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We won! Carleton supplied a quarter of the field (4 of 16 teams) and swept all three trophy positions at Grinnell's undergrad tournament. With Eric off traveling in China, and our top player Pat Hope sitting this one out, ten Carls drove to Grinnell and placed all four teams in the top seven. Carleton Cartman (Max Parrish and John Morse) went 10-1 to finish first. Carleton Kenny (the frosh: Garrett Ryan, John Cooney, Hannah Breckbill, and Ted Kuhn) took second by going 9-2, and actually led the entire field in points per game average. Carleton Kyle (Richard Leavelle and Nate Pysno) went 7-4, and beat Truman State and Minnesota in tiebreakers to claim third overall). Carleton Stan (Jack Rousseau and Trevor Burnham) also qualified for the top bracket after divisional play, and took 7th place with a 5-6 overall record. Jack led the whole tournament in individual scoring, and Max led in power tossups. Nice way to start the season!
More winning! We entered five teams in a 15-team field for this, and after seven rounds of divisional play all five Carleton teams qualified for the upper bracket of eight teams that then played a double-elimination schedule of playoff matches for the championship. For the second tournament in a row we wound up taking home all three trophies offered: Pat won the tournament playing solo, undefeated at 10-0. In second, losing to Pat in the final, were Richard and Hannah, 9-3 overall. Jack and Nate placed third, 7-5 on the day. Also finishing in the top group were teams of Max and Peter, and John and Trevor. It was great having Carleton team alumni Ted Salk, Chris Idemmili, Gabe Lyon, and Ezra Lyon all show up as tournament moderators. There is talk of a fun future get-together for matches between available alumni and our very talented current group...
The beat goes on for winning so far this year. At this tournament for eight-person teams playing themed packets, six students (Garrett, Jack, John, Max, Nate, Peter) combined with coach Eric to dominate a seven-team field. Altogether Carleton played 26 matches over the two day tournament, and went 22-4. Under TTGT11's unique point system, final results were Carleton 118, Minnesota 61, Wisconsin 51, with Grinnell, Drake, Illinois, and Michigan State following behind. Eric also won the individuals shoot-out, but Jack got the well-deserved applause in the finals round for his one-word buzz on "Slartibartfast" (answer: "fjords"). Fun Saturday night playing yet more questions with some of the Minnesota and Wisconsin people, including alumni Ezra and Gabe Lyon, now in grad school at those places respectively.
Winning here once more, in a very small field, completes a perfect term for us competitively: four tournaments played; four tournaments won -- a Carleton team first! An Iowa-based house team (Paul Drube and Matt Larsen) played in the field as an unofficial team and went undefeated, but among the five official teams our two finished first and third, with Carleton Brain (John, Max, Pat, Richard) going 8-2 to win, and Carleton Pinky (Garrett, Ted, Trevor) finishing 4-6.
Five tournaments played so far; five championships. Here again, Carleton fielded three teams, and finished 1st (John and Richard), 2nd (Jack and Max), and 3rd (Trevor, Garrett, Ted). Garrett was the tournament's top scorer.
Jack, Nate, Pat, and Peter went 14-1 to take the Div. I sectional championship crown with a record of 14-1, defeating in an exciting finals match the University of Minnesota, with which they had earlier split two games. Our second Div. I team, Adam, John, Max, and Richard, fought to a fourth-place finish in an eight-team field, going 7-7. Pat was the Div. I tournament's second-highest individual scorer, sandwiched between two of our alumni, brothers Ezra Lyon '04 and Gabe Lyon '02, now playing as grad students for Minnesota and Wisconsin respectively -- which were also the two teams sandwiched between Carleton 1 and Carleton 2 in the final standings. In Division II, Garrett, Ted, and Trevor teamed with Sam Benshoof, playing in his first intercollegiate tournament, and reached their final match tied for the lead with Grinnell, each with a record of 10-2 in a ten-team field. In the deciding game Grinnell prevailed 305-280, a contest decided only by power for Grinnell on the final tossup (the singer "Nelly".) Garrett was by far the Div. II field's leading individual scorer, averaging 84.62 points per game and powering more tossups by himself (32) than the total for any other team. (Grinnell had 31 for power.) So it's two more handsome additions to the trophy case, plus, more importantly, Carleton invitations to the NAQT ICT in both divisions.
