~~~~~***FLASHBACK***~~~~~
Thursday Night:
I arrived at the Deitricks Thursday for our usual practice. Since this was the beginning of the Ohio trip, we were also having dinner and staying overnight. I had to bring everything over that night. I had my suitcase and my carry-on bag. I had to make sure I had everything for the bus rides. My laptop for homework my teacher assigned (he actually wanted me to e-mail to him during the trip!), quizzing stuff to practice, puzzle book and novel for solo time, hackey sack and playing cards for fun bus games with friends, the mp3 player for music and spoken text, and the medication for my cough I was still getting over from the last week. In making sure I had everything on my carry-on, I forgot a sleeping bag and pillow! So my mom brought it about 3 hours later. Hey, I wasn't the only one to forget something. Chelsea's mom had to bring Chelsea her money for meals on the bus ride.
After a dinner of chicken, we started quiz practice. We had our normal 4 matches. I believe I quizzed out 3, errored out 1. I enjoyed my last time with Black Thunder, my buzzer. Then, of course, Tim gave Bryan his keyword questions and began drilling him immeadiately. I went with Mr. Deitrick to go pick up the van at the church and bring it back to their home. I enjoyed the ride up with Mr. Deitrick. It's always a good experience talking with Dave. When I came back, I found Bryan now at the quizmaster seat, quizzing Chelsea and Tim on keyword questions. Of course, I had to get in on this. After a while, we decided to end the questions and pack up the buzzers for the year. We had snack. We also tried to come up with a game to play. It didn't help that Mike, Tim AND Bryan all had Risk, but none remembered to bring it. Chelsea got out Battle of the Sexes game. We had fun just asking the questions from the cards, without the board. Then we went into playing Scum. I started out President, but finished up Scum. We played until 1 AM, when we were told to go to bed by Mrs. Deitrick. I slept in the same room as Michael, which always does scare me. You never how much (or shall I say how little) he wears, what he'll talk about, or how many stray farts will be released. I listened to my text as I dozed into sleep.
Friday:
Four hours later, I was awaken by Mrs. Deitrick right at 5:00 AM. They wanted us up and ready to go. Some were tired, some were excited about the bus ride. We got everything loaded, and those who wanted breakfast ate breakfast. We left Pottstown at 5:30 AM. The drive only took 90 minutes. We reached Dutch Wonderland, where the busses were leaving, by 7 AM, a half hour before the busses even began loading. We were like the 2nd vehicle there. Some staff got there before us. So we sat in our van for a half hour and waited for the busses to open and begin loading. Once they did, we started right away and got first dibs on the seats. The Spring City quizzers sat in between the middle back. We were also on the same bus as 2 Zion teams, 2 Hopewell teams, and Rockville. Hopewell sat behind us, Zion sat in front of us, and Rockville intermingled with our team. I sat with Christine, the same for all 4 years I've gone to Ohio. Tim and Mike were directly behind us, Chelsea and Bryan across the aisle, and in front of us was Jule and Wendy from Rockville.
The busses departed from the parking lot a little after 8 AM. Tim, of course, wanted to start playing Mafia immeadiately. We convinced him to wait until we got on the highway. Then we started the mafia. We had quizzers from every team in the game. The number of players was around 12 to 14. We had some good games. I played a fair share in all roles. I didn't seem to do too well, especially that one round when my fellow Mafia killed me off when people were getting suspicious. And another round, I knew Tim was the mafia, but he convinced everyone else I was and killed me out early, so I couldn't beat him. Anywayz, we played 6 rounds of mafia before we got to our first stop. It was about 10:15 when we arrived at Somerset. Some restaurants were still doing breakfast, some lunch, others both. I literally saw McDonalds change the breakfast menu to lunch. In keeping with a custom I started my first year, I bought a Happy Meal with a toy inside so I could use the toy as a quizzing buddy. I got Donatello from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! As Mike would later point out, Mutant Ninja turtles have pretty awesome biceps, thighs, and calves. He was ripped. Christine and I then went to Starbucks to get some hot chocolate. Their hot cocoa is just as strong as their coffee.
