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A valuable first event of the year for our non-veteran players, limited to those in their first two years of competing. We sent seven players, five for their first collegiate tournament, and two others to only their second. The "veteran" among the novices, with a whole season of experience under his belt, was Bryan Gast, who led Carleton "Tomayto" to a fine third-place finish among 12 teams, leading that team in scoring with a better than 40 points per game individual average. But this team enjoyed balance and depth, with great contributions as well by Kevin Clair, Keith Purrington, and Charley Huberty. Kevin and Keith also averaged over 30 points per game, making Carleton "Tomayto" the only team with three players among the top 15 individual scorers. This team finished the full round robin in a three-way tie for first, at 10-1, but then lost all three of their final games, in rematches among the top four, to finish 3rd. Carleton "Tomahto", consisting of frosh Mike Church, Sarah Horowitz, and Simone Kahmeyer, was ranked 5th with a 6-5 record following the round robin, but also lost all three final games in rematches with the field's middle third, to finish 8th. Mike averaged almost 65 points per game to earn all-star recognition (and a book prize) as the tournament's #2 individual scorer. Sarah, averaging almost 28 ppg. in support, happened to be the tournament's top-scoring female player. Coach Eric enjoyed the trip despite a sore throat that left him (after moderating 13 rounds) with no voice at all beyond a pathetic croak for the ride home. In fine Carleton tradition, the teams played more questions all the way back, even after a long day of competition; just what Eric loves to see!
WE WON! The Carleton team breezed by all oppostion in this unusual-format tournament for teams of up to eight players, wherein half of each school's squad is sent to different rooms each round to play on packets with different subject themes. Shane Ewert, Gabe Lyon, Chris Idemmili, Brant Beyer, Neal Schuster, Kevin Clair, and Mike Church combined--with unplanned-for help in one round from Brian Droitcour--to score 173 points for Carleton as compared with 120 for second place Oklahoma, and on down through Illinois, Wash. U., Minnesota, Iowa State, Wisconsin, Grinnell, and Wichita State. A lightning round competition was also held, and won by Shane, with Chris tied for 5th and Kevin tied for 8th. Carleton players were the top individual scorers on 11 of the tournament's 32 theme packets, with Shane being the top scorer on "ACF," "Belly up to the Bard," "Fame is Relative," "Italia," "Myths & Legends," "Poetry," and "Theater, Not Theatre"; Gabe the top scorer on "Things That Are Hard," and "Women in History"; Brant the top scorer on "This Was the Month That Was, September 2001"; and Neal being the top scorer on "Arlington." Brian Droitcour, who last played an intercollegiate tournament for Carleton two years ago as a sophomore, was present in the Iowa Union attending a conference, where he was spotted by team members. With only seven players present, and therefore a vacancy, and with a theme round on "Classical Music" approaching, a specialty of Brian's, some players dashed off to the floor where Brian had been spotted earlier, found him, and brought him back down to play that one round, a packet on which he "cleaned up." It was a weekend where all went right for the Carleton quizzers -- with the exception of the van's brief visit to a ditch near Waterloo on the way back, but we won't focus on that. (And, as Eric didn't come along on this trip, officially he knows nothing of this...)
Thanks to Gabe's calculation that the shortest route to St. Louis lay through his hometown of Galesburg, Illinois, the team enjoyed the Lyon family's hospitality Friday night before setting out well before the crack of dawn in order to arrive at Washington University in time for the tournament. Carleton A (Shane, Gabe, Chris, Neal) went 11-2 and placed 3rd in the 18-team field, behind only Kentucky and Michigan. Carleton B (Keith, Bryan, Mike, Emily Young) went 5-8, placing 14th overall but 4th in the "Division II" competition for first or second-year players. Shane was 4th overall in individual scoring, and Gabe not far behind that -- between them, they went 99-9, a nice 1-2 punch as regards tossups to negs. ratio. In the add-on "TADD Bowl" singles competition following the regular tournament, all four members of Carleton A made it into the top bracket of 16. Chris had the #4 seed entering the double elimination head-to-head rounds, but wound up 11th. Gabe had the #5 seed and finished 7th. Shane finished 12th, after being eliminated by Gabe, and Neal finished 16th. In the bottom bracket, Bryan worked his way up to 21st after avenging an earlier loss to Keith, who finished right behind at 22nd, while Mike and Emily wound up 29th and 32nd, respectively. The drive back to Northfield on Sunday included a midday stop in downtown Galesburg, where the team enjoyed sandwiches courtesy of "Cornucopia," the Lyon family's natural food store. Everyone agrees that Gabe's parents are very nice!
