Quizzing March Madness

Wins. Losses. Groups. Brackets. It must be March Madness. No, not NCAA Men's Basketball. It's the tournaments of Bible Quizzing. There are two of them: the ACC Tournament (once again, not the basketball one) and the Invitational with the Ohio leagues. No more does your standings revolve around points. You either win or you lose. Ya got to be careful, though. One too many losses, and you'll wind up out!

The first of the two tournaments is the ACC Tournament. It is also known by many other names, like the PA tournament and the Clean Slate Tournament. A team is placed in one of eight groups. Three groups have eight teams, five groups have seven teams. A team will quiz against every team in the group once. Record of win and loss is recorded. The top two teams from each group (totalling 16 teams) will go to a single elimination playoff bracket. The team that wins 4 matches in a row is the ACC Tournament champions! It starts at 1 PM at Lancaster Bible College.

Spring City is in Group F. The other six teams in our group are E-Town 3, Petra 7, Neffsville 1, Strasburg 2, Maple Grove 1, Bowmansville 2. We were surely blessed by God through the teams we have been chosen with. We were told every group was going to have a top 8 team. We got the 8th place team. We also got the easiest of the Petras. We've already quizzed against Bowmansville 2, so we know what coming up. We're praying really hard we can get in the playoffs. If we practice hard and trust in the Lord, we should have no problem. Here's are schedule if you'd like to come.

1:00 Strasburg 2 111-S
1:25 Maple Grove 1 104-S
2:35 Petra 7 204-GSC
2:55 Neffsville 1 201-GSC
3:35 E-Town 3 101-S
4:15 Bowmansville 2 111-S

There is the top quizzers award (which I'm going to get) and the quizzing video at 6:15 PM. I hope everyone can come to support the team. It is an all-day event, so come when you can, leave when you have to. We love to hear your cheering! We promise we'll do good!

Now, I like to make my own predictions, just like people like to fill out their brackets for the NCAA March Madness. This is what I think this year will be like:

A REMINDER THAT THESE ARE ONLY PREDICTIONS!!

Group A: Slate Hill 1, Goods 1
Group B: Good Shep 1, Reading
Group C: Petra 1, Zion 1
Group D: Petra 2, Zion 2
Group E: Rockville, Petra 4
Group F: Spring City, Maple Grove 1
Group G: Hope Comm 1, Strausburg 1
Group H: Paradise 4, Weaverland 2

And the brackets would look a little something like this:




If you can't read that, I wouldn't blame you. I had to shrink it so much so that I could upload it, only to make it barely interpretable. It had Spring City in first place, Petra 2 in 2nd place and the semifinalists as Maple Grove 1 and Slate Hill 1. I'm not having it that way to be cocky, but we do have a good chance at that. As long as we stay united as a team under God.

Quizzing Question with a Joke Hint:
What was fixed?
(Hint: It wasn't the Ethiopian eunuch)

It was different to close at LBC

Usually, the season begins at LMH, the halfway or 2nd half beginning at LMH, and the season end at LMH. From what I heard, LMH was already rented out for the day. So we'd have the season closer at Lancaster Bible College. It felt kind of weird. Every time we quizzed there was for the ACC Tourament and once the Invitational. So I had tournament fever when I got there. I was ready for tournaments, but I had to focus on this week and trying to get in 4th. To do so, we needed to score 130 points, averaging 100 for the year. We also needed a little help. Petra 5 could score no more than 75 points. Good Shepherd 1 couldn't scored past 95 points. It seemed possible. The hardest part would be scoring 130 points. But with the way our rookie Chelsea did in practice, it gave even more hope.

We got there early because the coaches had to go to meeting. Spring City went into practice. We used keyword questions. Mike hadn't received the keywords because he was down in Florida. It showed in practice. He wasn't help to do as well. Tim focused on getting Michael to par. I worked with Christine and the rookies. It was spotless, but it would have to do. We had to get out their and do our best. We worshiped, heard announcements, heard Merv's joke (which I predicted the right punch line as the one in the previous post). Then we were off.

