an official World Baseball Classic mission for continuity purposes; and

OBSERVING that the multidisciplinary excellence of Cassadaigua, although matched by few (if any) in the sporting world, is respected by almost all nations which are aware of their contributions to international sports, and should similarly be appreciated by this august body:

HEREBY COMMENDS [nation=Cassadaigua].

Reserved post is reserved

Who?

Apatosaurus wrote:Who?

Cassadaigua. Did you read the proposal?

I think I'd like to see more from this nominee in terms of tangible achievements in sports RP, if there are any, and perhaps more elaboration in the "Noting" and "Recognising" clauses, but they seem plenty commendable for me. I like the trend of commending nations for things the SC finds...unorthodox.

Apatosaurus wrote:Who?

You definitely haven't been in the NS Sport community. Perhaps you should ask regulars there about them to know more.

Outer Sparta wrote:

Apatosaurus wrote:Who?

You definitely haven't been in the NS Sport community. Perhaps you should ask regulars there about them to know more.

Yeah that was mostly a joke but I'm not an NS sports person :p

Anyway this looks well-written, will likely be supporting this.

Who? And why the hell should we care?

Cass is the only NS Sport roleplayer to win all of the big five tournaments (a specific term on NS Sports meaning the five sports that garner the most participation and roleplays) -- these are the toughest tournaments to win and winning them all is a remarkable achievement. This commendation is truly deserved.

@Tin: Perhaps we could add a little bit more RP flavour? Cassadaigua is a matriarchy that's made great advances in gender equality, it would tie in with the mention of Cassadaigua in Zwangzug's commend. Up to you though.

Wayneactia wrote:Who? And why the hell should we care?

Cassadaigua. And because NS Sports is, albeit often an overlooked community, still very much a part of NS that has already been recognized by SC resolutions before. I don't see why not recognize this nominee as well.

Support.

It’s quite rude of people to post “who?” because they’ve never been to NS Sports.

Comfed wrote:It’s quite rude of people to post “who?” because they’ve never been to NS Sports.

Agreed. There are many commendable NS Sports people out there, and Cass is definitely one of them. I also like seeing NS Sports regulars chime in on these and provide feedback so the non-NS Sports people can understand.

Comfed wrote:It’s quite rude of people to post “who?” because they’ve never been to NS Sports.

Or because they haven't bothered to read the proposal.

If people don't have anything substantial to post, they can always refrain from posting.

Hulldom wrote:I think I'd like to see more from this nominee in terms of tangible achievements in sports RP, if there are any, and perhaps more elaboration in the "Noting" and "Recognising" clauses...

• RE roleplay: Cass' roleplays aren't the longest or the most diverse, but they are pretty consistent. The Concord Heights Times is by some distance her most regularly-produced and best-known roleplay series, making up about 12% of everything she's ever posted on the current forums. (She also used to put out a few Spacebook chats in her pre-2014-hiatus days, but those aren't ICly meant for public consumption and I'm fairly certain that SCHQ hasn't yet cracked end-to-end encryption!) I'm also aware that she did an RP arc with Quebec and Shingoryeo during WC85 about their respective royal famillies but I'm a bit iffy about that - not least because there's quite a fair bit of reporting in there from guess who? The CHT of course
  
  Also, I do mean time immemorial. Cass' first ever roleplay was a Courtney's Space blog (i.e. Ferguson - see updated draft); that particular blog actually ran throughout her playing career!
  
  
• RE Recognising: This particular clause goes into about as much detail regarding Cassadaigua's hosting credentials (if not slightly more) as the other sports Commendations that mention hosting: Starblaydia, Commerce Heights, Zwangzug; The Holy Empire; Audioslavia; VilTur; ESF; Kelssek.
  
  
• RE Noting: I'm aware of the old adage that "positions aren't commendable, actions are." However, the actions described in this clause and its two-item list should hopefully give sufficient, additional attention to her administrative work in the sporting community as they stand.
  
  
• So how would I describe Cass, really? Dedicated, hard-working - and positively bubbly. I believe (and hope) that this reflects that.