When we got back on the busses and left during the hour of 11 AM, Tim wanted to get right back into Mafia. Everyone else was tired out from Mafia, so no one wanted to play again. So people went to do individual activities. People read books and magazines, listened to music, did puzzles, studied quizzing (I was one of those) and talked. Tim got so bored because he wasn't playing a card game, he actually fell asleep. It was quite humorous, so I took a picture of it. Jon wanted to put makeup on him, but the Deitricks decided it would be best not to so Tim wouldn't want to seek revenge. I saw the normal things, like the windmills and the tunnels, which I held my breath with a lot of the other quizzers. At sometime in the afternoon, we made a pit stop at a rest stop. It was a simple rest stop, with only vending machines and bathrooms. It was only suppose 15 minutes, but it lasted a half hour. There was hackey sacking and football throwing. After a half hour, Fred rounded us back into the busses and we continued on our way. Now that we were exercised, we got back into game playing mode. So Spring City quizzers got together and played scum again. I was for the longest time scum and vice scum, but near the end I got up to president and enjoyed a reign of a few turns up there. That lasted us until our next rest stop.
This rest stop was in Ohio. I wanted to go to Wendy's and the grocery store across the street, so I took a bus to get there. At Wendy's I had a bacon cheeseburger and their new float. Of course, I wanted coke instead of rootbeer and chocolate instead of vanilla. I went into the grocery store to browse around, but nothing caught my attention. The only thing I noticed was how packed the store was with Ohio State merchandise because OSU was in the Final Four. So I went back, ate dinner, and took the bus back to my bus. When we departed from that rest stop, we knew it wouldn't be long from there, so none of us got involved in any game, but we still had fun. We found out that Bryan had a likin' for Bekah Berg, so we tried to get the two to talk to each other. We also found out he had another crush on Mel, so we got Mel to come back and talk to him, but he didn't do too much talking, so I had to. Another moment we won't forget is Schwager's annual trip to the bathroom. We begged him as he headed that way, "NO, MICHAEL, DON'T DO IT!!" As soon as he went in, I began to time him. 18 minutes and 50 seconds later, Mike emerged from the bathroom. We all applauded him. Luckily, he remembered to take his quizbook with him. "I read all of Acts!" he proudly announced as he came out. Sure enough, he took out his Axe, like it would help the smell. Speaking of studying, we did some last minute studying, especially to the rookies. Before you knew it, we were at West Liberty High School.
Protocol says that the quizcoach waits at the bus enterance for the host family, and the quizteam waits on the bus until they come. As time passed, teams one by one left, until Spring City was the only one left on. The team was getting antsy from cabin fever, wanting to get off. I was especially antsy because Dave was receiving the packet with the tournament info in it, like the brackets. Vicki got them for me and we learned that our first placement match was against Paradise 1. Finally, our host family came. We got all our stuff and headed to her minivan. We quickly found out all our stuff and the team was not going to fit on in one trip. So half of the team went with all the luggage, and Dave, Vicki, Chelsea and I stayed back. In this time, we hackey sacked and talked to one of the Ohio quizmasters. Eventually, she came back in her minivan and we went over to her house.
I can't remember their last names, but all their children's names began with L. The two olders were quizzers for West Liberty. Their oldest son, Landon, quizzed for Crossway Community and the eldest daughter, Lauren (I have a habit of having host families with pretty daughters :)) quizzed for Calvary. I thought this was odd have 2 children quizzing for 2 different churches. They gave us free time before some rounds of questions. The boys excluding me played basketball. The girls and I played volleyball. It was a good idea for me. I was still suffering from the aftermath of the sickness and it made me short of breath. So once it got dark, we went inside for practice. We started out having rounds of questions with just our team, but then we decided to join up with Landon's Ohio team, who came for their practice. We shared keyword questions and quizmatch stories. We found out that West Liberty quizzes about 51 matches in a year! Wow! No wonder they are good. After a while, we decided to go to bed. We were in Landon's room. Just like the grocery store, it was decked out in OSU. Mike got top bunk, Tim got bottom bunk, I got pullout mattress, Bryan had the floor. Once again, I fell asleep with the beautiful sound of the dramatized text.