I watched in the first round Zion 1 vs. Bowmansville 2. It was closer than I thought it would be. In the end Zion 1 lost. I felt bad for Jeremiah beecause he couldn't quiz out for that last time. Hannah did. Jason got pulled one question, and then put back in because he had to sub. The next match I watched was Petra 5 vs. Rivercorner 1. I wanted to scout out the competition and at the same time root for my next competition to help prevent Petra 5 from reaching more than 75 points. It started out closer. Their number 1 quizzer, Josh Lehmen, quizzed out. But then Petra 5 took off. They got team bonus. Even after losing 5 points because of 5 errors, they were unstoppable. Petra 5 won with 90 points.

Our match was the last round before the playoffs. We sat Tim, Mike, Christine, me. I quizzed out by question 9, giving me 14 quizouts for the year. Tim got 1 buzz in right, but errored out. Michael wasn't too hot either. He did get a correct buzz in, but errored twice. We lost 5 points because of errors. Typical Spring City. Christine could only pick up a bonus situation question. It was up to Chelsea, our rookie who was on fire. At the end of question 14, we had 80 points. Question 15 started and Chelsea buzzed in. She didn't know it, but knowing what we taught her, went with default answer and said "Jesus's". It was right! She got us team bonus in the last moment possible, giving us a win with 110 points.

Then the playoffs began. It was officially announced. It didn't change from what it was the last week. The two semifinal rounds were Slate Hill 1 vs. Rockville and Petra 1 vs. Paradise 4. I had previously promised my friends on Slate Hill I would go watch them and root for them.

My team was split. Christine and I were rooting for Slate Hill 1 and Mike (Schwager) and Tim were for Rockville. It was hard to be louder than Mike and Tim. But apparently my cheering was the best in the end since Slate Hill 1 won. They got a team bonus and two quiz outs. Mike Good was the one dependant for team bonus. They only had 4, and he still had to give his. It was kind of funny watching him go around the material for the answer, but he was very good in the answer, not missing a spot, allowing no room for a bad ruling or a contest. It started out a close match, but then Slate Hill 1 took their lead, and held it. They won 110 to 65.

I left the room quickly because I wanted to see the end of the previous match. I then caught the tale end of the semifinal match with Petra 1. I saw the score was only a win of 75 to 70! I was quickly rethinking my prediction. If a team averaging 138 only got 75 in a semifinal, what would they do in a final match? But I had been right so far, so I went with Petra 1. But I had friends on Slate Hill 1. So my cheering becaming flip-flopping. I would cheer for the team who got the last question right. For example, one question Petra errored and Slate Hill 1 picked up the bonus and got it right. My cheer sounded something like this: "It's okay Petra. Nice try. Don't give up. Good job, Slate Hill 1. Way to pick up the bonus. Keep at it." Petra 1's quizzer for team bonus errored twice and was unable to give them team bonus. Andrew Weiler quizzed out, of course, and that was the highlight of Petra 1. Slate Hill 1 was the victorious team, winning 85 to 65. Therefore, Slate Hill 1 became the 2007 ACC Bible Quizzing Champions.

Yes, I was caught by suprise when Petra 1, averaging 138, lost to Slate Hill 1, who averaged 113. It was ironic to me that last year Slate Hill 1 had the highest point average, and lost in the final to a team that could have finished 3rd. This year, the team with the highest average (probably the highest finishing average in a long time), who also was no lower than 2nd (which was for the first two weeks, and we were first ) lost to a team that dropped as low as 4th at one time. But I was glad in the sense that I would have hated to see Slate Hill 1 lose two finals consecutively. But that did happen to Petra 2 in 2004 and 2005, both times to Maple Grove 1. Well, that's the way it can go. When playoffs come, unpredictable things can happen. That's perfect timing for the upcoming tournaments.

