The Quizbowl Resource Center

So will Maryland retake the title from Virginia this year? Will Illinois find a way to win the final round?

I mean no offense to Russell, but seriously, Kentucky needs a better way to decide who gets to go to Panasonic. C'mon folks, Gov Cup is the world's shittiest tournament. Do we really want to represent Kentucky based on GOVCUP? I say no. I say have an all-star team like almost every other state. But maybe this belongs in an email to KAAC.

Just my $0.02 worth:

I don't see a problem with having the winner of Governor's Cup as the one chosen, but given that Governor's Cup quiz bowl is quick recall, I would assume whomever is chosen will practice Panasonic-style questions prior to the tournament.

But I confess I do favor the all-star team. You're not alone: I think this is the first time (if ever?) that State College has qualified as the Pennsylvania representative; they will give all of us a run for our money!

As unofficial representative of the Virginia team, I respectfully submit that we will wipe the floor with our esteemed colleagues from Maryland.

Has anyone actually come up with something state-themed to wear on the banquet night?

I have a "Virginia Is for Losers" t-shirt, if you want to borrow it, punk.

BuzzerZen wrote: Has anyone actually come up with something state-themed to wear on the banquet night?

I won't be there, but personally, I like the tshirts for MD that have crabs sitting around eating people and say "Payback's a bitch."

Then again, if I had gone this year I would have been with North Carolina, and somehow I don't think smearing BBQ on a shirt would be good.

Kechara wrote:

BuzzerZen wrote: Has anyone actually come up with something state-themed to wear on the banquet night?

I won't be there, but personally, I like the tshirts for MD that have crabs sitting around eating people and say "Payback's a bitch."

Then again, if I had gone this year I would have been with North Carolina, and somehow I don't think smearing BBQ on a shirt would be good.

Uh... oh my. (And many of you thought my "swimsuits" comment was awkward.)

I was going to suggest Carolina Hurricanes hockey sweaters... but I don't think it would conform to dress code either.

We're just dressing up and wearing Alabama lapel pins. As a former Virginian, I would suggest wearing Colonial Williamsburg-style period costumes.

Sweaters!?!?? In Orlando in June?!!?? I don't kn ow about the rest of the Illinoisans, but I found it extremely difficult to find a college polo shirt (t-shirts aren't allowed and it's too hot for sweatshirts), we may be wearing lapel pins as well.

And colonial Williamsburg costumes sound great, but some of those north of the Rappahannock might not like it

From what those who know hockey tell me, the "uniforms" they wear during games are known as sweaters. I wouldn't want to suggest the real woolen kind for Orlando. :)

My prediction:
1: Maryland
2: Pennsylvania
3: Virginia
4: Kentucky
5: California
6: Oklahoma

David Riley wrote:But I confess I do favor the all-star team. You're not alone: I think this is the first time (if ever?) that State College has qualified as the Pennsylvania representative; they will give all of us a run for our money!

I think State College also went back in 1998 or maybe 1996. In any case, Julie had told me this was literally the first time in something like 10 years that they've won their state championship (apparently their state tournament is more screwed up than most everyone else's--I don't know for fact, though, having never been or found out many details).

As unofficial representative of the Virginia team, I respectfully submit that we will wipe the floor with our esteemed colleagues from Maryland.

As the slightly-more-official representative for VA, I respectully submit that my teammate has modesty issues. I look forward to a good match, and I expect I'll get one.

As an unofficially-official representative for the Virginia team. I would like to state that I challenge everyone at Panasonic to a game of Mafia.

Byko wrote:

David Riley wrote:But I confess I do favor the all-star team. You're not alone: I think this is the first time (if ever?) that State College has qualified as the Pennsylvania representative; they will give all of us a run for our money!

I think State College also went back in 1998 or maybe 1996. In any case, Julie had told me this was literally the first time in something like 10 years that they've won their state championship (apparently their state tournament is more screwed up than most everyone else's--I don't know for fact, though, having never been or found out many details).

Julie's told me a lot about that state championship. The state finals I think are held at the state capitol building. Believe me, if State College hadn't won their championship in over 10 years, something is screwed up.

Okay, maybe I've been in Florida too long, but trust me, the AC is on full blast in the Contemporary and the competition rooms will be chilly. Those of you with a reptilian bent-- bring a sweater or light jacket.

Team Missouri

Charles Dees --- North Kansas City
Andrew Hoekzema --- Westminster Christian Academy (St. Louis)
David Hoffelmeyer --- Savannah High School
Nate Kinast --- Thomas Jefferson Independent (Joplin)
Brandon Thomas --- Mound City

See you all down there!

