BUT
FIRST:
Things to remember while traveling out of state:
Traffic
on I-77 can be very random. Let me explain. We were driving north on I-77 in North Carolina when we came across very sluggish traffic around mile marker 20ish. At this time, the southbound traffic was flowing efficiently. When we called 511 traffic, we were told to our dismay that the interstate merged into one lane around mile marker 82. Obviously we got off in search of a back road, and we found it, State Road 21 traveled north right along I-77. So we began on that road, and non-surprisingly it was backed up as well after a mile or so. What was surprising was that we could see then an I-77 up-to-speed and with very little traffic. It then took us quite a while to get back on 77, upon which we experienced no more traffic northbound, even near the merged lanes. However, we saw 77 southbound stopped up and through Troutman for the rest of North Carolina . Go figure.
It’s very hard to find a room at 11:30 PM Thanks so much to Matt West for very graciously giving us his room so we wouldn’t have to sleep in the car. Apparently the rooms we reserved we all taken. “See, you know how to take the reservation, but you don’t know how to hold the reservation. And that really is the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anyone can just take them.” Marietta, Ohio, is a haunted town. While trying to find a hotel, we ran into more secret roads and graveyards that should be allowed in one city. And I swear they were not there before. Seriously! I’m being serious!
It’s always a good idea to bring a ball or a video game or something to entertain you, even if you think you won’t have time to bother. Returning back on I-26 in South Carolina , we encountered a complete halt in traffic going east for well over an hour. So after a while this guy in front of us opens his trunk and pulls out a football, wanting someone to play catch or something. So then people started getting out of their cars (including us) and played some ball, moved some cakes, and examined some tire shards. I really felt bonded with the other people, in that we were bonded by being stuck together.
Try to get a spare tire that is just a normal tire, and not a doughnut. After passing through construction on I-95 southbound we heard a sound that was just not right. After pulling over, we saw that one of our tires was flat. We called AAA thinking they could repair said tire, but it was too torn up, and after waiting a couple hours for them to show up, they simply changed the flat with the spare. Unable to make the 200+ mile return trip on just a doughnut, we stayed an extra night near Brunswick , took it in to a Walmart Service Center Monday morning and finally made it home later that day. That brings me to my last tip: Bring an extra everything. Extra clothes, extra toiletries, extra patience, because you never know when your trip will take a little longer than expected.
Now, to the review:
THE 2006 MIDSEASON INVITATIONAL
16 teams from over 10 different
ministries came to participate on October 21st with aspirations to start the new quiz year right by proving themselves in this tournament. As I spent most of the quizzing in the winner’s bracket (go us!), I can take you through our journey experiencing the best teams there. As I was quite biased toward Florida teams, I wished for the 3 teams from the Sunshine State to take the top 3. How did that work out? Well, you’ll have to read on and find out…
The Tournament:
The 16 teams there were separated into two divisions, and there they quizzed teams only in their division for the four round robin teams. Then, the top two teams from both divisions received a
bye and went to lunch early, while the tournament began. The rules were double elimination, and two fouls in attempting to answer the tossup would result in a new question.
One by one teams fell out of the winner’s bracket and made their way to the loser’s bracket, where they faced elimination from the tournament. (I am sorry to say I cannot comment on the consolation tournament, but if you want to details, feel free to visit http://www.theFQA.com/FQA and click on Recent Events!) Not surprisingly, the four teams remaining in the winner’s bracket were NAC (my team), PVKY, Calvary, and New York 1. My team had a bye when PVKY and Calvary gave New York their first loss. In what could be considered a huge upset, Calvary and NAC was able to team up to give PVKY a loss as well. While at this time, Parsippany, New York 2, and Truth (Lighthouse) survived the losers bracket (just eliminating Wood County 1, the home church, in 8th place) to make the finals. Parsippany was then forced to take on both New York teams and could not overcome the odds, finishing in 7th. With 6 teams left and two without a loss (NAC and Calvary), we wound up receiving our first loss in a quiz against New York 2 and PVKY. Meanwhile New York 1 got eliminated (6th place) while facing Calvary and Truth. To determine 5th place, NAC faced Truth and New York 2. Despite Truth gaining an early lead, they fell victim to the error zone and were eliminated at 5th.
