(Unofficial) Countdown until the first quizmatch of 2006:
1 month.

Wow, I can't believe it, only one month (exactly) until quizzing begins. It seems like just yesterday that the invitational finished......okay, who I am trying to fool. It seems like it is taking forever for quizzing to arrive! I can't wait. But it still seems just like the invitational recently happened. Why? The wonderful memories of quizzing 2005 are still fresh in my memory. I will now take this time to reminise. There are 5 statements that simply describe the highlights of my 2005 quizzing year with Spring City. Don't worry, I take time to explain them (with pictures!).

FRED USES MY QUESTIONS!!!!!
I BEAT JOSH MOSS!!!!!
I'M ON THE TOP 50 QUIZZERS LIST!!!!!
WE'RE THE ACC TOURNAMENT CHAMPIONS!!!!!
CHRISTINE ROCKED OUR QUIZ TEAM!!!!!

Fred uses my questions! It was the fifth week of the quizzing seaon. We were at Hopewell Elverson. My match was the third match. With no good second match to go to, I waited in the empty room that my next match was in. Fred was the quizmaster there. I started to talk to him. He said he was dissapointed that my website was no longer there. I said that I, of course, ended the Ark quizzing website when Ark ended. He said [something like]: "That's a shame. I always went there to get your questions. I used them in practice." I was so honored. I always worry about my questions. I always think some are contestable. But they were really good enough that Fred would use my questions. I still did write questions, even without the website, so I sent them to Fred via e-mail attachement. So to this day I e-mail Fred questions, along with my teammates.

I beat Josh Moss! An odd task, but one I am proud of. This was personal. After the 2004 Ark incident (I rather not go into details), the true quizzers who decided to keep quizzing were scattered among 4 different teams. I had some hard feelings around most of the Ark quizzers. This feeling drove me to a strong want to show them all up. I wanted to do that by either beating them head on, or finishing with a higher score at the end of the year. My chance came at week 4 of quizzing. We played Zion, Josh's team. I had quizzed out before Josh we were on the same team, but this team we were on opposite teams. This made it totally different. I was determined to quiz out before him. When Zion arrived at LMH, they were goofing off, singing a llama song. The drive was even stronger. I confronted him before the match. "Hey Josh," I said. "Why don't we make this match a bit more exciting." "What do you have in mind?" he said. "I sit across from you. You get my bonuses, I get yours." "Sure," he said. "I'll be sitting in seat 3." The match was on. I sat in seat 3, Josh was on seat 3. The match commensed. Josh got two errors. I picked up one of the bonuses. I got another 2 answers on buzzes. I quizzed out on question 14. Josh was unable to get a single question. On top of that, we got team bonus and beat Zion 120-20. I was so glad. I completed part of my goal. I had defeat Josh head on, individual and team. When the year ended, I finished 23rd with 510 points. Josh finished 44th with 485 points. Once again, I was ahead of Josh. I had taken down Josh, just like I always wanted. I exceeded the one who I always saw as a great. I now felt great. And the hard feelings- gone. At the end of the year, I signed his quizbook, congratulating him for a good quizzing career. Quizzing lost another good quizzer.

I'm on the Top 50 Quizzers List! A hard goal I wanted to complete for a long time. I was dissappointed when I didn't complete this my second year. I was far from it. So for my third year, I did not aim for it. Suprisingly, I took off the beginning my third year and was on it for the first five weeks of quizzing. I finished in 78th, not far from the Top 50 Quizzers List, but I wasn't disappointed because I wasn't aiming for it. The next year, I aimed to be on the Top 50 Quizzers List for one more week, 6 weeks. I did, plus more. I finally reached that one more week on Week 7. I was on it every day except Week 2/3 combination (ugh), when I finished 55th. With only one week to go, I thought "I think I can make it." And I did. I quizzed out my last two matches. When I went to receive my award, I think (and my coaches could verify this) I was the most estatic quizzer ever when receiving the Top 50 Quizzer Award. I went up wildly cheering and hooting. I tried to hug Fred! I was happy of my achievement. It took long, hard work to get there.



We're the ACC Tournamet Champions! This is too long to explain. If the want the whole story go to my Blogspot Webpage with the article title "Tales of a 6th Place Nobody" (you can click the article title, it's a link to the article). I'll briefly describe it. Let's just say we didn't deserve it. We got it only by the grace of God. I'm not sure why he chose us, but I think I may have an idea why he personally chose me. I think maybe one of the reasons that he chose me was that I wasn't trying. I was happy with whatever I got. 6 regular matches was good enough for me. God choose us, by his miraculous power, to go on to the playoffs. I was grateful to get to the playoffs tried to achieve getting to the semifinals, just to get a small trophy. We won the quaterfinals and went to the semifinals. Before the semifinal matches began, I said to my teammates, "OK, we won a trophey, but if we win this match, we can win a BIG trophey! We could, but I was happy with a "small" trophey. However, we came through and won the semifinal. We were going to the finals. Before the finals began, I told my team, "All right, we won a big trophey, but if we win this match, we can win a BIGGER trophey!!" I was satisfied was our "big trophey," but God thought I deserved better and gave the win for Spring City. We were a sixth place team, and no one thought Spring City could make it up there, even the Spring City quizzers (especially me). But I believe the Lord thought that we deserved it and God gave it to us. This, to me, was the final sign that I was meant to be on the Spring City quiz team.

Christine rocked our team! With all due respect to her, Christine is like a quiet fart - silent but deadly. Christine only scored 30 points in the regular season, and about the same during both tournaments. But she always came in when we needed her the most. She gave us team bonus we were in need, and we suceeded. All thanks to Christine. She saved us twice during the ACC Tournament, once giving us team bonus and other time getting the bonus so we could win by those 10 points. Both times I wasn't expecting it, but she came through and delivered. It was awesome! I'm glad she chose to quiz once more for Spring City.



Man, that was a great year. There are many other memories, but these 4 were the most dominant. This had to be my favorite year of quizzing (so far, at least). With great memories of this, I hope the next 31 days passes by fast so we can begin making new quizzing memories.