Saturday:
The quizzing began at 8:00 A.M. with all the teams meeting together in the gym of West Liberty High School. It was apparent that there team mascot was the Tiger because everything was orange and black. Even one section of the bleachers was orange with black stripes. I liked it. I thought it was pretty cool. It was quite the sight seeing all the teams filter in. The West Liberty cordinator got up and welcomed us here to West Liberty. He had assisstants hand out a fixed, new schedule. The old one had one page printed twice. Our first match against Paradise 1 was in a classroom, but we still had 2 rounds before our match was up. So the whole team went into that room to watch matches. We watched the speed the quizmaster spoke and how his rulings worked. Ironically, the 2 matches before us were 2 other Paradise teams. Finally, it was our turn against Paradise 1. We sat early, so early that that we were 10 minutes ahead of schedule. So the quizmaster wanted to stay on time, so we waited. Our team took the time to practice buzzing. We had these crazy buzzers, which we called "The Jetson buzzers" because they looked like they were from the future and they also looked like planes. So I pretended my buzzer was a plane. Perhaps the different buzzer may have played a factor on how I performed. I got one buzz in right so I could contribute for team bonus, but after that I got 2 errors. I was on the edge to error out. We eventually we got team bonus, and we were up with 110 points. Fact: when a team gets at least 100 points, it is impossible for the other team to catch up. So when we scored 110 points, we let up. Paradise 1 didn't and went at at normal speed, and still errored. The kid across from me errored twice and gave me two bonuses. I know we were trying to let up, but I wasn't going to look stupid. Besides, I think acting that stupid would be the ultimate insult to Paradise 1. We won our first placement match, putting us right away in in the double elimination bracket.
We went to the brackets to find out where we were and against what team. The team we were going to quiz against was the winner of a second round placement match. I found out it was going to be the winner of Hopewell 1 vs. Good Shepherd 3. So I wanted to watch it to scout out the opponent. Christine wanted to watch it to watch the quizzers. Mrs. Deitrick though we were going to watch it because we wanted to watch our friends who were on our bus. So while Michael was following Reading and Bryan & Tim was playing basketball, the rest of us watch Hopewell 1 vs. Good Shepherd 3. It was an interesting match. There were a couple contests and a few judges meetings. It was apparent the staff were new at this, for they mad some bad rulings. Hopewell strived through it and came out victorious. I made a comment to Christine about how I thought we could take them. Mrs. Deitrick looked at me and said, "Wait, they are our next oppenent?" I said, "Yeah. Why do you think I'm watching them?" Mrs. Deitrick told the Bergs the news. Their excitement of winning quickly died down knowing they would quiz against us. We went back to update the bracket and then we were off to our next quizmatch.
We were first to the room. I did last minute studying my going over Mrs. Deitricks study guides. Hopewell 1 entered the room, and Bryant said, "So, it this the execution room?" We prayed together and started the match. Perhaps execution was an accurately described word. We won the match 130 to 30. But I did see improvement on the team from the last time we quizzed against them. And althought it wasn't a big difference, it was better than when we beat them 155 to 10, with Hopewell almost losing points due to errors. Mrs. Deitrick still felt bad about it and said to me, "Please tell me they're not out of it." I pointed out they were just in the losers bracket, and even if they lost the next match, they'd end up in the Dorcus bracket. If you're curious to know what happened to Hopewell 1, they would win against Strasburg 1 in the losers bracket, but the next match they lost to Longnecker, knocking them out of the tournament. I heard that loss was by a matter of 5 points.