So let's go back to us. Spring City scored 110 points in the last match. We finish the year with a total of 1680, averaging 98.82, rounding up to 99. It is kind of upsetting we couldn't finish at 100 point average. There are so many times where we could look back and point out where we could have gotten the points. Two less erors, two less missed bonuses, 1 more team bonus. But those who choose to linger in the house of failure will never leave it. We got to look ahead to the future, by which I mean tounraments. As for the team's final placing, the final standings haven't been posted, so we don't know. I'm hoping that even though Petra 4 did fine, maybe Good Shepherd 1 didn't, allowing us to sneak into 5th place, the top 5. It would be the highest I ever finished with a team. But's 6th is cool also, a tie.

As for the team individually, we did good. Not awesome, but good. For every quizzer on last year's Spring City who is on this year: last year was their best, this year was second best. Mike finished top 60 last year, but this will only be top 100, which he couldn't get before 2006. Christine got 110 points. She scored 155 points last year, but the years before that Christine never scored more than 40. Last year I got 585 points. This year, I only got 530. Even though we had less matches, I could have still gotten up there to 585. I am also measuring this on the fact I was 12th last year. There is no way I can get 12th again. I'm thinking somewhere between 15th and 20th. But it is still better than 34th place with 515 points, which I got two years ago in 2005. The most impressive was the quiz outs. I couldn't beat my record of 15. I came up one short of tying it. Why I am so happy with 14 quizouts? I may have 14 quizouts, but Tim only got 12 quizouts. Therefore, in the occurance that Tim and I are the same team:

In the "Graham vs. Moss quizzers":
Graham vs. Tim Moss
Graham leads series 1-0

Yes, another Moss down! Since we are on the same team, this was determined by the one to quiz out the most by the end of the year, which was me. If we meet again on the same team, it will pick up from where we left off: me winning 14-12. If we are on opposite teams, this series will be null-and-void if we oppose each other. So don't worry Tim, you still have time to redeem yourself. But I don't think he cares too much that I am better than him, or that I finish the best quizzer on the team. Tim finished the best year he did in his quizzing career. With his score, he will finish probably somewhere between 20th and 30th.

So after 8 weeks of a weekly breakdown, we have now arrived at a point where all 17 chapters of quizzing merge as 1 giant lump. It is called the Tournaments. The tournaments are the last 2 weeks of quizzing. So what is the fate of Spring City? Tune in to find out! I will give you the schedule of the ACC Tourament once I get it.

Quizzing Question of the Post:
Who are the 11 who were present in the upstairs room?

Fun names, fun games, fun but lame joke

So our team had two practices this week. We decided to have a pre-practice as well. It was on Wednesday night, and it was fun because Tim and I got to have a chance to be the coach. Dave said he saw really maturity in us for doing that. This pre-practice did help. I saw how much it helped the next day at practice. Rookies were buzzing in like mad. They were beating in both Tim and I. It was scary and good at the same time. Now all we need to do is make sure they get them right when they buzz in. But with them buzzing the way they are buzzing, it'll be easy to get team bonus, which we need.

Our team also decided to get shirts for the tournaments. They are cerulean blue (sorry Mike, not pink). We also chose to be cool like the Ohio teams and have a phrase, sentance or verse from the material on the back of our shirts, kind of like a team name. It was up to the team to decide a good verse to put on our shirts. While all the team was thinking of good ones, I was thinking up things that were goofy or crazy. Here's what I decided were the top ten not to name your team:

1. Breathing out muderous threats (Acts 9:1)
2. Giving approval to death (Acts 8:1)
3. Knew nothing (Acts 7:18)
4. Looked Straight (Acts 3:4)
5. Alkeldama / "Field of Blood" (Acts 1:19)
6. Pregnant women and nursing mothers (Luke 21:23)
7. Two women grinding together (Luke 17:35)
8. Vehemently accusing (Luke 23:20)
9. Faces downcast (Luke 24:17)
10. The exalted humble (Luke 18:14)

Yeah, none of those made it. Wonder why? What we did decide on was one I actually thought up. It's Luke 19:40- "If they keep quiet, then the stones will cry out!" It's so good because that does describe Spring City. I can imagine us cheering wildly and someone thinking, "I wish Spring City would be quiet" and then we stand up and they read the rest of the shirt and goes "Oh." But it doesn't matter what we are wearing, but rather how we do

Quizzing Question of the Post:
Who are the 3 Saul will carry Jesus's name before?