As a little warning, everyone make sure they bring their rain gear. Florida gets thunderstorms about every afternoon in the summer, and it looks like Alberto is forming in the NW Caribbean right now. The models are showing it hitting central to northern Florida around Tuesday. If it presents any serious problems, I'm sure our tournament organizers and Disney World (which was just certified as a Storm Safe Community by NOAA) will take care of us.

So eight teams are already into the semifinals out at Panasonic. Here's my initial impressions:

1. Once again, Florida got an incredible weak draw for the first round with two teams finishing behind the empty chairs (that would have been filled by North Carolina). It doesn't look like Missouri had much trouble either.

2. Virginia had a game, it looks like, with Colorado, who is starting to really make some noise in this format. They've made finals each of the last two years and clearly aren't a pushover. Will they dominate over New Mexico (yes), New Hampshire (yes), and Wisconsin (probably) tomorrow?

3. So Connecticut came out of the room of blah with Montana close behind. Now there's a new room of blah tomorrow: Montana, Iowa, Idaho, and Washington. I'm saying that first team to 200 wins automatically there.

4. Nice to see DC put up a better performance than they did at all last year. Too bad they'll be running into an unhappy Illinois team tomorrow.

5. Ah yes, the room of death--congrats to Maryland for coming out of that in a more dominant fashion than I think any of us expected. Will that help them in the semis and potentially the finals?

6. The people who run Pennsylvania's state tournament should take note of what happened today: 326 points is a dominant performance, and I have a feeling it was pretty much mistake-free considering the scores from Oklahoma and DC in that room. Something is clearly wrong in the Keystone State when State College wins their state tournament to get to Orlando only about once every 10 years.

7. My picks for the matches of the repechage tomorrow: Alabama (with New Jersey keeping it close), Illinois, Tennesse (in a surprise over probably favored New York), Montana, Colorado, and Texas (especially if it's state tournament winner Clear Lake, as their math & science ability will really help them here).

It's times like these I wish Michigan would send a team to these tournaments.

Who is the California representative? Please tell me it's not the winner of BAAL.

[quote]7. My picks for the matches of the repechage tomorrow: Alabama (with New Jersey keeping it close), Illinois, Tennesse (in a surprise over probably favored New York), Montana, Colorado, and Texas (especially if it's state tournament winner Clear Lake, as their math & science ability will really help them here).[/quote]

The Texas representative is Cistercian, which finished 9th at NAQT HSNCT. Clear Lake was apparently the first of three teams to decline the bid. If TQBA can get control of the state's Panasonic bid (lots of red tape, long story), we will consider trying to assemble an all-star team like many other states do.

cvdwightw wrote:Who is the California representative? Please tell me it's not the winner of BAAL.

Please tell me California does not have any sort of state championship honoring a golden idol. (Or an American Idol)

PAC down to only 31 teams? My question is how much longer will the PAC hang on as a "national" tournament?

jrbarry wrote:PAC down to only 31 teams? My question is how much longer will the PAC hang on as a "national" tournament?

As long as Panasonic continues to give money to make the tournament possible, teams will continue to come. I don't see it going away any time soon.

Byko wrote:

jrbarry wrote:PAC down to only 31 teams? My question is how much longer will the PAC hang on as a "national" tournament?

As long as Panasonic continues to give money to make the tournament possible, teams will continue to come. I don't see it going away any time soon.

And as long as the Polk County office run it and other events...

There is a new Room of Death for the semifinals tomorrow morning at 9:00 am:

Ohio
Virginia
Pennsylvania
Illinois
Iowa

The other semi-final rooms are:
California
Florida
Missouri
Alabama
Oklahoma




Connecticut
Maryland
Tennessee
Wisconsin
This time, Maryland lucked out with the empty NC table.

Well, actually, the empty NC table cannot be advanced to the semifinals since it would have been eliminated. But it's nice to think that we did. :)

There was going to be 14 spots, so one room would have had 4 teams rather than 5.

This also happened last year, and somehow Illinois avoided the Room of Death, ending up with California, Colorado, and West Virginia.

I'd love to see the 15 pt round in the Room of Death.

Yeah, it's sort of a room of death. But Iowa definitely waters it down a lot.

Other thoughts:

1. Wisconsin beating Colorado says something about that team. IIRC, last year, Wisconsin was Rufus King HS, and they were mostly juniors (including their All-America captain Eva Lam, who was pretty much flawless on foreign language). It makes me wonder what happened in the first game...or maybe Pennsylvania (State College) is that good.

