[@Yankee]

I will admit, I am pretty rusty with gming. Some of the people here really know how to draw you in with their ads and openers, and I envy that haha.

The idea here was that the characters had long since beaten the champion. I know in the games you beat them and replace them, but in this world, it's like getting your black belt: you've proven you understand how to fight, but that doesn't mean you're a master. So we would be playing well accomplished trainers, the kind that have a full team and a lot of accomplishments behind them. They'd be competing on, like you mentioned, an Olympic level. 

I imagined the 'Valkyrie league' is more or less a stand-in for whatever group is orchestrating these Olympic-level Pokémon matches. They set up battlefields, transport everyone participating, record the matches, etc. This is 100% a stand-in name, I just wanted to throw the idea out there first. This all said, I do like the idea of making it a training program for high-level trainers hoping to go pro. That might be better than what I was imagining. Having them all be competitors makes it harder to beleive they'd interact outside of matches, and this is not Arena forums.