So when we celebrate athletics, we're largely celebrating innate qualities. Why can't we do the same for intellectual achievement?
As someone who straddles the athletic and intellectual fences, I would like to dispel the idea that athletic achievement = coasting for the physically gifted. For anyone who has true professional/Olympic caliber athletic ability, training and nutrition regimens match ability early. These children are being given the athletic equivalent of multiple grade skips and curriculum compacting early in their athletic "careers". This may seem like an extreme example, but statistically it's analogous to the 99%ile+ children represented here. Even for kids who are "just" strong high school players, there is a lot of discipline and effort required to use those innate abilities.
I would argue the best way to validate intellectual giftedness publicly is to adopt the athletics model and actually meet children at their level and keep pace with them through their studies. Give the children challenging outlets for their abilities, be seen doing this publicly, and praise the children's achievements (which couldn't have been made without the innate ability.) It sounds like this is what squishys is alluding to with published chess results.
Ultimately, the reader is simply presented with, "Here is a club, here's what they did, and here's their picture." Anything else anyone takes out of it is basically baggage they brought in.
And I don't disagree...if the club's accomplishments are listed as the primary focus, as is the case for athletics. But that's not the case in the OP, where the only info is a gifted ID.
I think I understand the spirit of your post, and I may be mistaken, but I don't think you meant to analogize giftedness to club membership. To simply equate a different way of thinking, feeling, and existing as being in Club Gifted downplays the different learning needs arising from the gifted's fundamentally different gestalt.
As an aside: With the uphill battle many of our members face in getting administrators to take advocacy seriously, equating GT with a club would simply make the slope steeper.