2. For several years, San Dieguito represented California because they got the paperwork in to Panasonic first. I don't know if that's the case this year, but I wouldn't be surprised.

3. Do you think Illinois was a bit pissed off about losing to Maryland yesterday? Seriously:

Illinois 487
Oregon 168
D.C. 191
Minnesota 147

Has anyone seen anything close to that high of a score before?

4. My picks to go to the semis: Pennsylvania and Illinois leave the defending champions out of the finals, Florida and Missouri edge out dark-horse California, and Maryland leaves the others in the dust battling for second with Wisconsin narrowly beating Tennessee.

As for the finals, I think it's hard not to like Maryland and Pennsylvania in the top 2 with Florida, Missouri, and Illinois in a dogfight for third.

Byko wrote:3. Do you think Illinois was a bit pissed off about losing to Maryland yesterday? Seriously:

Illinois 487
Oregon 168
D.C. 191
Minnesota 147

Has anyone seen anything close to that high of a score before?

Assuming full conversion of the handouts (which is 60 points... which that couldn't happen because the final score doesn't end in a 5/0), that's 327 points worth of buzzing correctly. Even if they were competing against two dead fish and a banana as opposed to three live teams, that's an incredible conversion rate out of 65 questions. That would mean that on average, Illinois would have to NET half of the questions in the 5- and 10-point tossup rounds correct and 12 of the 25 15-point tossups right (to get 330 points).

I think that Illinois may make things a bit closer into the final pairings if they can keep up with the speed of the Virginia and Pennsylvania teams and hope that mistakes would send one of those teams to third near the end.

E.T. Chuck wrote:Well, actually, the empty NC table cannot be advanced to the semifinals since it would have been eliminated. But it's nice to think that we did. :)

There was going to be 14 spots, so one room would have had 4 teams rather than 5.

Did I miss something? How come NC had a spot? I thought we never registered...

fancynancy wrote:

E.T. Chuck wrote:Well, actually, the empty NC table cannot be advanced to the semifinals since it would have been eliminated. But it's nice to think that we did. :)

There was going to be 14 spots, so one room would have had 4 teams rather than 5.

Did I miss something? How come NC had a spot? I thought we never registered...

We held a spot after Mr. Davis and Ms. Dawkins wanted to see if we could do something after NCOAST. After it was obvious we couldn't, I asked to pull us from the competition.

Also, since my email archive went out the window on my reboot, I wanted to be sure you and Katherine were still planning to make it this weekend.

E.T. Chuck wrote:

fancynancy wrote:

E.T. Chuck wrote:Well, actually, the empty NC table cannot be advanced to the semifinals since it would have been eliminated. But it's nice to think that we did. :)

There was going to be 14 spots, so one room would have had 4 teams rather than 5.

Did I miss something? How come NC had a spot? I thought we never registered...

We held a spot after Mr. Davis and Ms. Dawkins wanted to see if we could do something after NCOAST. After it was obvious we couldn't, I asked to pull us from the competition.

Also, since my email archive went out the window on my reboot, I wanted to be sure you and Katherine were still planning to make it this weekend.

Ohhhhhhhhhhh. Thanks, Dr. Chuck.

As far as I know (as in we were talking yesterday), Katherine is coming. I cannot, though.

Yes, I still plan on coming to PACE to read/scorekeep/timekeep/break up fist fights/anything else? :)

-Katherine

E.T. Chuck wrote: Assuming full conversion of the handouts (which is 60 points... which that couldn't happen because the final score doesn't end in a 5/0), that's 327 points worth of buzzing correctly. Even if they were competing against two dead fish and a banana as opposed to three live teams, that's an incredible conversion rate out of 65 questions. That would mean that on average, Illinois would have to NET half of the questions in the 5- and 10-point tossup rounds correct and 12 of the 25 15-point tossups right (to get 330 points).

Does that make it, for Illinois, a perfect day for bananafish?

E.T. Chuck wrote:

Kechara wrote:

BuzzerZen wrote: Has anyone actually come up with something state-themed to wear on the banquet night?

I won't be there, but personally, I like the tshirts for MD that have crabs sitting around eating people and say "Payback's a bitch."

Then again, if I had gone this year I would have been with North Carolina, and somehow I don't think smearing BBQ on a shirt would be good.

Uh... oh my. (And many of you thought my "swimsuits" comment was awkward.)

I was going to suggest Carolina Hurricanes hockey sweaters... but I don't think it would conform to dress code either.

Well, I would probably look better in a swimsuit than some.....