Electrum wrote:Perhaps we could add a little bit more RP flavour? Cassadaigua is a matriarchy that's made great advances in gender equality, it would tie in with the mention of Cassadaigua in Zwangzug's commend. Up to you though.

Very much. Draft 1b - as I may have hinted above - is now up.

Full and total support behind this one. Cass is awesome.

The usual edits. For an NSS commend which is rp at its most basic roots, this needs a lot more spice, rp, and storytelling. Meat is pretty good, the garnish is a little bare.

Tinhampton wrote:INTRODUCING [nation=Cassadaigua] as the only nation to have won each of the five major single-sport competitions - the football World Cup (WC) at its 50th and 51st editions; the World Baseball Classic (WBC) at its 14th, 16th, 19th and 50th editions; the gridiron World Bowl at its 8th, 22nd and 40th editions; the International Basketball Championships (IBC) at their 13th edition; and the World Cup of Hockey (i.e. ice hockey) at its 11th and 39th editions;

Two comments on this. First of all, this is hell to read through. Not because it’s grammatically incorrect per se, but because it’s just number and organization dump with very little context of why any of this matters. Nobody wants to read a paragraph of numbers and acronyms for no reason.

So secondly, in tandem with that first comment, it’s incredibly odd to me that the first clause reveals this amazing achievement of this person and honestly sort of glosses over it before moving on to the rest of the commend. I feel like you could write this better if you slowed this clause down a bit and maybe explained through each competition (maybe a list or something), it would be so much easier to understand. I also think it would be way cooler. Each of those competitions had their own story I assume, why not tell those stories?

Tinhampton wrote: RECALLING that the seven victorious Cassadagan squads in the WC, WBC and IBC were all-female. While neither the first nor the last to have fielded all-female teams, and even in the context of excellent yet ongoing progress towards achieving gender equality in a matriarchal framework (thanks largely to Male Equality Now, which has peacefully pushed for male representation in Cassadagan national teams - with some success - alongside other, less sporting issues since at least the 44th WC), Cassadaigua remains one of the most successful nations to have done so;

Aaaaaah what is even going on in this clause! This could be pared down so so much. You don’t need all this commentary on the gender equality of NSS, just a note on how Cass’s teams have pushed the boundaries of gender and been successful in such. I genuinely suggest a full rewrite of this clause.

Tinhampton wrote: AWARE that many of Cassadaigua's iconic sportswomen continue to inspire women and girls everywhere to this day, including but by no means limited to:

Alright, especially considering this clause, does the last one even need to exist? You could easily just combine the two.

Also “women and girls” is a bit odd. I suppose if you wanted to say women of all ages but then just say women of all ages and that sounds better.

Tinhampton wrote: Courtney Ferguson (who captained the Cassadagan football team from the 30th Baptism of Fire, their first tournament, until their group stage exit at the 45th WC - delivering leadership without which Cassadaigua may well have been a nondescript and much-forgotten sporting nation - before serving as Nethertopia's assistant manager as they came third at the 51st WC);

Eh? The whole clause is just parentheses? Parentheses should be unnecessary information added to something for context or additional detail, not literally all of the clause except for the name. You could also just literally replace the parentheses with comma and it wouldn’t change the meaning at all.

Also, the note about the assistant at the end should be removed or changed in some way. In its current form, despite being technically correct, is incredibly confusing. You could easily just move it to above the leadership bit because I assume the leadership bit would apply to that assistance as well, yes?

Tinhampton wrote: Jessica Schanke (a quietly confident player whose winning goal in the final of the 51st WC consolidated her reputation as perhaps Cassadaigua's best striker in their early years of success) and her granddaughter Rachel (who has captained the national football team since the 86th WC, where she scored three in their epic semifinal defeat to Nephara, and remains one of its most prolific players of recent times);

Same comments on parentheses. Even with both people in this one, the parentheses are weird as hell. You could easily do like “Jessica Schanke and her granddaughter Rachel, the former whom was blah blah blah and the latter blah blah”.