So here we are at the final four. New York 2. Pleasant View. Calvary . UCF, er, I mean, NAC. We high won the last quiz so we received a bye. Now, let me say this about this particular quiz ( New York vs. PVKY vs. Calvary ). Pleasant View was beaten at least twice during this quiz, but because of some mistakes in strategy, Pleasant View was not eliminated. The first mistake was with Calvary . They were at the point where they had at least a middle win and a likely high win at question 15 or 16. PVKY was low in points, and New York had a solid lead over them as well. However, instead of plopping down and staying put, they jumped and made errors, allowing PVKY to make 30 point gains toward Calvary . The second mistake was with New York. Now, maybe they wanted Calvary to get a loss, or what, but going into question 20 the score was 110 Calvary , 120 PVKY, 140 New York . PVKY misses, goes down to 110. New York , instead of allowing Calvary to get question 20 and thus eliminated PVKY, jumps and answers quickly and gets it right, sending Calvary and PVKY into a tiebreaker. Calvary gets the tiebreaker but PVKY challenged and got the question disallowed. Calvary then misses the next tiebreaker and PVKY gives Calvary their first loss.
And here I am. New York got the high and received a bye, so it was PVKY vs. NAC vs. Calvary . Here my team lost fair and square, with me missing a few quotes and stuff, and Calvary and PVKY both taking off. We headed home early at 4th. And just like that PVKY came back stronger than ever and took out Calvary and New York , in that order. Pleasant View KY wins the Midseason for a
second year in a row!
So what can we learn from this tournament?
Truth can learn that the future is looking bright. Truth is a great underdog team and really surprised a lot of teams by making it so far in this tournament. This is a new team on the scene, yet they scored very well and had great depth in that you could always count on at least 3 of them contributing to their score every single quiz. And they’re from Florida. This team shows a lot of promise and talent, and I would like to apologize for not including them in my preview. Hopefully we’ll be seeing them at Athens .
NAC can learn to work on depth instead of allowing teams to dig their own grave with errors. The best teams I have quizzed on have been teams that had 5 people that were reliable (or 4 and a toothbrush). Heather provided enough correct answers to get us middle wins (or sometimes high wins), but 4 or 5 good people are always better than 3.
New York can learn that combining your teams can be a good thing. With New York 1 being their stronger team in the morning, and New York 2 being their stronger team in the afternoon, a correct combination of the two could lead to a victory in the long run. I would credit this to the fact that New York has been rather inconsistent over the past few years. Yet at other tournaments they struggle every quiz. And here their #2 team exceeded their #1 team. They have made it to AACS 2nd day twice now with an almost entirely different roster. If they can figure out first what their official name is, and second, who should be their solid 5 quizzers, we can expect perhaps an AACS, or at least a NYC victory.
Calvary can learn that errors kill. Both PVKY’s first loss and Calvary ’s first loss were because of excessive erroring. And you know it’s pretty bad when the only team not in the error zone is my team, because I miss questions all the time. Use free errors when you have team (3 before question 16), and only in do-or-die situations should you attempt to answer questions in the error zone. The difference really is 50 points, 20 that you could have had, 10 that you would lose, and 20 that the other team would get. Seriously, that was one of the reasons my team got as far as it did, because other teams (and not just Calvary , but almost all of the teams) would error when it hurt them.
PVKY can learn that they aren’t invincible. The started this year coming off a (well-earned) high, and the fact is that these other teams are starting to find chinks in their armor that aren’t named Abby. That’s not to say that PVKY didn’t do a great job in coming from behind to win the whole thing, but the fact remains that shouldn’t have been in behind from the beginning. They have a team depth, but hopefully this tournament showed them that they can’t walk into a competition and expect to dominate with minimal effort. The fact is that more and more teams are starting to raise their game and PVKY is going to have to do the same if they want to repeat the success of last year.
What do you think? Am I completely wrong in my diagnosis of a team’s problem? Should Calvary or New York have won? Or is PVKY still unstoppable? And is Marietta really haunted? Send me a
question!