Ever since coming home, people have been asking me "Are you done?" and I'm not sure what they mean. So I answer, "I finished my spring semester and my junior year, but I still have one more year to go until I graduate." Last month I did finish my third year at Lancaster Bible College with 102 credits. My GPA is a bit over 3.0, making me an A-B student. According to many, including the Education Department, that would make me fully competent in my degree to teach Bible. Lancaster Bible College's mission statement is simple: To educate Christian men and women to live according to the a Biblical worldview and to serve through professional Christian ministries. Academically, it has done that. But I still can't help that this school is ruinging me.
Lancaster Bible College is a non-denomination school. This means simply they don't side with any denominations. So when they write their statemet of faith, they try to make it generic as possible to able to reach Christians of all denominations, and yet at the same time, when they need to make a doctrinal stance on a lesser belief (spiritual gifts, for example), LBC can choose to take whatever stance the President and Board of Trustees decide to, without worrying about a certain church's opinion. The first part is very true, and I believe some good has come out of it. I've met people from all kinds of denominations at LBC, coming from many backgrounds, such as traditionalist, fundamentalist, and evangelical. I once heard someone say that one denomination shouldn't bash another denomination because each denomination can learn from each other. I think this has some truth to it. So one would think that a combination of denominations into a non-denominational college would be good. In theory it is, but a problem arises. I believe one of the reasons we have denominations is so we can fellowship in peace and unity with believe of the same beliefts. When within a church or school of the same denomination, the person to the left and right of you will mostly have the same beliefs as you, with maybe a few small variations. But in a non-denominational church and school, the basic beliefs are the same, but there will be also great differences and disagreements. This can cause strife.
Trust me, I've felt this strife at LBC. The biggest one is the Calvinism vs. Arminianism (predestination vs. free will, for those of you who don't speak Bible scholar), but can range from anything from women in the church to spiritual gifts. I've even heard some crazy arguments, like if Jesus said if a smell was good or bad, would we have to accept that smell has objectively good or bad, or would it still a subjective opinion. In general terms, there are arguments over what is sin and what is not, and how to deal with it. But these aren't simple conversations between believers. No, these are full out debates, and they can get quite vicious. You can't find it on facebook, but I wrote a blog in November called "Christians under friendly fire". It was inspired by this. The best metaphor to describe the intensity of these Biblical debates would be gunfire. We load up our guns with the doctrine from our preferred denomination or faith statement, then we go fire on those from different denominations with different faith statements, telling them they're wrong. And it's gotten bad, really bad. I've heard Christian college students questioning another fellow Christian's faith just because the other person doesn't exactly believe the same as the attacker. Let me be clear that I believe in absolute truths, I believe Jesus is the Truth, and God's Word is the inerrant truth. But these arguments are over things like the roles of women and spiritual gifts, things which I believe do not affect salvation.
I feel like I've been under this doctrinal gunfire at LBC. Everyone at LBC has their own faith statement and doctrine, and rightfully so, since LBC is training us to have one. The problem is when we use it against other classmates. I've seen LBC students go on and on for hours, arguing and arguing over the right answer to doctrine. What good has come out of this? None. In fact, the common result seems to be the students walk away mad at each other, not talking to each other for a while. Students start questioning each other's faith, and that never goes down well. You'd be insulted too if someone said that the faith you held on to for your strength and truth was really weak and wrong. How did it end up this way?
I think part of it is responsible to our our belief in objective truth gone to an extreme. When there is an objective absolute turth, there is only one right answer. All other answers have to be wrong. And we also hear so much that if one objective truth falls, everything else will fall around it, too. So we are quick to put up our walls and defend to the bitter end our personal beliefs about minor details, even if it's a kamakazie move to our relationships.
And in response, I feel like I am forced to put up my wall in defense as well. I feel like I have to load my faith statement gun and fire it back at anyone who is firing at me. I use to be like that, too. In my underclassman years of high school, I also had my set of beliefs so firm that I had to make sure everyone knew what I believed, that is what right, and that anyone who said differently were wrong. I would go on and on defending it, which would later lead to a counter-attack. When I realized that I losing the few friends I had and that a couple fellow students were just waiting to contest whatever I said, I stopped being that way and instead became quiet. I still held on to my personal beliefs, but I just was silent about them. And while things didn't get better, they stopped getting worse. Now at a Bible College, these doctrinal subjects come up again. This time I'm more socially involved. Therefore, I'm more engaged in these debates. I tried to keep quiet and passive on my personal convictions, listening to the other side for greater understanding. But when my college classmates take advantage of this by telling me I'm wrong, beating me with intellectual put-downs, I can't stay quiet anymore. I feel like I have to speak up. In a way, I feel like I'm force violently defend my beliefs, too. I don't want to do that. I want to have good intellectual discussion with my college friends, understand where the other one comes from, learning from them and strengthening our own beleifs. Instead, I must set up my own personal convictions as a weapon for debate.
And I've noticed something from high school happening here. In high school, I became very vocal about my beliefs, and I ended up alone. In college, I feel like I'm forced to become vocal about my beliefs, and the effect is a feeling of lonliness. Yes, that's right, I feel alone. Despite being in Lancaster County, there isn't a lot of Mennonites that go to LBC. In fact, I would say that Mennonites are a minority there. And the Mennonites that are there are the uber conservative ones (plain dress, head covering, submissive women, etc.) and some of them legalistic. So when they see me, dressing causually, watching TV, playing video games, I'm even criticized by them! With no one who shares my beliefs or remotely close (in terms of specifics and "third degree triage" if you will), I feel alone. You have no idea what relief it is to go to a Mennonite church every Sunday morning, to be able to worship and fellowship with believers that have beliefs so similar to mine. It is theraputic. I look forward to it so much. There, I am not alone. But at the college, I feel alone. Because my views are different, I feel like they don't want to hear from me.
