By Ron Zyhaus
With one of the three biggest tournaments of the year coming up, everyone’s looking for some predictions right now. Well, you’re going to have to wait a little longer. Today’s article does focus on a great tournament, but not for high school students. The New Year’s College tournament (I just made that up—it’s not the official name) will be held the Friday before NYC in Greenville, SC. With three legitimate teams coming ties the record for most at a college event. Although this number seems tiny with all of today’s gigantic 35 team tournaments, expect the competition to be fierce. Let’s take a look at the teams.
Georgia Institute of Technology:
Georgia Tech is the only school that has perfect attendance at all college events. They are led by our BibleQuizzer.net buddy Brant Callaway. They’ve won 1 out of 3 events so far and could challenge again for this tournament. According to Brant, they have the best Bible Quizzer who didn’t quiz in high school, Michael Ellis. In West Virginia (the last college tournament) they were overwhelmed later in the day by Seminole and some of the younger teams, but you can expect them to be stronger for this tournament and contend all the way to the end.
Seminole Community College:
Seminole also features a good ole BibleQuizzer.neter—Jesse Startup. They’ve also won 1 college tournament. He went from being a little worse than Brant in their first meeting to considerably better at the second one. They also get strong performances from Jordan Bond and Heather Rigsby—all from the Master’s Academy.
The Bob Jones University:
Bob Jones is the most mysterious team of the bunch. Here’s what I know. They have Tiffany Parrott. There are a ton of old Bible Quizzers that go to Bob Jones. That’s about it.
What They Need To Do To Win:
Georgia Tech:
Georgia Tech has to have Brant be the strongest quizzer of the day in order to maximize their chances. The other thing they’re going to need is to find a way to get some questions out of their other quizzers. According to Brant, he’s got a lot of confidence in right hand man Michael Ellis. Just the two of them went to a tournament in early November and both consistently quizzed out. If Michael can match this performance, they’re probably won’t be much that can be done to stop them.
Seminole:
Seminole, much the same as Georgia Tech, needs Jesse to be the day’s best quizzer. Actually, in my opinion if Jesse and Brant turn out to be even, I give the advantage to Seminole. They have two more experienced quizzers that should have a big advantage over the rest of the role players.
Bob Jones:
Bob Jones will probably follow the same mold as the other two teams and rely heavily on their star quizzer, Tiffany Parrott. I would be surprised if after half a year of quizzing if Tiffany is able to keep up with the other two, but don’t put it past her. What Bob Jones needs to have done is to have found some other big name quizzers of which there is no shortage at BJU. If we see Joy Burrows, Abby Garland, or Mary Berg tagging along with Tiffany, the rest of the teams could be in big trouble.
Prediction:
I think that this may be one of the hardest predictions that I’ve ever had to make. Bob Jones probably has the highest upside because of all the great quizzers that could be on the team. On the other hand, they haven’t been to a quiz this year, so they probably haven’t been studying as much as the other two teams. I’m going to say that they’ll finish third for this reason. But here’s probably a more accurate prediction: expect them not to finish second. I think they’ll either be the best team or the worst teams.
Now it comes to GT vs. SCC. These two teams have been evenly matched all year long. I think that the advantages for SCC are that they’re 2nd and 3rd quizzers have more experience than Tech’s. But there is a telling stat that seems to give Georgia Tech an advantage. The team that has had more rest has won both times they’ve met up before. The first tournament this year was at Brant’s home church—Tech won. The second tournament was in West Virginia. Although that’s still further away for Seminole, they took an extra travel day while GT got there at 4:30 in the morning. This tournament is easier an easier trip for Tech. So for these two reasons, it looks like it’s a tossup, but I’ll go with Tech on a gut feeling.