Quizzing Joke:
Q: How did Saul react to the idea of sneaking out of Damascus at night?
A: He was a basket case (har har har)

Akron Mikeless

These quizzes were tests to Spring City. We only have 5 quizzers. We were one Mike Schwager short of a quiz team. Mike has given us team bonus and the occasional quiz out. Now we didn't have Mike. Could we perform up to average?

Obviously, to get near average we needed team bonus. So we drilled our quizzers as much as possible. We made sure they got the most questions in matches. They missed some, they got some (a lot of them they didn't know they knew). I was throwing Chelsea questions during break time. We still had fun during fun time. Christine and I raided Tim's car. We took out his hockey stuff and passed a ball around with the sticks. It became eventually a game of catch...and answering questions. We had ziti for dinner and was off to Akron.

Akron felt a little lonely. No Reading, no Zion. There really wasn't anyone we knew. The closest was the Hopewell teams. So we had to create our own fun. At least Brandon was there to have some fun with us. Not having Michael didn't stop us from wild cheering. We did the normal stuff, and Brandon gladly joined in.

Our first match was against the home team, Akron 3. So of course we were in the Sanctuary. Wesley Lapp was the quizmaster. He looks different without the facial hair. The match seem to begin still under the stress from doing bad last week. We sometimes became unsure of our answers. We got passed that. I quizzed out first, Tim quizzed out second. Since we only had 5 quizzers, we decided it was best for the second quizzer to quiz out would stay up. So Tim sat in his seat for the duration of the quizmatch, waiting for a bonus. It was up to the rest of the team. Christine got two, one was a buzz in. Christine was one away from quiz out. We were one rookie buzz in away from a team bonus. We had oppurtunities to get both, but alas, neither were successful. In the meantime, Akron was making a comeback with some quizouts. It was too late for Akron when they began the comeback. We won 90 to 80.

We had back to back matches in the middle of the quizmeet. So right away we had the match against Maple Grove 3. I'm pretty sure Maple Grove has never had 3 teams. So it was a new team, in a way. I think I recognized 1 or 2 of them from last year's Maple Grove 2. Tim quizzed out first, I quizzed out second and I sat up there and waited for the match to be over. Christine got one in. Then, with no notice, Bryan buzzed in and got it right! Bryan got us team bonus!! He also got 3 bonuses, 1 of which he got right. So it was pretty cool that Bryan got team bonus, and he was one away from a quizout. He tripled his score in one day. We did win with 110 points.

It was good for all of us. We were able to maintain point average. Tim and I were able to get back in the swing of quizzing out each quizmatch that we have. That also means we clinched the top 50 quizzers list. Bryan moved up to scoring 30 points in the year. Christine got 30 points in the day, moving herself to another year with triple digits in the score. The standings came out Monday. I didn't believe it, until I realized that the standings were only team standings. So once again, they've stopped the individual standings for the element of surprise. I don't like it. At least we can see where our team is. Still in 6th, still with 98 average. I've figured out that Petra 1 has clinched 1st place in the League. They have an average of 138, and even if they scored nothing in their last remaining match, their average would drop no lower than 131, far out of the reach for anyone in the League to get to. Slate Hill 1 is in second. They clinch it if they can score 140 points in the two regular season matches they have. With the opponenets they are facing, I think they will have no problem taking 2nd place. So it is Spring City's goal to get in 4th, so we can be the top team in our group in the ACC Tournament. This is how we do it: we need to score 130 points, averaging us for the year 100 points. Petra 5 must not score more than 75 points, and Good Shepherd 1 no more than 95 points. That will keep them below our average, thus getting us in 4th.