With time before our next match, we decided to get in line for lunch. Christine predicted it would be chicken because we have been served chicken in the past. Sure enough, she was right. After lunch, we updated the brackets again. I then went to go purchase a quizzing shirt that they were selling. On the front it says "Bible Quizzing 2007 West Liberty, Ohio." and on the back it says, "Take off your sandals, for the place you are standing is quizzing ground." I got it personalized with "Graham Holcomb quizzer extrodinaire" for a few extra dollars. Before you knew it, it was time for our next match. It was against Forest Hills. But by the time the match was ready to start, there was no audience. It was just the 2 teams, their coaches, and the staff! I asked, "Does anyone know there is a match here?" Apparently not. The match went well, and we won again. We were advancing further into the winners' bracket.
So we went back to the brackets to see what our next match was against. There we met up with our host family to find out how we were doing. We compared performances. Then we figured out that we were playing Calvary, the team that our host family's daughter was on. This was also exciting because it was the first Ohio team we were quizzing against. We joked around that if Spring City beat Calvary, Spring City might find themselves sleeping outside that night. It was a team of 5. 4 of the 5 were these blonde chicks. At the first impression, they looked crazy. They did this finger wave thing, as one quizzer would go down the line, touch fingers and go "WOO!" It seemed like they were the West Liberty equivilant of Spring City. That's probably why we were at their home. They may have seemed crazy, but they were also crazy good. They always made good buzzes and got in before us. They quickly picked up the points and team bonus. We had nothing against them. We lost. With one loss, we were on the losers side of the bracket.
Now being on the losers' side of the bracket, we had less time between matches. So even though we had a round between our two matches, we went to our next room. It just so happened that the in between match was our friends from Reading. They were quizzing against Neffsville 1. I scorekept the match. It got close at sometimes, but Reading did win. Reading and Neffsville 1 cleared out of the room and Rockville entered. And that was it. Just like our Forest Hills match, it was just the quizzers, their coaches and the staff. The match was close the whole way. By the end of question 13, we called a timeout and looked at the situation. We knew that we would win as long as Rockville did not get team bonus. Question 14 began "What did the Son of...." and Chelsea buzzed it. Obviously she got it wrong. Question began with "What book..." and Mike buzzed in. Thirty seconds later, Mike came up with nothing. The match ended with us as the winners and an errie feelings. The staff looked at each other. There was mumuring from the Rockville side. I quickly left the match. I want to make it clear right now: SPRING CITY DID NOT BLOCK TEAM BONUS. Spring City would never block team bonus. It is true we were well aware we could win as long Rockville didn't get team bonus. But it all is good explanation for this. Chelsea is fast because we taught here to buzz crazy. Tim's idea of having rookies buzz in on the third word got to Chelsea. Chelsea will buzz in on the third, whether a good or badd buzz. For Chelsea to wait until the fifth word, Chelsea actually slowed down. As for Mike (who was one right answer away from a quiz out), he was being Mike. When Mike gets under pressure, he can sometimes forget things or make simple mistakes. Mike made a good buzz in at "what book." It's different from "In what book," a footnote question. We told Mike over and over again the answer is Isaiah, which was the correct answer for the question. But Mike being Mike buzzed in, knew it was a good buzz, but forgot why. So this was the normal performance of Spring City. I say it again, Spring City would never cheat in such a way. The Deitricks have taught this team to be better than that. We'd rather lose gracefully than win unfairly. But I don't blame Rockville for being upset or the staff for being suspicious. If a team did that against me and knocked me out of the tournament, I'd be suspicious and upset, too. I did display my disaproval to Mike and Chelsea. The Deitricks thought I was a little hard on them, but I didn't want that incident to follow us, especially if we were to go all the way. Later on, I did apologize to one of the Rockville quizzers for knocking them out of the tournament in that fashion and set things straight.