That's another that changed for high school to college. Sure I was alone, and classmates were hardly involved in my life, but what they know about me was as the Bible Guy. When they wanted me, it was either for their team on the Bible review quiz game or just to keep Bible class discussion going. I answered so much, I had to learn to hold back to give others a chance to answer. The few times I got to stand out, I did. Now here at LBC, everyone is that Bible Guy. I'm on an equal playing field with a lot of people. I don't stick out. So I'm just one of many. What do I have now? The football watching, video game playing Mennonite? Yeah, I do that all. It's all true. But it's nothing that stands out as a part of the community I'm in. How can I contribute? Please do not take this as a selfish cry for attention, but rather a search to know where I fit in when it comes to the local Body of Christ within the college community. With little intearction in the college events, it's a question I've been pondering.
I think the other part of it is our Biblical Education gets to our head. Several of the students at LBC com from a Christian family and has grown up in church. They've heard a lot of the Bible stories over and over again, and might even be familiar with a lot of doctrine and theoloy, depending on family background or church background. Point is very few students come in knowing nothing. Somehow it gets in their head that they are equals with the professors and just here to turn the Biblical knowledge they already have into a degree. Maybe it's because the person believes that since they have a Bible and the Holy Spirit, they have all that can fathomed about the Bible and the Spiritual. It is true that the Holy Spirit guides the believer in interpreting the Scriptures, and any and every believer is worth listening to because the Holy Spirit is speaking through that Christian. But that doesn't mean we should throw away the professor's degree. His degree shows that he has spent hours studying the Bible in-depth and produced sound exegesis. Yet I see students quick to stand up against the professor, contesting him as if he knows nothing. Now, truth be told, I see this more in the adult students (30+ years old) than the undergrad students right out high school. This might be because the teacher no longer has authority of being older, but is now a peer with the adult student. But even the young students will join together to criticize the professor's teaching. Now to be fair, I can't be entirely innocent. In fact, the last semester, I was highly frustrated that I couldn't get an A on the exams simply because the exam question would ask for an interpretation, I would give mine, and the professor marked it wrong because it wasn't the same interpretation as his interpretation. Yes, it ticked me off. But did I call him a bad professor? No. I don't agree with some of his interpretations, but I still respect him as a teacher, and I still learn from him, despite not agreeing with everything he says. I believe all students can learn from teachers, even if the teacher and the student don't have the same exact faith statement. But instead the students must defend their faith to a professor that says differently, even though it's the same faith, and they come across as jerks doing it.
And this jerk notion just doesn't appear in the classroom. It appears when they go to church as well. I can't count the number of students I hear come back from church on a Sunday afternoon and heavily criticize the church they come from, especially the pastor. It always "he said this wrong" or "I didn't like where we went with that." Yes, what both the pastor and the student have in common in is both went through a Bible college or seminary with Bible and theology classes. The difference is he completed it, got his degree, and has real lif experience, unlike the student who has just a few semesters and just few Bible classes. Yet the student acts like he knows more or he knows better. If I was a pastor, I would not allow any LBC student to come to my church. The only people who have the right to criticize the pastor, if anyone beside God has the right to criticize, is his regular church members, not some young student who has to go to church on the honor system. Criticism is not constructive to the church body, especially by a Bible college young adult, whose acts like he knows it all and comes across as a jerk.
I believe there are some LBC students (not using names because I am not calling out specific people, but just saying this in general) that need to humble themselves and need to remove the "jerk" from themselves. And I sometimes think the faculty and staff at LBC recognize the student body needs it. The best example I can think of is the atheletic department. On top of their normal athletic responsibilities, like working out and going to practice, players on the athletic teams at LBC have academic responsibilites, which is not only keeping grades good but going to required "study halls", and spiritual responsibilities, like required Bible studies. I once heard a young freshman athlete complain, "This is stupid. All I want to do practice, play and compete. I don't want to have devotions. I don't want to have study groups. Why am I required to do this stupid stuff?" And the whole time I was thinking, "It's to take the jerk out of you, ya jerk." And LBC righfully so does this. Most of these athletes were athletes of the same sport in high school, whether public or private. Since they did play sports, the high school (doesn't matter if public or private) gives them the highest honors and makes them popular. They get special treatment from their popularity, from both teachers and students. So when they come to college, they come to expect the same popularity and the same honor. They get quite the shock when they find out the students at LBC don't care about the sports teams and their members in the same way as public schools. They're not as popular. If they continue to act as if they are, they can come across as jerks to the rest of students in the school. This is my observation, but I think other LBC students have observed it, too. Truthfully, I remember going to Thursday night worship once and hear one of the older athletes complain about his teammates being immature. Furthermore, I think the faculty and staff at LBC notice this, too, and that's why they enforce discipling the athletes in the classroom and the church setting, as much as in their sport. For the most part, I believe it works. Sure, the underclassman athletes are still immay ture, resisting the discipline they have to adjust to, but the upperclassman who have gone through this process and accepted a more reasonable role among the student body are quite mature. I had many good intellectual conversations with them about athletics, academics and the spiritual. So kudos to you, LBC, for recognizing a need in your school and fixing in a Biblical worldview way.