So we did good in Akron, even without Mike. We called him up and told him the result. We jokingly said that we didn't need him any longer. Truthfully, it is easier and less nervous to do it with Michael, but we now know we can do it without him, or if he or someone else screws up. That's reassuring for the future.

I hate double weeks

This week we had a double week. Unable to have practice on Saturday, we had a practice for the Sunday School hour. It was fast so we could get in as much as possible. It was all on the missed week material, and none from the new material. We did fairly well. I, as well as the rest of the team, felt like we knew the old material better than the new material, but that contradicted how I felt leaving practice on Thursday. So on my own time I studied the old material. We were able to stay for all of church, and left once we had lunch.

We went to Ridgeview so early because we wanted to study more the old material. But we had fun with those matches. We switched name tages and acted like the person's name tag we had. It was fun being Mike, grunting and using big words. Dave even got in on it, and prentended to be Vicki by kneeling to get the height right. We had fun, got some right, got others wrong. It wasn't too bad.

The matches started off without any worship singing, announcements or jokes. The first match I watched was Petra 1 vs. Zion 1 because I was rooting for my friends on Zion 1 and scouting out the opponants on Petra 1. Petra 1 started out slow, but caught up, reaching 135 by the end of the match. Their perfect quizzer quizzed out with 2 errors. It was time for us to go to the 1990 Hall (which Dave kept calling the 190 Room, for a reason I don't know why) for our match.

We were in the 1990 Hall against Petra 3. The match didn't go as well as we would have liked. I quizzed out, and Tim barely quizzed out at question 15. Mike was the only quizzer able to get in, and he scored 10. We finished as last minute winners, with the score 80 to 65. Not as much as we wanted. We vowed that we be our lowest score of the day.

Our next match was Neffsville 2. This was believed to be our grace match because they were only 16th place, compared to playing 4th place Slate Hill 1. Easy, right? No. Tim errored out after getting only 10 points. I quizzed out at question 11. Mike, once again, only got 10. Errors added up between Mike, Tim and I. We got 6 errors, causing us to lose 10 points. We lost for the first time, beaten 55 to 65. If we didn't error as much, we would have tied.

I watched the afternoon matches end with Petra 1 vs. Weaverland 1. Even 1oth place Weaverland 1 couldn't stop Petra 1 from reaching into the triple digits score. They lost 120 to 30. We met together in 1990 Hall to eat. We wanted to study and eat, but there were too many people there to have a good study. The Schwagers brought us pizza from Pizza Hut. Zion kept stealing it. Nice, Zion, very Christ-like. I had 2 pieces of Meat Lovers, what I call "Vegetarian Nightmare." Remember those days when I wouldn't eat because I was so nervous? The opposite became true. I was nervous eating. We had only a short time to practice after eating. They were brand new questions, and we did not know how answer those questions. We went into matches unsure of our fate.

It didn't help when we watched Neffsville 2. After winning against us, they could not do as well against Petra 1. Petra won succeeded in winning once again with points in the hundreds. We saw a perfect quizzer stop being perfect. She made a desperate contest to save her perfection, but it failed. Now it was our turn to take on Petra 1. Petra 1 had the first two matches consecutively, but it didn't seem to bother them. A lot of people were there, wanting to see the 1st vs. 3rd. It didn't shake Petra at all. They were fast, they got only few words, but got it right! They got 3 quizouts, mostly on buzzes, allowing nothing for Spring City. I was only able to get 10 points and 1 error. We lost miserably 135 to 30. And Petra 1 didn't even get team bonus!

Shaken, we tried to walk it off. I tried to study by watching Petra 5 vs. Zion 1. Once again, Zion 1 was taking on a Petra we had to take on. I was too knocked off concentration to focus on the match. So I asked Dave to ask me questions. Mr. Deitrick rounded up everyone for questions again. We were only able to get a little done before our match came up.