Pat and John worked as moderators, but the rest of us formed four teams to play in our own tournament, and in a 17-team field all four finished in the top six. Carleton Old (Nate and Jack) went 10-6 to finish 6th; Carleton Blue (Peter and Max) went 10-5-1 to finish 5th; Carleton Borrowed (Adam, Richard) went 12-4 to finish tied for 3rd; and Carleton New (Sam, Hannah, Trevor, Ted, Garrett) went 13-3 to finish 2nd, behind a St. Olaf team that cleaned up at 15-1.
Our Division I team (Jack, John, Max, Pat) finished 3rd in the competition for the undergraduate national championship, tied for 12th overall. At the end of the 13 regular rounds of tournament play we were tied for 2nd with Chicago among the undergrad-only teams, and therefore played-off for the right to face Williams in the undergraduate final. Carleton led that crucial match from the first tossup until the second-to-last, but Chicago took five of the last six to win 255-215, and consign us to 3rd place. Though slightly disappointing to us given our hopes for better this year, 3rd place in the country is a lofty finish. Along the way to it, Carleton defeated Simon Fraser, Georgia, Carnegie-Mellon, Vanderbilt, Princeton and Yale. Our losses were to Williams and Chicago, as well as Brown, Virginia, Rochester, and North Carolina. It was the 240-205 loss to North Carolina in our last regular match that dropped us into a tie with Chicago and forced the tiebreaker game which they won. As it happens, the elder statesman of that North Carolina team is Carleton alumnus Kevin Clair ('04), now in grad school at UNC, who somehow didn't get the message that his undergraduate alma mater was supposed to win that game! Pat led all undergrad players in individual scoring, averaging 61.25 ppg. In Div. II, the Baby Carls (Garrett, Sam, Ted, and Trevor) also did well, tieing for 12th place with wins along the way against Snead State, Southern Virginia, Vanderbilt, Maryland, Oklahoma State, Columbia University, and Grinnell. Garrett averaged 68.46 points per game, good for first place individually in the Div. II field, and giving Carleton both the top undergraduate and top Div. II individual scorers in the country this year.
Summary by Jack: Jack, Nate (even though he graduated already), John, Trevor, Garrett and Peter headed down to Grinnell for the mirrors of Moon Pie and RC Cola. Due to the tournament being an open one, the Moon Pie held more individual success than team success. Garrett, Nate and Peter got fourth (8-6) after losing a tiebreaker to Illinois and Jack, John and Trevor got fifth (6-8) losing many close games including two tiebreakers. As a school we placed three players in the top six. Garrett was third (and got himself a negmaster), Jack fourth and John sixth. One may wonder how a team with two scorers in the top six finished below .500, well let's just say we were very "Quiz Bowl Serious" about the tournament. The next day was the RC Cola trash tournament. Jack, John, Nate and Peter formed Carleton's team with Trevor offered as a free agent and Garrett moderating. With Iowa's big trash team there it was really a fight for second, which Carleton lost to Grinnell, taking third at 6-4. Though we were able to hand Iowa their only loss on the last tossup, which Nate nailed. Again we put two players in the top six, this time with Jack at fifth (taking the Carleton Trashmaster title) and Nate at sixth. Feeling left out of the proceedings the day before, Jack got his own negmaster title by being very "Quiz Bowl Serious." All in all a very good time was had by all involved.
In a tough field on tough questions, the Carleton team of Jack, Pat, John, and Garrett placed 5th out of ten teams, a spot ahead of Eric's team, with which two games were split. Pat lead the entire field in individual scoring. A full round robin had both Carleton and Eric's team at 5-4 and in the top group for a secondary split round robin among six teams, in which Carleton's lone victory came versus Eric & Co., to take 5th. This closed out both a very successful season for the team and a very successful Carleton quizbowl career for Jack, who is off to Iowa (and doubtless future quizbowl competition versus Carleton in grad school.)