Now, LBC, take it up a notch and apply it to your music program, 'cause Lord knows they need to have the jerk removed from them too. Seriously, they have more jerk in them than the athletes sometimes. In fact, I think they have more jerk than the athletes do because they take on the jerkiness of an athlete. I think part of this is in due to the ministry they are serving: sports ministry vs. music ministry. It's a bit harder to connect sports with the spiritual, considering a sports competition usually doesn't happen during church on a Sunday morning. Someone in a leadership role of sports ministry has to carefully and naturally integrate the Bible into their sport. But the musical worship program, it is very obvious where the ministry fits in, from leading a Sunday morning worship to performing a Christian concert. In short, you could say music ministry is direct, while sports ministry is indirect. Anyway you put it, it's bad. Another part has to be the attention you give them. The attention high schools give athletes is the type of attention LBC gives their music and worship arts students. Let me tell you, it results in the same thing, too. It doesn't help that LBC makes many of the worship arts students their poster child. I think another part has to do the modern-day attitude if worship. The time of contemporary praise songs has become the center of worship. So when the worship leaders realize they are the leaders of what becomes the most important time on Sunday mornings, a lot can get to them, mainly to their head. And from that, I've heard a lot of heresies. I've heard one worship leader say, "Of course you've got to be musically talented to be gifted to lead worship." Oh really? I've already had two theology professors say that spiritual gifts are more than putting human talents to a spiritual application. I can attest to this. Some of the best worship leaders I know do not have any musical education more than hymn singing at church. And if you think you're so great because you've lessons and training from LBC. you got another thing coming. I've heard Mennonite churches, Mennonite colleges, Mennonite high schools, heck, even Mennonite middle schools, sound better than you. And in those Mennonite churches, most of the members are farmers and trade craftsman, with no musical training. And sometimes these worship leaders, who are trained in their music, feel like their call of worship has to be mini-sermons and they try to become mini-pastors. Let me tell you, this isn't always pretty. I've heard one worship leader say in the same chapel "It's not about worship" and "It's all about worship." Anyone see a contradiction? I've seen verses taken out of context. I've seen big productions made out of a simple worship. The funniest one was when the worship leader showed a video of himself talking, while he was on stage tuning up his guitar. I've heard uneccesarily solos. Let's remember what "solo" means- one, alone, self. Self does not go along with something that is to be edifying to community. I once had a conversation about this to someone I know who plays in a worship band. During the course of our conversation, he said to me, "I just play bass. I just want to play bass." I couldn't have said any better. I think he's got it. Our worship should be focused simply what we're doing to worship God, not making a big production. Now to be fair, this isn't something that just happens at LBC; it happens at a lot of churches. But if LBC is preparing students to become worship leaders, as they claim they do, their school and students need to be an example to the broader Christian community.
But enough of that, what seems to be "LBC Bashing." I don't mean to be "LBC bashing" because I really do love the school, from the teachers and students to its academics and purpose. There's been some quality growth at LBC, too. The best example would be community. There high school I was at endlessly preached community, as if it was a fourth part of the trinity (I know that sentence is a paradox, but you get my point). Yet all four years in high school I never felt an ounce of community. I come to LBC where there is no extra emphasis on community, and I feel community before the fall semster is over. Good job, Lancaster Bible. You've fostered and atmosphere that encourages community, and you've done it so well that the students do it own their own, even without the faculty holding their hand through it. But recently past struggles of community and friendships have reoccured again.
Now this is the part where I start talking generically in some parts. I do this first and foremost to not publicly embarrass someone who might be embarrassed. Secondly, I do this because I am not calling anyone out to make them look bad. Thirdly, the emphasis is not on them individually, but the effect it has been on me. On that note, I would also like say that this isn't a call for attention, but a cry to understand what's happening and to get answers to questions.
Previously to me coming to LBC, the college had small groups along side chapel, called Life Groups. By the time I got there, the individualism of American culture had taken hold of the college, and they shifted from groups to 1-on-1 mentoring betweeen a teacher/faculty/staff or a grad student. I got partnered up Louis Fritz, the best partnering LBC has ever done for me (actually, tied with picking my first roommate, but more about that later). Louis would see me on campus once a week, to have a Bible study and play the infant Wii, only one year old at the time. Life Connect was meant to be 1-on-1, but it quickly became a Life Group. The first one was Dennis. Dennis was in my quad my freshman year, and when Louis came to the quad with the Wii, he would join in playing with the Wii. When dennis learned we had Bible study following, he felt bad for just playing Wii, and joined us for the Bible study. Comparing my interaction in Bible study from the 1-on-1 with the group, Louis must've thought best for me to have more social interaction in a group and encouraged a Life Group. So before you knew it, we had a Life Group of me, Dennis, Brady and Micah. My first roommate Eric Burkhart wasn't in it because we mostly met on Friday nights, and Eric was home. But when he was there during the weekdays, he easily fit in with the rest of group. Since Dennis, Eric and I were in the same quad, and Brady constantly visited and stayed overnight, we quickly and easily bonded. Some of my fondest memories are staying up to 3-4 in the morning, despite having at 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. class, eating Ramen noodles, finishing homework that was due the next day and playing video games like Mario Party or Tiger Woods golf. On top of that, I had a cool section and an awesome quad. With those guys, I felt like I could be myself and be liked for who I was. That's as true as friendship could get. In a Valentine's blog freshman year, I wrote the friendship in my suite was so strong that I didn't care I was single. The irony behind that statement is that I did have a girlfriend for a short time during my freshman year, the first one in 15 months. Socially, life was good, and for me, this was as good as it could get.
