I think that sums up the other replies that say 'friends first, etc', and is in fact my point.
In my experience there was some prestige in winning, and particularly in picking a winning team, and that would feed into who was picked for the school team.
When the stakes are low, you can can choose to be among friends. When the stakes are higher, you need to work, perhaps less comfortably, with greater talent.
Interesting, I had kind of the opposite takeaway. You can afford to pick friends followed by the best for pickup teams, where winning doesn’t matter too much. But when the stakes are high you need to be pick folks you can work with for months or years, even if it means their tech skills aren’t as solid as a candidate that is otherwise unfriendly or untrustworthy.
In my experience there was some prestige in winning, and particularly in picking a winning team, and that would feed into who was picked for the school team.
When the stakes are low, you can can choose to be among friends. When the stakes are higher, you need to work, perhaps less comfortably, with greater talent.