ITT I sort of live blog an IESA sectional....

[the return of AHAN]

Quote of the Day:
Mike Laudermith: "I learn more about agriculture from these questions than from IHSA."

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OUCH! Marlowe's first bonus is unanswerable glacier question that gets double-bageled.

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5 part fine arts bonus....on... wait for it.... CHRISTMAS SONGS

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3 bonuses left...Aptakisic 225, Marlowe 209

[jonah]

I'll not have you criticize my Homestead Act tossup, Mr. Laudermith!

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5 part bonus on #19 on computer domain names.... swept by Aptakisic to take a commanding lead with 1 bonus to go....

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Finals from round 1: Aptakisic (unseeded) 286, Marlowe (#3) 234
Daniel Wright (#2) 301, Hawthorn South (#7) 186

[the return of AHAN]

For the 2nd match in a row, a team in our room has asked for illegal communication to be called, even though it was for just glancing at a teammates paper during the reading of a bonus question. Fortunately, the current rule says it must be to gain an advantage. And that's totally Mr. Laudermith's discretion, thank god.

[the return of AHAN]

halftime score of the Hawthorn South-Marlowe game, 219-146 Marlowe is up.

EDIT: This game ended Marlowe 293, Hawthorn South 218.

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Daniel Wright beats Aptakisic, 309-144.

FWIW, Palmer describes them as unstoppable.

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After 10 TU in round 3, it's Daniel Wright 134, LITH Marlowe, 104...

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Daniel Wright gets 4 of the last 5 TU of the half ... a Geometry computation of a proportion, where he didn't even wait for the question, New England Patriots, spell "Plague", and inertia...

Daniel Wright 234, Marlowe 146, with 6 bonuses remaining.

[the return of AHAN]

That's it. It's over. It's all over.

Referee Mike Laudermith steps in after the 18th Toss-Up and steers yet another battered team out of the path of Daniel Wright JHS, 302-164.

Wright moves on to the State Finals where they can't be described as anything other than a favorite to win it. They crush computation, geography, civics, general knowledge,... little gets past them. Only a TU on Louis Sullivan went dead in this match, and that was after a Marlowe player buzzed with Frank Lloyd Wright, right after Prairie School and just before he was mentioned.

Buffalo Grove Aptakisic defeated Hawthorn South, 265-224, to claim the runner-up ribbons.

[the return of AHAN]

The meta-hsquizbowl.org moment of the day... I crack up Mr. Laudermith at a break in match 2 by showing him Jonah's response to the agriculture comment.

[Stained Diviner]

meta-hsquizbowl.org moment of the night...I went to a Daniel Wright concert, and they played a song from Twilight.

[the return of AHAN]

meta-hsquizbowl.org moment of the night...I went to a Daniel Wright concert, and they played a song from Twilight.

WAIT, your kids go to Daniel Wright? I thought you were in Aptakisic-Tripp 102...

[Stained Diviner]

My oldest is a 5th grader at Wright. We are in the tiny sliver of Buffalo Grove in District 103--the house behind ours is 102.

[Stephen Colbert]

Ottawa Wallace wins the Sterling St. Mary's sectional. Millburn West players claimed they had a moderator at the Barrington Invitational who looked exactly like me. Millburn West captain annoyed me by trying to buzz in on bonuses. Eventually she just resorted to screaming "buzz". Wallace parents were upset when I won't call the other team for illegal communication, though the communication was not used to gain an advantage and therefore perfectly legal. Wallace's coach couldn't understand why I wouldn't accept "gelatinous maximum" for gluteus maximus and insisted I should have asked the player to spell his answer. Despite the late start and a random dinner break, I managed to make it home earlier than expected.

[the return of AHAN]

Ottawa Wallace wins the Sterling St. Mary's sectional. Millburn West players claimed they had a moderator at the Barrington Invitational who looked exactly like me. Millburn West captain annoyed me by trying to buzz in on bonuses. Eventually she just resorted to screaming "buzz". Wallace parents were upset when I won't call the other team for illegal communication, though the communication was not used to gain an advantage and therefore perfectly legal. Wallace's coach couldn't understand why I wouldn't accept "gelatinous maximum" for gluteus maximus and insisted I should have asked the player to spell his answer. Despite the late start and a random dinner break, I managed to make it home earlier than expected.

On more than one occassion, the Slammer Systems paddles were inadvertently pressed, causing people, including Mr. Laudermith, to think that time had been called. It was enough of an issue that I may ask the AdCo to address it in the rules, to make it a clear verbal declaration if you wish to end conferring early.

And with regard to the 2nd time the aforementioned coach approached me to complain about me not paying attention and helping the moderator... Same issue. If a kid is glancing at what another kid is writing, jeez, can we police whether that is gaining an advantage? I was very disapppointed that she said, "I drilled it into my kids that YOU'D be strict on the enforcement of those communcation rules and they KNOW not to look around during a bonus." I wanted to say, "Do you know me at all?" But settled for something along the lines of, "I'd like to see the match settled by which team knows more."

EDIT: continued the narrative

[Stephen Colbert]

On more than one occassion, the Slammer Systems paddles were inadvertently pressed, causing people, including Mr. Laudermith, to think that time had been called. It was enough of an issue that I may ask the AdCo to address it in the rules, to make it a clear verbal declaration if you wish to end conferring early.

I guess I really don't have a problem if teams want to do this, but I usually hit the bonus switch after a correctly answered tossup, making it impossible to buzz. One team invariably ends up confused, especially because it isn't really common practice in most of Illinois. I suggested saying "time" or "ready to answer" and it was basically a non-issue after a few tossup/bonus cycles. At this point, I thought Millburn West was going to win the sectional (there were some questionable coaching decisions during the match against Wallace, including not playing many starters until almost halftime) and I thought they should probably get in the habit of calling "time" the before state tournament.

[Stained Diviner]

This reminds me of the time that an opposing coach approached me after a match to warn me that my kids were not putting their pencils down when the Moderator said Pencils Down and that, though he decided to be lenient and not protest anything during the match, my students would be penalized if they ever went to State and did that. I told him that my students had gone to State the previous year, had not put down their pencils, and had not been penalized. For some reason, there are rumors that Moderators in the state tournament penalize students at every opportunity, which fortunately is not the case but which leads to a lot of penalties being called during the year by people who think they are teaching the students a valuable lesson.