Then, near the end of my first year, things changed. We had made simple plans. Eric, Dennis, Brady and I were going to be all in the same quad in Peterson Hall, in two rooms, Brady & Dennis, Eric & me. It soudned good and things were going to be the same our sophomore as our freshman. But a few days before, Dennis said to me a few times, "You know Eric isn't coming back." This was news to me. Eric never mentioned anything. Not wanting to me either a receiver of spredaer or rumors (anything not come from Eric's mouth himself) I dismissed it, figuring if that was true, Eric would tell me himself. Until then, I would assume to continue the plan. The night before room assignment, I was telling Eric my plan to get there early with registration stuff, and he said, "Yeah...I'm not coming back LBC next year." Even though I was warned by Dennis, it was still speechless. My roommate was leaving and I had to find a new roommate. With the end of room registration the next day, and everyone else I knew was set for roomate, I figured I would just take in a new freshman. Hey, I still was going to be with Dennis and Brady in a Peterson Hall quad. So I thought, but was fooled again. Brady had a class, so he trusted his registration info to Dennis. When Dennis went to register, Resident Director Garrett asked, "Where do you want to be?" Dennis shrugged and said, "Wherever." Garrett said, "How about South Apartment?" and Dennis said "Sure." Well, Brady and I were slightly ticked. Why did Dennis make this change? We speculated a lot. Did it have to do with Eric leaving, that Dennis didn't care? At first, I thought Brady made the decision because his sister Trisha was moving to the apartments. Did Dennis want to be closer to Trisha for Brady's sake or his own sake? Was it because a girl he liked? We questioned Dennis, and we couldn't get a straight answer. The best answer we got is "Garret just put me there." It sounded like Dennis himself wasn't sure either, but at the same time, maybe he knew, but wouldn't tell us. I was flustered about it, but Louis saw it for the good. He said it would be good because it would force us to stick together despite myself living in Peterson, Dennis & Brady rooming together into South, and Micah now moving into Brubaker. And for the beginning of the sophomore year, it was like that. For every Bible study, I would leave Peterson, go to South to get Brady & Dennis, then we would go to Brubaker for Micah. But shortly later Micah went from moving out of Peterson to moving out of LBC, and there was one less person in our small Life Group. As for Dennis and Brady in South, at first Dennis would complain about, from the lack of Air Conditioning to the overflowing toilet, and wished he was back in Peterson. But as the year went on, he was glad that was there, so much he was trying to convince me to move out of Peterson and into South. And despite being in two different dorms, I would regularly get calls from Dennis that would be "Graham, could you let me into Peterson?" and I would let him in to play to visit and play on the Wii. And on a few occasions after Eric Burkhart left, he would come and visit, and things were like the same again.
One Eric left and another one came. I knew Eric Bowden from Bible Hermeneutics class. Eric knew me for having orange and black shoes (he was hoping I wore those because I was a Bengals fan with Bengals colors). Eric had planned to room with Rob, but when Rob wasn't welcomed back with his 0.5 GPA (which was not a surpise to anyone...except Rob. lol.), Eric was without a roommate, stuck in the jock's quad. With Eric available, I became his roommate. Why did I want to be Eric's roommate? Confession time. I learned Eric lived in Pottstown, about 25 minutes away from my house. I always wanted a roommate close to home so I could home on the weekend for quizzing. Eric went home on the weekends anyway, so it was easy to find a ride home for quizzing, compared to the hectic search I had the last year. But I wasn't going into this stupid. Both Eric and I watched football and owned & played a Wii. As we got to know each other better, I learned Eric loved anime, and he re-sparked my interest in Pokemon, Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh. So I thought I had chose a good roommate. And with the same Life Group and a very similar dorm section, I thought things would be similar, and Eric would be grafted in easily.
In the beginning of the sophomore year, Life Group was Brady, Dennis, Micah and me, led by Louis. When Micah transferred out, we always joked about Eric being the "Micah replacement." Eric was slow to the idea. When Louis and Eric first met, Louis saw Eric playing a game on his laptop, and Louis asked, "What are you playing?" to which Eric meekly and shyly replied "An RPG" and Louis responded, "Well, I can see that." Brady encouraged Eric more and more to come. The selling point was when Eric learned that he could go use Lou's internet connect to get on World of Warcraft and fill his World of Warcraft obsession, Eric started coming to our Bible studies, now regularly taking place at Lou's apartment. So now it was Brady, Dennis, Eric and myself, led by Louis. It was another small thing, but things were good.
Or were they good? Truthfully, things weren't as good as they looked. One of us was failing. He was using his maximum skips in chapel and class. He was handing in papers partially done, weeks past their due date. He wasn't doing homework. Now granite there was a lot of stress on his part from family issues, especially due to his sister. But he wasn't helping himself either. He was sleeping appropriately, with not enough hours, and not even in his own bed or his own dorm room (in fact, his roommate even said it felt like he had no roommate). He was spending 3-6 hours a day playing a video game. He was more concentrated fun activities with friends than on schoolwork. All these took up the time he needed for class, and everything that came with class, like homework, papres, projects, and studying for exams, which needed to be done. So naturally his grades did suffer. And it didn't help he started getting overly focused on his girl crushes than his classes. He was well aware about his problem. It worried him, and added to the stress. Being the good Life group we were, we did what any small group would do: offer accountability. The rest of the group was in our failing friend's classes, so we knew what was going in his classes. We would make sure he came to class by walking to class with him, make sure he did his homework by doing homework with him, and help him study by forming a study group with him. It was our plan to start off his spring semester this way, the right way, to get his grades back up. Easier said than done. See, this is where I learned that giving accountability and receiving accountability were two different things. We would tell him, "Go to class." He would never show up. We would ask, "Did you do your homework?" He said he did, but he wasn't. He was just there for the video games and the fun activities, and the occasional Bible study, but even the Bible studies were less and less. That was for a reason. Apparently he found our accountability to be just annoying and pestering. Instead of spending time with friends who cared about him, he started hanging out with new friends. Don't get me wrong, they're not bad people. But with them unaware of how their new friend was doing in school, this guy could have fun in school without worrying about school, when he really needed to worry. He also spent more time with girl crushes than us, too, and gave himself an unneccessary love triangle or love square or some kind of love polygon. He didn't need more stress, but he added on to it himself. And these new friends and girl crushes took more time out of his life. I remember I was in a class with him, which he was miserably failing. It showed he was miserably failing because the class paper he was suppose to write I saw, and all it contained was paragraphs from commentaries cutted and pasted onto a Word Document. Anyways, it was evening class, which means it's 3 hours long. Between 1/6 and 1/3 the way through, he gets a text message. He sprints out of the room, leaving his books and binder behind. I look at the guy next me, and we're thinking, "Must have been some kind of emergency." Well, his books are still here, so he's got to come back. At the end of the three hours, his books were still there because he did not come back. I took his books back to my room to hold on them. About 5-6 hours after he left, he came to my room for his stuff. He told me, "Some girl invited me to build a fort, so I went." Yeah, I almost lost it. He needed to be in that class, and he gave it up for a fort. So naturally he got in trouble with student services. And the more he pushed off meeting with them, the more he got in trouble. So the guys in our small group confronted him, trying to help him so we could see him again the next semester. How did respond? He angrily yelled at us, "Well, maybe if you weren't bugging and pestering so much, I could get some work done!" Yeah, of course, I almost lost it again. Well, I did lose it, just privately. Bugging?? Pestering?! We give him accountability to help stay with us, and he instead blames us! Whatever work he did do during that semester would have never got done unless we did "bug" and "pester" him. In a last minute attempt, we told his other friend. They responded, "He's really failing classes? We didn't know" which just goes to show how much they were in the dark, and how much he kept them in the dark. Now even they were trying to pitch in and help. But it was too late. He had traded his academics for his social life, and it would cost him both.
