The twelve Ko-orenite Olympic academies all have their own teams in volleyball, handball, and water polo, as a national league in those sports didn't exist yet. Over time, if clubs wanted to operate separately from their academies, that'd be fine. If clubs wanted to stay affiliated, that's also fine, and it seems most clubs opt to do the second. It's not like there are no fans there: visitors to the academies and other athletes tend to visit, as do schools if matches are scheduled on weekdays, and all three sports schedule a few matches in venues in big nearby cities and those tickets sell pretty well.
Then beach volleyball was added, with each academy sending two duos to the competition, opting for a very different kind of scheduling: there were to be eight tournaments, hosted in turn by different academies - or again, at venues in cities if they were hoping to get some cash out of it, and some event organisers have jumped on the opportunity - with the winners of each advancing to a final tournament.
The performances in those leagues dictate who we send to the Olympics, with volleyball, handball, and water polo picking the best from the twelve teams and sticking them on one squad, with the rest of the league to act as sparring partners while the elite selection prepares for, in this case, Hamilton and Schimpol. For beach volleyball, the best duos are sent, because there is little sense in frankensteining two-person teams like that.
Then there are orienteering and cycling, which don't adhere to the above schedules, and frankly operate outside of the Olympic system: they have a lot of events throughout the year, and that gives a pretty strong idea as to who the strongest athletes are. For cycling, only a few can represent us internationally - and even then, the Olympic road cycling format only looks like multi-day stage racing to an extent - and orienteering doesn't have international competition at all... yet.
For other sports, it's looking like the beach volleyball meet-by-meet system is taking over. The sports that 1) multiple academies have a good location for and 2) are potential medal events for us have trialled it.
Canoeing
Sprint is done at a lot of academies and has the status that rowing enjoys in a lot of other countries... we think. It's hard to gauge the cultural relevance of rowing, but if you're picturing a primarily collegiate sport with plenty of enjoyers outside of universities, this is probably it. This was the easiest to get a national 'competition' for, also given it requires, basically, just an expanse of calm water... and we have a handful of lakes and a massive bay sitting idly by anyway. For the team events, formally they're given the name of the academy they report to, even if they spend maybe a few days per year there, tops. This limits the number of teams to twelve, though each academy's full roster is a bit bigger than that.
Slalom is a slightly more niche activity but as it has so much overlap with the Sprint discipline, you'll find plenty of people trying to hit some whitewater on the weekend. And don't forget that both have an orienteering tie-in as well, with some littoral, stream, and lake courses, so a lot of people have some sort of exposure to the activity. It was easy to find quality competition, but it was difficult to find proper places to hold competitions. In the end, the various rivers that have their origin in the western mountains turn out to hold a few good options, they're somewhat close together, but it does mean forgoing the Olympic academy structure. Oh well.
Gymnastics - Rhythmic, as well as Judo, Fencing, and Archery are the other medal-able events of note, and they conform far better to the meet-by-meet schedule, especially as they are so tied to the academy having the space, the materials, the training, etcetera.
Hockey has a full league system outside of the academies, with clubs focused around the northern province of Mahrkioren and a handful of feeder clubs in the rest of the country. It receives significant funding from the Olympic budget to keep those feeder teams afloat, while the Mahrkioren teams - much like the concentration of ice hockey clubs in Aerellen - are perfectly (financially) healthy.
Sailing is, somehow, tied to the eastern islands, where races are run in the calm-ish-but-deceiving straits between the four islands. Standardisation is an issue however, as the vessels used aren't the same as the ones used in the Olympics, despite attempts to translate the Ko-orenite setting to a multiversal one.
. A big shoutout to Lisander for the pictograms & medals. Same with Tik for the logo of the event. Viva la Crpostran!