It seemed like we were quizzing against Petra 1 again, because the results were the same. Petra 5 was fast, not allowing us in. Out of 3 situation questions, I only got in for one. Those were the only points I scored. But my errors increased to 2. Bad. Our final score had Petra 5 winning and us losing, 135 to 30/35. I thought I saw 35, but no one quizzed out, and I got ten. Maybe we got 40, but 5 errors later, we lost points. I couldn't tell. I was distraught, and so was Mr. Deitrick. We decided it was best to go home once we were done.

Reflections: It's hard to say what went wrong. I guess you can first say it was the fact we had a snow week. They're evil. It can't be pride. The Deitricks and I feel like we've been hearing that the Lord wanted to remind us that He gave us what we have, and we must always thank Him for what he gave us, good or bad. As for studying, it's hard to study in a double week with twice the material, keeping them separate. The rookies were not ready for it. Maybe it would have been better to use both sets of material at practices. As for the top 3 quizzers on Spring City, it's very sad. No one could quiz out for the past two matches, and Tim and Mike haven't quizzed out for the past 3 matches. Technically, Mike has not quizzed out since our match against Bowmansville 2, which was 3 weeks ago (and ironically he was the first to quiz out on the team). On top of that, we're Mike-less for next week. That means we need a rookie to step up to the plate. We'll work at it, and pray the Lord God will help us.

Quizzing Question of the Post:
Where 4 are the Jews members of the Synagogue of the Freeman?

A blessing out of the curse

I hope no one went to LMH last Sunday, because there were no quizzers there. The wintry mix cancelled quizzing. Cancelling quizzing is depressing. We're already limited to so many weeks in quizzing, and now there is less. I think we could have made it, but maybe they got it worse. The worse part about snow...it leads to double weeks. Yes, we got to learn double the material, but we quiz on it separately. It's hard to get down.

There is no schedule up on the quizzing website, but our coaches got one. (Speaking of which, I want to give a shout out to Mrs. Deitrick, who now reads my blog. Now, I got to watch what I say!) We now know we are at Ridgeview, just like the schedule says Spring City will be at for March 5. Double weeks mean afternoon matches and evening matches. The afternoon matches will begin at 3 PM, and the evening matches at the regular 6:30 PM. We still have four matches, too. But it's not the same teams, since Slate Hill and Good Shep 1 are going to Slate Hill. So we got new teams to quiz against in the afternoon. We are still quizzing against Petra 1 and Petra 5 in the evening, but in the afternoon it comes down to Petra 3 and Neffsville 2.

Let's look at this stragetically. We had a tough 4 upcoming matches in two weeks. We were quizzing against 4 of the top 7 teams. When I heard that we were going to be at Ridgeview, I expected the teams to be changed. I was hoping for lower teams (for obvious reasons), but Fred did a good job making sure that the teams quizzing each othere were of like strength. Like I told Tim, the only way it could've got harder is if we quizzed Good Shepherd 1 isntead of Petra 5 or Goods 1. Anything else is an improvement on the strength of the schedule. Since Good Shepherd 1 is at Slate Hill, we can't quiz against them. So our schedule got better. It's now two afternoon quizmatches against Petra 3 and Neffsville 2. So we've gone to four top 7 matches to three top 10 matches. That helps a lot. God has cut us a little mercy in a double week. I plan to go Petra hunting and end the reign of a few perfect quizzers. That will raise my position.

I think we can take it. I can take it. I quizzed out all 4 practice matches. I'm not sure about the team. Tim quizzed out and errored out, but that's Tim. Christine and Bryan performed like normal. Christine do that thing she does, but her performance will all depend on how Christine feels and her mood. As for Bryan's mood, we got to give him a mood that wants to perform well and quiz. Chelsea didn't come to practice, so we just got to make sure she's well caught up on information. Mike screwed up his working schedule, so he wasn't there. I hope he is self practicing and Tim is checking up on him. I don't like double weeks, but I think I can pull through.

Quizzing Question of the Post:
Who are the seven.......