E.T. Chuck wrote:

fancynancy wrote: Did I miss something? How come NC had a spot? I thought we never registered...

We held a spot after Mr. Davis and Ms. Dawkins wanted to see if we could do something after NCOAST. After it was obvious we couldn't, I asked to pull us from the competition.

Also, since my email archive went out the window on my reboot, I wanted to be sure you and Katherine were still planning to make it this weekend.

Yeah, I was planning on coming down and hanging out in Orlando as an "adult" and helping you practice down there if you wanted to

The semifinal results are up. The final matchup is Virginia, Missouri, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Tennessee. Maryland put up a huge score. Virginia and Missouri were also impressive.

Pennsylvania's tournament is absolutely horrid (I'm a State College alum, and played in it three times) . Actual question from Pennsylvania's state tournament "British India was divided into 3 countries. Name one of them" (India obviously being one of the correct answers). If that's not a buzzer race, I don't know what is. Unfortunately, all of the questions are like that. Plus they have questions that change directions. Questions that start off like "The 16th president of the US was" and good teams will buzz there and say Lincoln, but then the question continues "Lincoln. Who composed A Lincoln Portrait?".

Anyone heard the results yet? They're 1.5 hours late in posting them.

Final round results:

1 Maryland - 211

2 Florida 187

3 Missouri 171

4 Pennsylvania 166

5 Virginia 155

6 Tennessee 146.

Plus, the sun finally came out and we weren't blown away by Alberto.

Yea Maryland!

astrophysicist2b wrote:Pennsylvania's tournament is absolutely horrid (I'm a State College alum, and played in it three times).

Out of curiosity, you wouldn't happen to know who runs it (or really, who provides the questions), would you? With a state as good as Pennsylvania, teams really deserve something better on which to decide their state champion, and I know there are several people on this board who could put together a far better question set for them.

Congratulations to our brothers on the other side of the Potomac.

Congrats, Chris, Alex and the rest of Team Maryland (I don't know/think any of the others are on the boards...correct me if I'm wrong) on your victory.

Has anyone heard of any of the players on the "All-America" team?

styxman wrote:Has anyone heard of any of the players on the "All-America" team?

Panasonic Academic Challenge wrote:Brian Alford - California
Chris Adams - Colorado
Andrew Hoekzema - Missouri
David Shimel - Florida
Elizabeth Stryker - West Virginia
Francois Greer - Pennsylvania

Ohio had a decent showing, we won an easy room on day one. Had we lost, we would have had a much easier way into finals (fighting for the tennessee spot) but even so, we beat illinois and stayed close to State College. That was in large part due to the format, but i think we could have run with tennessee. I think an all-star team may have put us into finals, too. Who knows, maybe next year. Congrats MD.

Andrew Hoekzema was the high scorer from WashU.

Howard wrote:

styxman wrote:Has anyone heard of any of the players on the "All-America" team?

Panasonic Academic Challenge wrote:Brian Alford - California
Chris Adams - Colorado
Andrew Hoekzema - Missouri
David Shimel - Florida
Elizabeth Stryker - West Virginia
Francois Greer - Pennsylvania

David was one of the players from Pensacola HS's team at NAQT. I believe Francois Greer is from State College, and I would guess that Chris Adams may be from Grand Junction HS, as they have been the representatives from Colorado the last couple of years.

ASFA had a wonderful time representing Alabama at Panasonic. We didn't particularly care for the format of the games, but everything else was very well done.

Rounds: In the first round, we came in last mainly due to the superb performance of Virginia and Colorado and also because of negs erasing a lot the few gains we made. On the second day, we played mediocrely during the 5 and 10 point rounds but took off during the 15 point round to achieve a solid victory. The semifinal game turned into a repeat of our first game with negs erasing all the gains we made. In that game we placed 4th, putting us in 10th place overall (if you rank the teams by placing in semifinals and then scores, if you rank by scores alone we placed ninth, not that it matters either way). Our strongest area was the team questions, where we consistently put up high scores. ASCA worksheets were good prep for those.

The Rest of the Tournament: First, I want to thank the PAC officials for the very enjoyable experience they provided. The food was excellent, the awards banquet was top-notch, and I loved Casino Night (lost all my money on the last hand of Blackjack, but still had a good time). Panasonic gave out some very nice prizes too, to put it lightly. The parks were as fun as ever and not too crowded thanks to Senor Alberto. Probably the best part was getting to know everyone there during our various activities. Overall, it was a worthwhile experience, I'm glad we were able to attend it, and I hope the rising seniors on my team get to partake in it again next year.