The “its” near the end should just be “Cassadaigua’s” because otherwise you have an ambiguous subject there.

Tinhampton wrote: Hannah Ranucci (who started for Cassadaigua after it returned from its years-long absence from football at the 78th WC, took over the captaincy before the start of the 81st and remained dangerous in front of goal until her retirement after the 84th WC); and

Parentheses.

First “it” should be “its”, “Returned” should be “return” and the following “its” should be “a”. “Took” should be “taking”, “remained” should be “remaining”. These are just tense/active voice fixes.

A “the” should exist before “goal” afaik

Tinhampton wrote: Stacie Houston (who has not only won the 7th series of the NSSCRA, the multiverse's leading stock car racing championship, but has also established an eponymous Foundation which seeks to provide essential and targeted support for people with disabilities of all ages);

Parentheses.

Why the “has”s? “Who has not only won” sounds better as “who was not just victorious”. With this you can also delete “but has” and “established” would be “establishing”.

“The multiverses leading stock car racing championship”, now that can be in parentheses

“People with disabilities of all ages” should be “people of all ages with disabilities”, we’re not talking about the disability’s age here

Tinhampton wrote: APPLAUDING the tireless work not only of the Concord Heights Times' journalists (Chelsea Dufresne foremost among them in recent years) but also, on many occasions, the blogs of many Cassadagan sportspeople themselves for helping to deliver to the multiverse unabashedly opinionated yet highly informative tales of Cassadaigua's triumphs, tragedies, successes and failures since time immemorial;

Comma after “work”, as well as a comma after the portion in parentheses.

“For helping” should be “in helping”

Tinhampton wrote: RECOGNISING that Cassadaigua has also worked - sometimes with many other nations - to organise many enjoyable and well-run sporting events, most prominently:

“Recognizing” has a z, not an s, unless you’re really old fashioned

Is the part in dashes necessary at all? If you say in each list item who they worked with, I think all that does is make the clause a bit claggy.

Tinhampton wrote:

• an astonishing six WBCs, second only to Newmanistan: the 18th, 26th, 40th, 43rd, 45th and 50th (all hosted alone);
• four WCs: the 54th (co-hosted with The Babbage Islands), 67th (with Equestrian States, now known as Equestria), 84th (with the Commonwealth of Baker Park) and 88th (with Chromatika);
• three Cups of Harmony, for the best football teams to have missed out on the WC: the 57th, 73rd (both co-hosted with Equestria) and 79th (with Northwest Kalactin); and
• hosting and helping interested nations sign up for the 9th Volleyball World Expo by themselves in 2020 - a tournament which had not been held in three years but which is now consistently being run for the first time since 2011-12;

Similar to that first clause, this whole list is really gross to read through because it’s straight up a list of random numbers, names, and acronyms. Again I would implore you to try to write these more as a story, perhaps choosing the most interesting to tell and writing the others as a side note, sort of in the same way WA authors get commended, where you don’t just have a clause for literally every resolution. NSS is full of amazing rp and dope ass stories, I want to read more of them in this resolution.

Tinhampton wrote: NOTING the service of dedicated and reliable Cassadagan paper-pushers as:

Whatever this is supposed to mean, I’m not getting it. If anything, “as” should at least be “, serving as” because as it is, that makes no sense. Also why paper-pushers? It’s a weird title to give in a commend.

Tinhampton wrote: World Cup Committee Vice-President from the 55th to the 57th, then from the 61st to the 63rd, WCs (where they oversaw host votes involving bids from the Presidents' home countries in each term, thus helping to prevent conflicts of interest that could have damaged trust in the Committee); and then

“then from” should be “then again from”.

Why the heck is there a comma after “63rd”. That definitely does not belong.

Everything in the parentheses reads super weird both because it’s once again, all the meat of a clause in parentheses. Just replace the parentheses with commas. It’s also just generally really confusing? I have no idea what that stuff in parentheses is saying and I honestly don’t know how to fix it because I just don’t know what it means at all.

