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Got our feet wet starting our season at a very small initial event -- just five teams, playing a double round robin. Both Carleton teams lost twice to both Chicago teams, twice beat a winless Drake squad, and had two games versus each other, with "A" winning both. Three frosh -- Carsten Gehring, Frank Firke, and Max Bearak -- made their Carleton debuts on the B team, along with sophomore Tom Sullivan. Carleton A was seniors Garrett Ryan and Ted Kuhn, and sophomores Austin Bell and Andreas Stoehr. Individually, Garrett was the tournament's #3 scorer, Carsten #5, and Austin #7.
Hmm, left to the coach to write something about this. Garrett, Andreas, Austin, and Tom went for Carleton, and played under pseudonyms, so who knows who scored what, except that "Shaft" scored about 2.5 times as many points as Blackula, Superfly, and Foxy Brown put together. They went 3-5, and then, things moving much more slowly than they had known it would, decided to take pity on the spectating set of parents and left the tournament early. Shortly after which, I (Eric) showed up to look in on how things were going, and was surprised to be told my team had just left. I read a round as a moderator, then actually played a game as Carleton (beating Grinnell, so I guess Carleton was sort of 4-5 before all the forfeits) and then had to leave myself, so that was that. Carsten was also at the open tournament, playing with other friends, on a team that went 3-11.
Nine of our freshmen attended this "novice" event, a nice first tournament choice for the six who were playing for us for the first time. The three who had already debuted in Iowa in October, Carsten, Frank, and Max, combined with Anna Swanson to win the tournament, undefeated at 10-0. Carsten and Frank were the tournament's #4 and #8 individual scorers, making Carleton "A" the only team to have two individuals in the top ten. Altogether they outscored their opponents 4270 to 1535 over 10 games. Carleton "B", which tied for 6th in the 11-team field at 4-6, was a rotation of Scott Fox, Dustin Anderson, Emily Barter, Collin Hazlett, and Becca Cordes, with one of the five playing each round with a combined "Extras" team knocked together to fill a schedule slot left empty by a no-show. For this team Scott finished 5th in overall individual scoring for the tournament -- and had a 9-tossup game during his one appearance on the "Extras" team.
Andreas, Austin, Carsten, and Frank attended this for us, and finished 3rd in the eleven-team field, losing only to Minnesota and Chicago. The individual scoring was nicely balanced among these four, with each of them averaging between 20.00 and 33.46 ppg. A good tournament.
It may not have been the most gracious thing for a host school to do, but we finished 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th in a 19-team field at our own tournament. (20 teams played, but the Iowa team that placed in between 2nd and 3rd was technically ineligible.) Going 10-1 on the day, losing only to that Iowa team, was the duo of Austin and Ted, playing as Old Possum's Book of Practical Carls. Runners-up were Michael Servis and Andreas, playing as 'Tis Pity She's a Carl, and going 10-2, with both losses at the hands of Austin/Ted. Then came the freshmen: Emily, Frank, Scott, and Anna, playing as Ode on the Death of a Favorite Carl, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes, who went 9-3. In 5th, just behind Wisconsin, was Tom, playing solo as The Country of the Pointed Carls, and winding up 8-3. Not counting matches of Carls vs. Carls, our four teams' collective extramural record on the day was 32-4. Alright...
Farther south on the same day, Carsten joined two Iowa grad students to play at the Illinois Open, where his team went 9-3 to finish 4th. All in all, a very winning day for Carleton quizbowlers.
We entered three house teams in this on-campus event. Garrett, Austin, Andreas, and Ted, playing as Jormungand, Hel, Fenrir, and Sleipnir, went 6-2 in the initial nine-team round robin, and after further playoffs finished at 7-5 and third in the tournament. Garrett was the tournament's #2 scorer, and top undergraduate scorer. The all-frosh team of Carsten, Frank, Scott, and Anna went 3-8 overall to finish tied for 7th, and Carsten placed as the tournament's #7 individual scorer. Nathaniel Snell, Michael Servis, Marc Boyce, and Nathan White went 2-9, finishing 9th. Emily Kawaler gave us her day to serve as stat goddess, entering all the tournament statistics on Carsten's computer.
Carleton results: a team of Andreas, Austin, Carsten, and Frank went 6-6 to finish 4th in a 7-team field. Anna, Emily B., Marc, and Max were winless (0-12).