This wasn't my only encounter with accountability issues. There was another guy in our group struggling with issues. Now his issues were more various than the last guy. He did have struggles with school work being hard. He would always get things done, but would sometimes cheap out on them by just doing them, even if they were in poor quality. At a few times it became so overwhelming that he even felt like giving up. He also had sin struggles, from anger to pornography to addictions (of the non-drug sort). Now at some points he recognized his problems. He would talk them out with me individually and with us as group and he would ask for accountability. Doing the right community thing, I offered it, despite what was happening with the other accountability situation. Now looking at it, I feel like I should have learned my lesson from the last accountability issue. It became a cycle. He would ask for accountabilty, he would give it, he would start strong, then it would degress as time went by, we would remind him out of accountability but not action would follow, he would degress as low as he could go, and then he would realize he hit bottom and ask for accountability help again. Repeat cycle. Now I can get the first time asking for accountability help, and then even maybe a second time after slipping and letting accountability get away. But when it comes a third and fourth time after, I couldn't. I was saying "Yeah, yeah, whatever" because I knew he was going to slip into the same cycle again. He was just saying it, even to just do the right things. He was doing a lot of things just because it was the "right thing to do" like pray, read the Bible and go to chapel, even though I'm not sure he was applying it the right way. But at other times he wasn't even doing those things. When I give accountability, I usually start at that simple level of reading the Bible, praying, and worshipping. But if no one, him specifically, would do that, my accountability and advice are just mere words, and I am talking into the air, to a wall. And it can be frustarting to see nothing you say should be done being done. It feels like they're not listening to you, and that can be frustrating in itself. By the end, he had fallen into a deep funk, the lowest of the low. It was so low he didn't want the accountability. He just wanted to slump in his depression. So I let him, and didn't care. He brought it on himself.
The third guy had nothing to do with accountability, but an issue arose with him, too. He had a habit of being somewhere between blasphemous and heretical. Now everyone in our group has done this, and we've all joked around with it, but we know the point to end it and go back to serious. But he seemed to keep being heretical, whether to be funny or to be just stupid. And some of us would get annoyed by this when we're trying to have a serious discussion at a serious Bible study. It seemed liked after our fearless leader brought this up, he shyed away and started coming less and less. First they were valid excuses, like needing to do homework or study for a test. But sometimes I would get back from Bible study early and find him playing pool or table tennis with other friends, not doing homework as he claimed. Once again, these new friends are not bad guys. In fact, I think they are good guys because they're getting him to do things we could never get him to do, like go to chapel. But it felt like he was lying to us. But as time past, he was more honest, but I'm not sure it was better. One time, in the middle of our Bible study, he got a text message, got up and said, "I'm going back. Someone has clam chowder, and I want clam chowder." Yes, he left our small group for clam chowder. I half wished he would go back to lying to us because even if it was a lie, it was a better reason, while clam chowder, jogging and a Sheetz run were just excuses to leave. Since he was there from the beginning, it was kind of hard to see him leave.
So it came to pass that after my sophomore year, Brady left the group. In the summer of 2009, Brady decided to think over who he was, what he was doing at LBC, and where he was going, so he took a semester off. It made sense. No reason to be spending money for a college if you don't know where you're going with a degree there and if it will help. So naturally Brady, was gone for the fall semester junior year, but after making one appearnce in the spring semester, he was never seen again in our small group. Brady was replaced by Dylan, an incoming freshman Eric knew from a previous encounter. Once again, there was a little joking about Dylan being the "Brady replacement", but not as much because there was a somber feeling because we lost one a second time, and possibly worse, he was still there half the time. Besides, while it was great to acquire Dylan, it really wasn't a full replacement because Dylan was not similar to Brady as Micah was to Eric. So we had still had 4, but the pattern was to continue. During my junior year fall semester, Dennis came less and less, and by the end of the fall semester, Dennis no longer came to group. And then there was 3. Eric, with no PC at Lou's apartment for World of Warcraft had less of a reason to come to Bible study and had other people he rather see and other things he rather do than be with us, so he started coming less and less, and by announcing he was no longer being a resident student, he left the group. And then there was 2 in Lou's small group, and I was the only original. Brought a whole new definition to "small group."