Our next match was against Lockport 1. I was told later that Lockport 1 was the 2nd place team for Northwest Ohio. There was more of an audience for this one. Since Reading was knocked out of the tournament, they came to watch us. Some of Zion arrived as well. The score started as 10-10, then it was 20-20, then 30-30. When one team took a lead, the other team would come back and tie it up. Even with quizouts, when one side had a quizout, so did the other one. It was like that to the end, but in the final couple questions, we took the lead and won.
We had to hurry to our next match in the next round. I quickly went into the the cafeteria to look athe brackets and found out Petra 2 was our next oppenent. I have high regards for Petra 2. They were in the top in their league for a while. We had the Jetson buzzers again. My cord was incredibly long, so I wrapped it around my arm. It was weird also because we were on art stools. Petra 2 quizzed just as I would have expected. Petra 2 took the lead. By the end of question 13, we were losing 80 to 50. Team bonus would tie it up and we were one away. Tim sacrificed his seat so Chelsea could come in and increase our chances of getting team bonus. After question 14, the score was the same. The quizmaster satarted, "How many swor..." Christine buzzed in. Time started flying by. As the time came near to running out, Christine answered "all" and was marked wrong. We were all sad because we were out of the tournament, but Christine seemed to be more upset than the rest of us. It was especially weird because that’s something Tim or I would do, not Christine. She didn’t tell me a sure answer, but I came to the conclusion that it had something to do with not being able to provide for her team. I thought to myself, “That’s nothing to get depressed about. She has provided many times in these six past years.” Then it hit me. This year was Christine’s last. She had exceeded the age limit and could not quiz the following year. I realized that after six years, six years of thick and thin, Christine would no longer be there. We had quizzed our last match together. I emotionally lost it and started tearing up. All I could do was thank her for six great years, and then I stepped aside to take a breather.We were now out of the tournament. Spring City was done for the year.
Our team actually decided to stay in the same room because another interesting match was starting in there. It was Petra 1 vs. Calvary. The 2nd place ACC team was taking on the team that beat us in the winners' side of the bracket. I truly believed Calvary had the chance to take down Petra 1. Maybe they could have, bu they didn't this time. They got buzzes in, but they kept erroring, erroring so much they were losing points. Another reason Calvary was like the West Liberty version of Spring City. They were loud, crazy, and prone to error. After 15 questions, Calvary errored on 9 of them. Petra 1 easily picked up the bonuses and won the match. Calvary was eliminated.
Being out of the tournament, and no good matches to watch, we went to dinner. Dinner was a simple hoagie. Reading got ahead of us, and Mike was with them. Tim and Bryan were in the the gym. The Deitricks had gone to the coach's meeting for the way home. So we got in line and waited for dinner. In line I met a girl from Central, from the Northwest Ohio Confrence. We talked for a while, comparing performance and other teams in our conference. She congratulaed us for winning against Lockport 1 because she said that team was a difficult one this year. She was familiar with Sand Ridge winning. She called someone up on her cell and told the person on the other end, "Yeah, Sand Ridge is winning...again..." We waited in a long line, and when waiting in line, we heard a loud cheer coming from the Reading table, mostly Michael's sound. Christine looked at me and guessed right away what it meant. "We're going to be on the same bus with Reading and Zion." Sure enough, she was right. Mrs. Deitrick told us we were going to be on a bus with Zion and Reading. It was going to be a crazy bus.