We finished second to Chicago. After the first night's singles and doubles play we were in third, but strong performances by both Carleton quads on Saturday moved us up to second. The team for this one was Brant, Chris, Sarah, and Shane playing 1st quads; Bryan, Gabe, Kevin, and Neal playing 2nd quads; Shane playing 1st singles; Gabe playing 2nd singles; Chris and Neal at 1st doubles; Brant and Bryan at 2nd doubles; and Kevin and Sarah at 3rd doubles.
Shane, Gabe, Chris, and Brant decided to forgo Penn Bowl 11 on the East Coast as well as a mid-winter weekend in Minnesota for a chance to compete at the first-ever Penn Bowl Mirror in Pasadena, California. The team enjoyed spending much of the weekend on the palm-tree-lined campus of the California Institute of Technology, where on Saturday Carleton and five other California teams duked it out in a triple round-robin. UC-Berkeley was declared the winner by a one-game margin over second-place Carleton, who compiled a 12-3 record by defeating Berkeley once (in a close game that was only resolved when a Berkeley protest had been ruled in Carleton's favor), while losing once to Caltech's house team. Thanks to third- and fourth-place finishes in the tournament's individual scoring, Shane and Gabe received book prizes -- a guide to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence for Shane, and a cultural commentary on twentieth-century art entitled "Modern Times, Modern Places" for Gabe. When not competing, the team had ample time to see the sights of Caltech and Pasadena -- including a spectacular view of the San Gabriel Mountains from the ninth floor of Caltech's monolithic Millikan Memorial Library. At least one adventure ensued on Saturday night, when Chris and Shane decided to attend a public screening courtesy of Caltech's Anime Society -- but managed to do so only after they had survived a series of pranks at the hands of Caltech students. To be sure, the long weekend out west proved to be a grand excuse for four senior quiz-bowlers looking to put off their comps research.
Three Carleton teams journeyed to Madison for the 15th annual running of the Elvis. On what proved to be generally tough questions, our top team of Brant, Gabe, and Shane did quite well in a full round robin, going 8-3, if memory serves, with each loss coming by 20 points or less. Those narrow losses underscored how they missed the presence of Chris, who had to miss the trip due to a family funeral. This left Carleton A tied by record with Michigan State for the last spot in the break for playoffs into the top four, and Carleton had (narrowly) defeated MSU, but the tiebreak was on points, and Carleton lost that by 70 or 75 (did we mention that we could have used Chris?) to fall into the middle bracket of four for playoffs. There they went 2-1 in final matches, to finish 5th, 10-4 overall. Another Carleton team -- Emily, Kevin, Mike Church, and Ezra Lyon -- started out 1-7, but won their last six matches to finish at .500 and feel like they had some great momentum for future events. This was the quiz team debut for Ezra, Gabe's younger brother. Finally, the Carleton team of Courtney Colby, Neal, Sarah, and Simone hung in there on the tough questions, defeating St. Olaf and a Wisconsin house team, though being overmatched by most of the rest of the field.
Carleton won two of the three championships awarded at the largest NAQT SCT ever to date. The Division I "A" team of Brant, Chris, Gabe, and Shane went 11-3 to finish 3rd overall (behind Chicago and Illinois) and earning an automatic invitation to the ICT with our fourth consecutive Midwest Division I Undergraduate championship. Our Division II team of Ezra, Keith, Kevin, and Mike Church also gained entry to the ICT by winning the Division II championship with a 12-2 record, handily beating the University of Missouri twice to capture the title, where Missouri needed to win only one of the games to win it themselves. Kevin gained all-star recognition for his individual scoring statistics. Also competing for Carleton were Bryan, Courtney, Mike Olson, and Neal, in Division I (4-10 record), and Charlotte Christensen, Heather Purdy, Sarah, and Simone in Division II (5-8 record; the debut tournament for Charlotte). This last was the first all-female team ever to play in an intercollegiate tournament for Carleton, though we've had 3/4 female teams several times in the past. We enjoyed our rendezvous in St. Louis with Emily Pike '99, and Rob Hentzel, who came to moderate at the tournament, and to spend time reading questions in motel rooms with the Carleton contingent. With the 17 of us, plus those two, plus several others from Wash U., we had a memorable dinner for 24 at the House of India Saturday night after the tournament. A very successful and fun event for us, the nine-hour drive each way notwithstanding.