So why do I go through this long story? Do I want to get revenge on them by bashing them? No, I said I wouldn't, I said I wasn't, and I'm not. You have to hear what I've been through to get where I'm going and how I'm feeling. I told you in the beginning of this half I came out of high school and into college, believing that there was no such thing as "community," and every "community" had a negative view to me. I said within the first semester my views of community were healed because I finally felt community. I believed community existed because I was personally experiencing it that freshman year. But from that point on, I watched it slowly dissolve. I even made up a saying to describe this, which is a cross between Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and ApologetiX's parody of Bohemian Rhapsody "Bethlehemian Rhapsody". And it goes something like this: "People come, people go, people get disposed." It simply states this: people come into your life, and either literally go, as in getting up and leaving, or they "get disposed" which means they are still present, but they are so inactive your life they might as well be gone. And that's what I showed you in the last paragraphs. At LBC fellow college classmates came into my life. Some of them got up and left, due to transferring out. Others are still there in my college, but I see them and talk to them so little they might as well be gone out of my life. It would almost be better if they did got up and leave because you could say it was on better terms.
And looking back at all this, especially from the beginning, can you see the irony? Louis decided to make his and my Life Connect into a Life Group because he saw I needed a small group to boost my social interaction and Christian fellowship for spiritual growth. And what happens? Instead we have people rejecting accountability, people lying, people not sticking around, people leaving, people losing contact. We saw replacements and we saw decreasing numbers. And at the end of this junior year, I couldn't help but turn to Louis and said, "You made this to show me Christian fellowship and community. I saw community is flawed and cannot be trusted to be around in the long term. Thank you for proving me right." While I might have sounded like I was being "smart" I think this is hard for the both of us. We're the only two originals. If Louis is seen as the leader, I'm the one and only original. And from freshman to junior year, we've had 6 different guys in the group, and including Louis would make 7. It has had Louis and I look at each other and ask, "Are we doing something wrong? Is it our sometimes heretical jokes? Is it our uncoventional views? Is it our video game tangents? Is it our separation from the rest of the college? Is it Louis that's causing the problem? Or is it Graham causing the problem? Are we doing something wrong?"
More irony comes with how last year ended. For reasons needing to be addressed, Louis transferred out of Lancaster Bible College's Graduate School to Liberty University's Online Graduate progam, then he moves from the Manheim Township suburb near LBC campus to downtown Lancaster city. These were two big changes, especially including him, but not limited to him, including us. He was no longer part of the larger college community. He was no longer within walking distance. We need someone with a car to drive anyone there, and some way to afford the gas to go visit him, some way to pay for the parking meter. If you're missing one, there's no trip. While its distane is literal, maybe it is symbolic for a distance with the undergrad students. When he was closer, I could visit him 2-3 times a week. Now it's down to one. This summer I am going have budget more gas money to make sure I can make at least a once a week trip. And with these little distancing things adding up, plus Louis sometimes talking constantly about how bad his sickness gets in the summer, sometimes I wonder how long he'll stick around before he leaves me, whether it be leaving because he doesn't like my theology, he doesn't like my choice of video games, or even as extreme as him dying early on me. After all, people come, people go, people get disposed.
It wasn't just the small group. It was the roommate. Yes, Eric was both small group and roommate and small group member, but here were different aspects of each separately, and sometimes those aspects collided together. Yes it was true both Eric and I liked football. But I was an Eagles fan and Eric was a Bengals. It wasn't so much the team that was the issue, but our approach to our teams. While I am an Eagles fan, I am equally critical of all NFL teams, giving all of them positive and negative criticism, including the Eagles. Eric sees his Bengals as God's chosen team, and their quarterback Carson Palmer was the messiah. I tried reaching out to him by talking about Bengals news (and still do), and as long as it was positive, it was all good. But if I dare give a negative criticism, I was committing a blasphemy. Sometimes he got so defensive, I thought he was going to stone me (the bad way, with rocks). Yes, it is true that both Eric and I like video games and play Wii. But our approach to video games, we differ. I am causual in my playing of video games. I do it for relaxation. I seriously just play for the fun of it, whether it be by myself or in fellowshiping with other friends. Eric plays very competitively. Eric plays to win. And if Eric doesn't win, his anger can get the best of him. If he's losing, he blames it on something out of his control, like the controls or the other players. There's a lot of yelling involved while playing with Eric. It got so bad I stopped playing video games with him unless it was co-op. Yes, both Eric and I have a socialphobia of some sorts, some fear of groups of people. But I will not allow my socialphobia to stop me from doing what I truly want to do. Eric's will. For example, a full cafeteria will not stop me from eating if I'm hungry. I just take a booth and strae at the wall. But with Eric, it will stop him, and he would starve instead of dealing with those people. Yes, both Eric and I are Christians seeking God. But our theology was different and that caused strife. I could handle metaphors and liked talking about symbolism and interpretations behind them. Eric couldn't handle metaphors because he needed everything to be literal. For example, I once said about the apartments, "they have a very open-door policy there" (and you should pick up that "open-door policy" means they welcome anyone to come in at any time). Eric replied, "No, you can close the doors there." Obviously he missed it, and that was a small, unimportant one. You can imagine the nightmare when our small group was studying Revelation. We all saw the message of Revelation as God giving hope to a persectued church. All Eric could see was God simply spilling information about the end times. We both did have different opinions on doctrine and different theology. I am usually intellectually open to discussing them by examining all sides, understand each side, and learning for all of them. Eric has his opinions emotionally attached to him. If I dare suggest another side, even if it just for the sake of discussion and I don't believe in it, Eric would be quick to trash it down. If I dared to suggest possible criticism of what he thinks or believes, it was like I was treating him as a non-christian, which I wasn't. It goesall the way back up top to the first half of this blog. LBC students turn doctrine into a full out war. There were also other little factors. Eric made me feel guilty every time I asked a favor from him, even it was so simple. Yet Eric asked me to do many simple favors for him, even stupid things as walking to an office with him (when he did, I was would sarcastically ask, "Do you want me to hold your hand?"). There was also the issue that Eric was taking things from my side, from borrowing me GameCube controller without permission to drinking my water, and I lost trust in him. That led into an argument on how each one should deal with our possessions, which in turn led to more fighting. All in all, I think I can sum it all up in saying this: I became all things to Eric in the places he was the "weaker brother" so I could reach, but he never did that for me. All this has left doubts in my head about him. I use to think he would make a great counselor, with all people he is friends with. But after seeing how he sometimes can't handle groups of people and how sometimes he lets the anger get the best of him, I'm not sure he can do it. I'm not sure I would let my kid see him. Sometimes I wonder if it's sublimination. Is Eric wanting to be a counselor so he can figure his own psychological problems?