After dinner we went to watch the 3 remaining matches of the day. First, Sand Ridge beat E-Town 3. Sand Ridge would be going into the Sunday final match undefeated (including placement matches). The next two matches were in the losers bracket. The first match was Slate Hill 1 vs. Longenecker. Longenecker had an early loss in the winners bracket, but was just making it well through the losers bracket. They had just beat Weaverland 1, the team that beat them in the placement match AND the winners bracket. I guess the third time is the charm. Their oppenent was Slate Hill 1, our championship team. Just recently lost Sand Ridge, the champion tean of Northwest Ohio, they had re-entered in the losers bracket against Petra 1 and had beaten them for the third time in the year. Slate Hill fought hard, but Longenecker won. Slate Hill 1, ACC champions, finished 4th place. Lastly, the newly defeated E-Town 3 was quizzing against the resurrected Longenecker. Longenecker couldn't be stopped and kept going for another win. The final match(es) was going to be Sand Ridge vs. Longenecker on Sunday. E-Town 3 finished 3rd, finishing 3rd for the second tournament this year, finishing 3rd in the Invitational for a second consecutive year.
Just like last Invitational, there was ice cream after all the matches Saturday night. I had chocolate. Then I sat at at table, watching a Final Four match on the TV they had. It was the Ohio St. game. I remember how much the whole state of Ohio was into having their state university in the Final Four. In one of their stores, I saw a whole aisle of Ohio St. apparrel and merchandise. If you could put an OSU logo on it, the item had it. We all watched as Ohio State won the game, and everyone from Ohio cheered. I didn't care about that game, but was upset that UCLA lost against Florida St. in their game. UCLA was the last team alive in my fantasy bracket (which I lost). Then we went back to the host family's house.
To our suprise (although Mrs. Deitrick overhead some talking), we were having a party. It was Spring City, Crossway Community, and Calvary. There was snack foods, soda, water, even a punch bowl. We talked about the quizzing of the day, but only for a short while. Our fun started with talking about Michael's crazy wrestling maneuvers. He even demonstrated one on the host's son. Then they got into playing wrestling games, like leg wrestling and the swords game (the poking game, I like to call it). Chelsea couldn't resist and got in on both. Then they got playing into card games. So of course, Tim wanted to play a game of Mafia. One was played, but only one because it dispersed. While we waited for another card game, I played Tim in on chess on a mini travel chess board. I did lose, but Tim didn't checkmate me as fast as he planned. Later on, they played Spoons and Egyptian Screwrat, but I didn't get in on it. I knew I was going to play card games all day on the bus, so I wasn't ready for a whole night of it, too. Besides, it was getting way to physical for card games. To get a spoon, you tackled anyone going after a spoon and wrestled anyone who had one. In Egyptian Ratscrew, you really slapped...hard! Both in both physical games, the last 3 players were girls. That Egyptian Ratscrew game lasted a long time. People were falling asleep. Bryan couldn't make and fell asleep right on the couch. Mrs. Deitrick saw it best to put him to bed, so she asked him to bring Bryan upstairs. We though Mike would hold him properly, almost like a big baby. But instead he grabbed him by the middle, and his neck whiplashed back hard! That woke him up. As Mike carried him upstairs, I heard Bryan say, "Mike, put me down!"
At 1 a.m., when the adults and girls (except Chelsea) left and went to bed, we got out the Risk board began to play. There was 6 players. Mike, as always everytime I played him, got the upperhand. He made two "border alliances that were mutally beneficial" (his words exactly) with 2 other players. Tim quickly lost and was mad about it. He complained about it when everyone else took their turn. He kept saying that "Mike has it won" just because he was out. But hearing this, it convinced the Ohio guys so they forefeit and ended the game. I was upset because I could have made a comeback against Mike, but because everyone else gave up, I had to, too. I got over it, but Tim wouldn't let it go. As I we walked about the stairs and got ready for bed, Tim and Mike argued. We got into the bed and turned off the lights. They were still arguing. An hour later, there were still arguing. I was trying to fall asleep, but the bickering wouldn't allow it. I eventually did fall asleep, so I really don't know when it ended.