Not a quizbowl event as such, but a group of team-associated people attended this dinner and world geography/intenational current events trivia contest again this year. Chris Burke reports: we were rather late because we made some wrong turns and then had to compete with Gophers hockey fans in a race to find the remaining 2 parking spaces in Minneapolis, which we won via undisclosed tactics. Max managed to run inside in time to check in the team and see the start of the competition; the rest trickled in within the first 10 questions. Max more or less knew the answer to everything that anyone knew an answer to, including the names of 10 provinces in Brazil and the 11 national languages of South Africa (which was a tiebreaker question for two other teams but we totally would have smoked it if it had been ours). At the half-time score check we were actually on top by one point, but the question difficulty skyrocketed in the second half, and the Current Events questions were dubiously current events-related. We also totally blew a potential 5-point question on naming some members of the Obama administration--we only ended up with one point, from "Secretary of State - Hillary Clinton." Carleton finished with 59 points out of a possible 75; the winners had 62. We all went onstage to accept our prize, which was a gift certificate for each player for $25 to The Liffey, a pub somewhere in Minneapolis. No one on the team is 21 yet. The team was (in order of relative worth): Max, Austin, Francesca [Chubb-Confer], Frank, Andreas, Emily [Kawaler], Nathaniel, Me.
In Division I, Carleton's top team of Garrett, Andreas, Austin, and Nathaniel went 10-4, finishing third overall and winning our sectional's undergraduate title for the fourth year in a row, and ninth time in eleven years. Garrett was an all-star, Division I's #3 overall scorer. Our Div. I "B" team of Ted, Marc, Michael, and Chris went 1-13 to tie for 7th in the eight-team Division I field. In Division II, our freshmen Carsten, Frank, Max, and Scott were unbeaten on the day at 13-0 in a fourteen-team field. Carsten was the division's #2 overall scorer, and Frank #6. Carleton's second Div. II entry, sophomore Dan Ehrenberg playing with frosh Dustin, Anna, and Emily B., went 11-2 in the full round robin to tie Grinnell for 2nd - and then settled for 3rd after a playoff with Grinnell for which only Emily was still present.
A frosh-soph team of Andreas, Carsten, Frank, and Max acquitted themselves very well at ACF Regionals, finishing 7th in an 18-team field with an overall 8-3 record. (5-3 in their preliminary bracket, and then 3-0 in the middle-bracket playoffs.) Andreas was a top-ten individual scorer, and Carsten was not far behind.
Carleton's two teams at this 11-team event went 18-4 between them, and wound up finishing 2nd and 3rd. In terms of average points scored per game and bonus conversion, the relative veterans of Carleton "A" (Andreas, Austin, Ted, and Chris) ranked ahead of the all-frosh Carleton "B" assemblage (Carsten, Frank, Scott, Emily), but in their head to head meeting the youngsters triumphed by a hair, 300-285, and, with both teams running the field otherwise, apart from losses to Carnegie Mellon's Trevor Davis, it was the frosh who got to play a rematch with Davis in the finals. That was an advantaged final, with Davis needing to win only once while Carleton would need to win back to back games to take the championship. Having lost their first match to Davis earlier in the day by 230 points, this seemed to be a tall order, but the young Carls nearly pulled it off, beating Davis in a tense 255-220 match to force a deciding game, and then taking a lead in that into the final tossup, ultimately to lose by a heartbreaking 15, 300-285 -- Davis needed to score 20 points on the final bonus to win, and he collected all 30. Carsten was the tournament's #3 overall scorer, and Andreas #4.
Carleton did well in both divisions, though the only trophies brought back were Garrett's pair of individual Division I All-Star awards as the tournament's #7 overall scorer and as the #3 undergraduate scorer. The Division I team of Garrett, Andreas, Austin, and Ted placed 14th overall in the 32-team field, and 6th(?) in the undergrad-only rankings. Wins were notched over Oklahoma, Tulane, Princeton, Minnesota B, UCLA, Florida, and Georgia; losses were to MIT, Illinois, Harvard B, Florida State, Chicago B, and Maryland. The all-frosh Div. II team of Carsten, Frank, Scott, and Max placed 5th in the novice-teams field, with a 9-4 record that oh so easily might have been better. (Three of the four losses--to Davidson, Yale, and RPI--were by 60 points or less.) After preliminary play the frosh reached the top-eight-teams bracket via a tiebreaker rematch with Davidson, to whom they had earlier dropped a 255-245 contest, but this time in the half-game tiebreaker Carleton romped, 215-45. Other wins along the way came over Gonzaga, two community colleges (Chipola and Reynolds), Wash U./St. Louis, Minnesota, Michigan, Princeton, Chicago B., and McMaster. All nine of us (including the coach) enjoyed a post-tournament steakhouse visit along with Scott's dad and team alumnus Richard Leavelle.