But it wasn't just the roommate. It was everyone in the quad, and even everyone in the whole section. In my freshman year, I had a whole section that got along, love having fun, and built community. I was in the same section my sophomore year, with a few graduates leaving and a few new incoming freshmen. Still, I for the most part got along with everyone. The only one who irked me was Aaron Thomas because he just enjoyed making fun of me too much. When I tried to bring the same fun, joyful late night gaming I did my freshman year to Aaron and Eric my sophomore year, they took it and turned it into a fierce competition. When I was winning, they would complain about my win. When I was losing, they would make fun of me and put me down. The late night video gaming was no longer fun, and I stopped playing with them altogether. On top of that, since Aaron didn't have the same serious view on school as I did, he would constantly bug me when I was working on homework, whether it just talking or asking me to do something with him. Now I'll cut Aaron a break. He realized that LBC was not for him, and he was just trying to have fun his one semester. And he wasn't the worse.
No, the worse was my junior. Once again, this was not chosen by me or student services. Actually, this was moreso picked by Eric because he was trying to work in as many friends as possible. I just said it had to be in Peterson, and he was fine with that. It was tough for me to live in that quad. I had another Mennonite in my quad. You think this would be good to have someone of the same denomination in your quad, but as I said much earlier above, he was a hardcore conserative legalistic Mennonite, with plain dress, orthodox beliefs, and a submissive girlfriend. I was under constant constant scruntiny from him, anywhere from the video games I play to the music I listen to. He would put down anyone, including me, his Mennonite brother, for not believing exactly as he does. Now I can handle it, but his roommate, who this year was working on making his parents' beliefs his own got the worse of it. It was good when the two of them would talk about different beliefs on different doctrine because the legalistic pastoral student knew them all. But it was bad because if his roommate dare suggested a different view, it was quickly shot down as wrong, and the roommate was put down for even thinking such a thing. And all around, I felt like this legalism on the campus was a bad witness of mennonites to other Christian denominations, especially when he was hypocritcal (he would yell at other students for not following school rules, but would break others himself, and would defend himself as being in the right). I heard constantly my own roommate Eric mockingly say to him, "Is that how a Mennonite acts?" I know he was talking about our next dorm neighbor, but it still was tagged on to me too. And while I only heard it verbally from Eric, it wouldn't surprise me if others were thinking it, too. And sometimes I wonder if everyone thinks that I think and act the same way. That would be sad. Even sadder, I feel like I have shun him and not associate with him in order to perserve my witness. But this uber-conserative Mennonite isn't my only problem. I had a D.A. who always complained my music was too loud, especially my Guitar Hero. First, I have it nowhere near as loud as at home. Second, I have heard him play so loud I can hear it my room through the wall...after curfew! In my whole section altogether, they spend hours playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl in a loud, obnoxious fashion. I know this might sound selfish, but it makes it so hard for homework or sleep. I dare not say any complain towards it, though, because they will get upset as when they do when my legalistic neighbor does. And also remember playing the wii is a huge stress reliever for me. But it seems whever I got the small window of chance to play wii, they are playing their 50th round of Brawl. Plus when they would get to together to try to have serious discussions too, they also became loud yelling arguments to defend who was right. Once again, the LBC atmosphere causes that. Between the doctrinal arguments and the Super Smash Brawl arguments, I would just have to shut my door and play my music very loud to ignore them, so I would get upset. That's not the brotherhood, the "manctuary" that I knew from my freshman year.
Look what it's done to me. It's totally changed me, and not for the good. First of all, this was the first year that I did not want to be on campus or in my dorm. Second, I found myself visiting Louis more often 2-3 times a week, for hours upon hours, just to get away from my dorm. Third, when winter break came this junior year, this was the time I could not wait to go home. Was it homesickness? Not at all. I just needed to get out of that quad and away from those guys at least a month. To prove it, there was that one Friday where it was just me, and I liked it so much. Fourth, I felt lonely and single, needing a girlfriend. Why is this so critical? In my freshman year Valentine's blog, I wrote that the friendship from my dorm section was stronger than the desire for a girlfriend, so I didn't need one. When I didn't have philos, that brotherly love from my quad, I sought eros, the love from a girlfriend. Seeing all the couples around campus, I felt lonely and was aware of how alone I was. No girlfriend, no friends. I returned to sitting by myself for lunch (when I say "returned to" I meant from high school). More proof to it, when I left college, the desire to date was gone again because I'm not surrounded by couples. But on campus, when I see couples, I not only see boyfriend and girlfriend, I see two best friends, and I want a girlfriend who will be my best friend, too. But even that's in complication, which brings up the fifth thing it's done to me. Fifth, I feel like I have become incapatible with living with someone else. If I can't get along with a roommate of the same gender, how can I get along living with a roommate of the opposite gender. If I can't live with everyone in my quad, how can I live with a family? It didn't help my roommate kept referring to the end of being roommates as a divorce. Now I'm afraid that even if I do get married. she'll end up divorcing me within two years because she's sick of living with me. But even in the nearer context, I'm afraid that my new roommate wil get sick of me living halfway through the year again. I tried picking my own roommate again, and this time I picked Dylan. Now when LBC picked me a roommate, I ended up with Eric Burkhart, and that worked out great. When I picked my roommate, I got Eric Bowden, and that ended terribly. Choosing myself again, I'm afraid it will end tragic again. But Dylan has positive outlooks, and assures me that he thinks it could well.