Tinhampton wrote: WBC Council President from the 44th to the 46th, then from the 50th to the 52nd, WBCs (where they distributed WBC signup forms, organised host votes, oversaw the induction of nations into the WBC's Council and Hall of Fame, and established an official World Baseball Classic mission for continuity purposes); and

Comma after 52nd is wrong. Parentheses are weird.

What is the “continuity purposes” thing? The rest of the clause reads well, that bit reads confusing as heck.

Tinhampton wrote: OBSERVING that while the multidisciplinary excellence of Cassadaigua may be matched by few (if any) in the sporting world, it is respected by almost all nations which are aware of their contributions to international sports, and should similarly be appreciated by this august body:

Why the “while”/“may be”? Excellence and respect go hand in hand, not as opposites. I’d reword that because as it is, it makes it seem like countries that exhibit excellence are not regularly respected.

Hope this was helpful, have a great day~

-A

I'll probably submit this around October 28th - maybe a bit later.

Definite support.

Tinhampton wrote:It was, at least some of the time

Glad I could help, at least some of the time It does look a lot better with at least some of the proposed changes

I am the most biased person to comment on this because Cass is one of my very best NS friends; I co-hosted World Cup 84 with her at her invitation, and I'm currently Vice President of the World Lacrosse Council of which she is President.

The fact she hasn't already been commended astounds me. I came by the SC thread to say I cannot understand why people keep looking to right wrongs from 10+ years ago by condemning nations for things that 80% of current nations have zero knowledge. Cass has accomplished most of her legendary success more recently than things listed in the current proposal at vote.

WHEN this comes to vote--Tin I will gladly be part of a quorum needed to make that happen (and the Nephara draft as well, TG me)--I expect a near unanimous approval, and will take names of those who vote no.

Commonwealth of Baker Park wrote:The fact she hasn't already been commended astounds me. I came by the SC thread to say I cannot understand why people keep looking to right wrongs from 10+ years ago by condemning nations for things that 80% of current nations have zero knowledge. Cass has accomplished most of her legendary success more recently than things listed in the current proposal at vote.

Since I am the author of the proposal at vote (and the one before it), I really don't understand why so many people argument that "those actions happened long ago, so let's just forget them". It is still NationStates history that has an impact on today's existing communities. I am well aware NS Sports is one of the communities that doesn't get much attention in the SC, but that doesn't mean you should say other communities aren't important nor compare that they did more, since it's an entirely different way of playing. Now I don't want to threadjack Tin's thread, and I do support this commendation since I am in favor of the SC recognizing as many NS communities as it can, but just thought it'd be important to address this. If you want to discuss more about the at-vote proposal this let's do it in its own thread.

Cass is good to RP with, and she is one of the first people I would trust to host an NSS tournament. Support.

She has added a lot more to my NS experience than any of the people posting "who?"

My philosophy on C&Cs has always been to explain as much as possible about who the nominee is (a trusted member of the NS Sports community), what they have done (consistently produced high-quality, mostly character-based RPs for thirteen years, hosted many tournaments and served in a couple of important NSS admin positions), and why they ought to be recognised (for their success in many sports and in many different ways) in as little characters as possible... largely for the aid of new nations who may have sincerely never heard of the nominee before. Similarly for Liberations; refer to this post from 2020.

I'd add that some, but by no means all, of Cass' achievements happened "10+ years ago" (her two World Cup victories were in 2010) - and she was completely absent from NS Sports for about three years from May 2014.

Much as I dislike your modus operandi within the WA Tin, this draft reads very well. I agree with Gio that NSS is an overlooked community in the SC. I would say this draft goes a long way to addressing that.

Commonwealth of Baker Park wrote: The fact she hasn't already been commended astounds me. I came by the SC thread to say I cannot understand why people keep looking to right wrongs from 10+ years ago by condemning nations for things that 80% of current nations have zero knowledge. Cass has accomplished most of her legendary success more recently than things listed in the current proposal at vote.

If she was that good why didn’t you get off your backside and draft a Commendation instead of sniping at Gameplayers.