Two teams represented Carleton at ACF regionals, which began with two simultaneous round robins among an evenly split field. Carleton A (Brant, Chris, Gabe, and Shane) did well enough in the first round robin (losing only to Michigan B and the eventual winner, a well-stacked Chicago A) to garner a third seed going into the play-off round robin comprising the top four teams in each initial division, but managed only to win one game thereafter (avenging Illinois B for their head-to-head win at NAQT sectionals) for an overall seventh-place finish with a 6-8 record. Carleton B (Courtney, Ezra, Keith, and Kevin C.), in the same division as Carleton A to start out the day, wound up 3-10 and in fourteenth place amidst a tough sixteen-team field, though they did post a win against Iowa in the play-offs. For most of the afternoon, the teams enjoyed the company of alumna Emily Pike ('99) and Gabe and Ezra's parents, who treated everyone to dinner at a "Noodles" restaurant in Hyde Park after the tournament. Everyone also relished Saturday night's drive back to Northfield, particularly since it entailed reading questions until 4 a.m.!
It may not be the most gracious thing for a host to do, but for the second year in a row a Carleton team won the championship at our own CUT. This year it was the twosome of Brant Beyer and Chris Idemmili, who took first place in a field of 28 teams, defeating an Iowa State duo in the final, 260 to 200. Brant and Chris, playing as Carleton Yuan, compiled an overall record of 13-3, becoming unstoppable in three rounds of playoffs after having finished 3rd in their 14-team division in a preliminary round robin. Full results of the tournament are available elsewhere on this website. Also finishing 13-3 was the solo-team of Gabe Lyon (Carleton Chou), who won that division with an 11-2 record, including a win over the eventual champions, but was ousted in the playoff semifinals by Brant and Chris in a rematch. Gabe went on to beat a Northwestern duo in the 3rd-place game, to allow Carleton to take two of the three trophies at stake. Also among the eight teams making the playoffs was the duo of Kevin Clair and Mike Olson (Carleton Sung), who went 9-4 in their division, before being defeated in playoff quarterfinals by Gabe. Altogether, Carleton entered seven teams in our home tournament, tying a team record with 17 students playing. (Including three student moderators -- Bryan, Courtney, and David Niles -- 20 current Carleton students participated in the tournament, definitely a team record.) Every one of the seven Carleton teams did well in this one, with every team winning at least six games. The remaining house teams were Carleton T'ang (Heather and Neal), who went 8-4-1; Carleton Ch'ing (Danielle Kurtzleben in her intercollegiate quizbowl debut, Ezra, Mike Church, and Sarah), who went 7-5-1; Carleton Han (Shane), who went 7-6; and Carleton Ming (Emily, Keith, Simone, and two others making their first intercollegiate team appearances, Kevin Kalinowski, and Kyle Willett), who went 6-7. Well done, all!
Carleton qualified and sent both a Division I and Division II (novice) team to these national championships, with good results for both: an 8th place finish nationally for our Division II team of Kevin C., Ezra, Keith, and Mike, and an 8th place finish among undergraduate teams, 19th overall, for our Division I seniors: Gabe, Shane, Chris, and Brant. Our return flight wasn't until Monday morning, so we enjoyed a full day of leisure on Sunday, spent mostly playing questions (what else?) with '01 Carleton grad Ted Salk and NAQT president Rob Hentzel joining our teams and coach. The quasi-traditional dinner at an Indian restaurant was made convenient by there being one a few steps outside the door to our Sunday night motel.
WE WON! A Carleton team of Gabe, Shane, Chris, and Neal, went 12-1 and defeated Chicago in the final, 295-150 to close out the intercollegiate career of three of our seniors in perfect style. Gabe was 2nd in the tournament in individual scoring, Shane 5th, Chris 10th, and Neal 14th. Carleton outscored its collective opponents on the day 4490 to 1440. The trip featured the craziest travel logistics at least since Carleton's first trip to Penn Bowl years ago (driving to Chicago, then flying to Baltimore and renting a car to drive to Philadelphia, and the same in reverse). Gabe, Shane, and Neal drove to the east coast, picking Chris up at the airport after he flew out late enough on Friday so as not to miss classes; then all four turned around right after the tournament and drove back again. Seven tournaments worth of questions were read on the road....
We closed out the season with this event for first and second-year players. In a 14-team field, Carleton Cheerios (Ezra, Kevin C., Sarah, and Mike) went 10-3 to finish third behind Chicago and Pitt. Carleton Froot Loops (Keith, Kyle, Simone, and Charlotte) won 5 and lost 8. Ezra won a book prize for finishing 3rd in the tournament in individual scoring. (He was the top scorer among players with more than one teammate, behind the standout of a two-person team and a person playing solo.) Everyone contributed; the trip was a fun one; lots of questions were read in the van in both directions; and it was an all-around nice way to end the year's competition.
