By David Marriott

Wow, I think after today everyone that was able to attend the Marquette Manor Invitational deserves an “I survived the MMI 2005” t-shirt. I was supposed to leave college this morning at 5:00 to try to make it 150 miles south to the quiz venue. This morning at 4:30 I woke up to about a foot of snow and huge drifts around the car that I had scheduled to borrow. I feverishly dug it out of the snow and proceeded toward I-94. After much travail, I finally met up with the team that I am helping and we made it to Chicago, but too late for them to quiz. We just enjoyed watching. The teams that were able to make it through the snow were:

Capitol City
Faith Coleman (WI)
Faith (MI)
Falls (WI, teams 1 and 2)
Heritage
Marquette
Parsippany
Ridgewood
Schaumburg

After the morning round robin quizzing, the seeding looked like this:

1. Faith (MI)
2. Parsippany
2. Capitol City
2. Schaumburg
5. Falls 1
6. Faith Coleman
7. Ridgewood

Faith received the bye to the finals and the playoff rounds were as follows: Capitol City v. Schaumburg v. Faith Coleman

I was not in this match, but I saw the end from outside. Schaumburg prevailed over Capitol City 200 to 160.

Parsippany v. Falls v. Ridgewood

I watched this match and the score deceives people into thinking it was close. Parsippany controlled the match and the outcome was never in question although the score was 220 to 160.

Finals: Parsippany v. Schaumburg v. Faith (MI)

Parsippany came out guns ablazin’ in the first round and by a small margin gave Faith their only middle win of the day. Schaumburg was eliminated. In the next round, Faith returned to the form that we saw all day as Eric O’Brien clinched the 1st place honors with a correct answer to question 17.

Faith (MI):
This team is looking pretty sharp for this time of year. It appears that they are already strong on references and their talent goes five deep. They are led by senior Christina Foran (the last of Michigan’s AACS quizzers). She quizzed out in just under half of today’s matches. Steve Graham, RJ Tanis, Eric O’Brien and Sarah Moon all contributed a couple match (at least) on average.

Parsippany:
This team has some serious potential for later this year. I was impressed by their young quizzer, Keith Fisher. The young man quizzed out 7 times in ten matches today. He is slightly error prone, but a phenomenal quizzer nonetheless. They also have good contributors in Kevin Christman and Arielle.

Schaumburg:
Well, Mr. Thaxton is taking some time away from quiz. In his absence Brother Koontz from Neighborhood Bible Time is coaching. The team looked fairly good, but they lacked some passion and intensity. I heard one of their quizzers tell a teammate as they were about to start the finals, “We’re gonna get smoked.” She was wrong; they hung in for a while. We won’t see them again until their State and then in South Carolina. This team could be a surprise, but it will all depend on what is accomplished between now and then.

Capitol City:
Capitol City is lead by Felicia Burdette yet again. I didn’t see much of them today. They were tied with Parsippany and Schaumburg after round robin and they just didn’t keep it up in the playoff. The tournament format dealt them unfortunate hand (as they didn’t actually lose to miss the playoffs, they just didn’t get a high win).