Sunday:
We got up Sunday morning around 7 AM. I got dressed, packed everything up, and cleaned up our mess. Mike claimed he lost a pair of boxers. They served us breakfast, but of course I don't break my nightly fast until lunch. We gave them our gift out of gratitude and thanked them for all they did for us. We loaded all our stuff in the car and left for West Liberty High School. Once we got their we loaded all our stuff in our bus and reserved seats. It was us, Reading, Zion and Rockville. Rockville got the back, so Spring City got the next back. Then we went into the gym for the final showdown.
Sunday morning's events started out with the that final match between Sand Ridge and Longenecker. For those who saw, they may have been confused why the match went down the way it did. I believe I understood it better by seeing the whole tournament picture, and so might you, before I telly you what happened. In the tournament, Sand Ridge won their first placement match, and won every match in the winners' bracket, leading up to that final match. Longenecker lost their first placement match against Weaverland 1, but then one their second placement match. They got placed in the winners' bracket, won against West Clinton 2 and Maple Grove 1, but then lost to Weaverland 1 again. That lost put their near to the back of the losers' bracket. In thier first match in the losers' bracket, against Hopewell 1, they won by only a matter of 5 points. It was a close match. Somehow Longenecker get themselves back together, and started advancing one match at a time down the losers' bracket, including going against Weaverland 1 for a third time (but this time winning!). After beating 4 ACC teams in a row, Longenecker had made it to the final match. But the way Longenecker played, they didn't seem like one of the top 2 teams. By the end of the match, Longenecker errored 10 times! That's 2/3 of the match. That also means that 2/3 of the match was bonuses for Sand Ridge. It was like the championship match was handed to Sand Ridge on a silver platter, because they easily picked up the bonuses. Longenecker's score went deep into the negative numbers, but they did score a few points to shrink the negative number. 15 questions (and 10 errors) later, Sand Ridge won 135 to -5. I'm pretty sure that Sand Ridge never got team bonus, making their score even more impressive. What happened to Longenecker? There's a lot of theories (including a possible conspiracy theory). Maybe Longenecker got too confident of how they were doing, and decided not to study the night before. Or on the opposite end, Longenecker got so worried that they "overstudied." Perhaps Longenecker's strategy was to buzz in first so they could get the question before Sand Ridge or they wanted to be the first team bonus, so they switched into a crazy buzzing mode, which backfired on them. Possibly when Longenecker got up on stage for the last match, they looked over the crowd, saw that ever staff member, every quizzer, every quiz coach and some parents from all over 4 quizzing leagues was watching, they freaked out and weren't fully in it. (And if you want to throw in the conspiracy theory here, Sand Ridge "paid off" or made some kind of deal with Longenecker to let them win, but that's pushing it.) Whatever it may be, the results are the same. Sand Ridge won, and Longenecker lost. So Sand Ridge would be the Invitational champions for a second consecutive year. As far back as I can remember (which is 2002), that's the first time I have seen that. So this is the results of the 2007 Invitational in West Liberty:
DOUBLE ELIMINATION BRACKET
1st place: Sand Ridge (Northwest Ohio)
2nd place: Longenecker (Wayne County)
3rd place: E-Town 3 (ACC)
4th place: Slate Hill 1 (ACC)
DORCAS BRACKET
1st place: Paradise 3 (ACC)
2nd place: Strasburg 1 (ACC)
The rest of the tournament was a praise band and speaker. Both very good. Then came the announcement of next year. Our own Fred Hertzler got up to make the announcement. Because he was making the announcement, I had a feeling where it was going. I was about to be right. Fred announced first that the Invitational will be in Lancaster, Pa. I figured that the ACC cordinator would announce the the Invitational hosted by the ACC. Then came the material for next year, which I also predict correctly. We were finishing up Acts. Next year's quizzing material is Acts 10 to 28. I started on it right after Transition Day. Others weren't as excited. After 2 years of New Testament, they were ready for Old Testament, not a third year of New Testament. I really don't care. Whatever I'm given to quiz on, I'm going to be awesome in studying and quizzing on it.
Then we began loading onto the busses on the way back. It was the same exact bus number, exact same bus driver, and mostly the same teams, except Hopewell Reading replaced Hopewell Elverson. We were a little slow to leave. I was looking for the rest of my team, but found out they were outside, saying goodbye again to our host family. So I got out and joined them. Not only was our host team there, but also the other quizzers from Calvary and Crossway. We talked and took pictures. But eventually we became the hold up and got back in the busses so we could leave and head back home for Ohio.
When we got on, the coaches had to do their authority thing. Jon got up and made a speech of this being a privildge and then he laid down the rules. My favorite was, "Guys are blue. Girls are pink. We want no purpling," which roughly translated into no coupling or PDA (we think this is because of Mike and Cadance). But I was cool with that. Of course, we started out early with Mafia beceause Tim wanted to. We did that until our first stop (an early stop) but after that no one really wanted to pick up on it. At our first stop, I just went to the grocery store by myself to pick something up to eat. The bus that was suppose to pick us up was late coming back to for us, so I had to run to make my bus. That wasn't good for me, especially when I was just getting over a mild form of bronchitus. Believe it or not, when the 2nd part of the bus trip was actually quite uneventful, maybe even boring. Tim went to the front of the bus to play rook and other card games. Most people listened to music, I did some word puzzles. Some people actually fell asleep (gasp!). I also did some homework on my laptop.
Then we got off for our midway pitstop at a rest stop just for bathroom breaks. I joined in the bathroom. It was funny because the men's line was longer than the women's line, but our went faster. Then we hackey sacked until they told us to get back in. For this third part, we were making sure it wasn't going to be boring. We played games like bull and scum. Bull started out well, but it eventually got to the point that no one could even lay down the real card, everything could be bulled easily because someone had all of one number, so we just gave up on that. Then we got a game of scum going. Even Mr. Deitrick got in on it. Somewhere through the game, the rules got messed up. It ended just in time for our Somerset stop, our last stop on the trip. I wanted to go to Turkey Hill, but I wasn't sure we could cross the exit ramp. So I just followed Christine around, like I had for the past 6 years (next year will be shockingly different). We met back together at the busses docking area. I got a call from home. Chelsea wanted me to get out the hackey sack again so we sacked again. Before we left, we gave Fred a thank-you offering gift to him because we were so grateful for all he did. He was grateful and was he said his reward was working with youth alone. We were definitely going to have Fred for many years to come.
We then all loaded back onto the busses for our final stretch home. Pretty much, we played mafia all the way home. Up to the last minute. I got to play every role, even narrarator. In the last two games, we were able to pinpoint the mafia exactly. Tim was so happy, the best way to describe it was a proud father. He thought our mafia playing was perfect, being able to think it through and pin down the mafia exactly. It was pretty evil against the mafia. We convinced the mafia that the dectective wasn't the detective and convinced them that an innocent townsperson was the detective. So the detective stayed alive the whole time without the mafia noticing, so the detective could find out who it was. The last mafia game ended exactly as we pulled into Dutch Wonderland. We collected all our belongings and left quickly. I wanted to say goodbye to everyone, but Mr. Deitrick had to be at work the next day, so we didn't want to hold him up. We drove back to the Deitricks and I stayed the night there, and finally got back to my own house on Monday morning.
~~~~**END FLASHBACK**~~~~
Between that Monday morning of Transition Day and the Secret Sponser thing, I looked closely at the bracket and realized that, technically, we finished 9th place with 4 teams (including us). Since this form of the tournament began, that was the furthest Spring City has ever gotten, including the 2005 team that won the ACC Tournament. This was also a great tournament because the whole time I never got sick of being around anyone, nor was I upset at someone's performance. I truly believe that everyone performed to their full performance that weekend. We got far, did well, had fun, and gave God glory. That's what made it a great tournament.