So as I'm getting near the end of my blog, let me get to the end of my junior year. It was not a pretty one. Dennis rarely talks to me, but when we do talk, we have hearty conversation about football, and the few conversations we do have I appreciate, even though it's nothing like it use to be. Brady fell back into the same slump that got him in trouble in the first place and repeated mistakes from his freshman year. Eric and I jokingly would say he "sold his soul to the devil" as metaphorical joke. I meant that he gave up good brotherly accountability for a girl, while Eric said that in reference to girl exactly. I proverbally washed my hands from anything Brady did, declaring myself not guilty of or responsible for his actions. Between getting rejected by a crush and getting in a fight with his dad, Eric fell into a deep slump. When friends offered to help, he went into a "leave me alone and don't talk to me, I'm depressed" phase and cut everyone off. Anyone who tried to help, he dragged down into his depression, making things worse. He tried to drown his sorrows in a video game, neglecting food, sleep, class, chapel, and social interaction, making things even more worse. When I saw how he was acting, I wasn't going to baby him like everyone else. Once again, I proverbally washed my hands and did not offer my accountability, he was on his own. He responded likewise. I hardly saw him and talked less to him. As far as I was concerned, he was no longer my roommate, Dylan was. As I said, Dylan replaced Eric as my roomate. Eric was also replaced at small group by Greg. Greg is less emotional than Eric and more intellectual like me, which I like. I can see us having good intellectual conversation in the near future. Yet I can't help notice only 3 people there, along with Louis. It isn't what it use to be. Yet we'll keep rolling with the punches. I think the pinnacle of the last day of my third year came with an event on Wednesday evening. Eric had taken his last final and went straight home to play World of Warcraft on his monstrosity of a computer. I was working on my computer, preparing my internship the next day, when I heard the quad door open. Outside my open dorm door, I saw Dennis and Brady. They asked me, "Is Eric still here, or did he leave?" I answered, "He left already." They reply, "Oh ok" and leave. That's it. No "how are you doing, Graham?", no "how were you finals, Graham?", no "what are you doing this summer, Graham?" or not even a "Have a good summer, see you next year." All I got was an "oh ok." Now people would constantly come to my room looking for Eric all year. I got use to it; I didn't like it, but I got use to it. But these guys, who have known me since fall semester my junior year, couldn't even properly hold a short conversation to say goodbye. This was almost as bad as when Brady "cowered in fear" at the sight of Louis after not seeing him a long time. That alone might have led me to write all this.
So now finally concluding, while I am getting equipped so much at Lancaster Bible College, I feel like it's also ruining me. I use to be accepting of all denominations, and now I'm critical of them. I use to enjoy worship time, but now I'm loathing them. I use to thing community was a fantasy, but it was given to me to show it exists, and then it was taken away from me. LBC has forced me to put my faith on defense, and even sometimes counter-attack people. I don't want it to be this way. At LBC, I fee like I'm being criticized from everyone on all sides. I don't know where I fit in this LBC community, and I want to know I belong here. I don't mean to point the finger at anyone, but to simply point the finger back at me. This is not selfish call for attention, but a cry to know I belong in part of the Body of Christ. If someone can endure to read all this, please pray for me and tell me whatever you hear.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
More details on the 2010 ACC Tournament
Let me take a step back. I told you about the Invitational, but didn't tell you about the ACC Tournament. If you went to the Conestoga Twitter page a week earlier, you would have seen that I was giving it a test run with the ACC Tournament resutls. So if you read that, you already know what happened. If not, enjoy this description of the matches.
First, I believe owing God thanks and praise that he made all things work out for this Saturday. The previous Wednesday evening my grandmother passed away, and I wasn't sure if I would make it back from Connecticut for the tournament. But I believe God recognized my needed leadership in the ministry I was serving, so He made it so that the viewing was Friday and the funeral was Saturday. I spent all Friday morning driving up to Connecticut from home and all Saturday evening driving from Connecticut back to LBC so I could be with my team in a big tournament. Thank you God for being faithful to the calling you gave me.
The team met together for the Sunday School hour for quiz practice, and joined together in worship for the church service. After church all the quizzers met together around the ping pong table for lunch. Sharon, Amanda's mom, brought meatballs for meatball subs, along with sides and deserts. We all ate in good time and left in good time, even though we were pulling it close. We got to Lancaster Mennonite School exactly 2 minutes before 1 p.m., when the tournament started. Luckily for us, our first match wasn't until 1:20 anyway. So we waited out for our match to come, reviewing some questions, some lists and some footnotes.
Conestoga was in Group E with 5 other teams. Therefore, we quizzed 5 matches in the afternoon's round robin with other teams in our group. The first team we were up against was Zion 2. In the season, we had faced Zion 2 and had a close loss. Zion 2 started off the match quickly, while Conestoga had a slow start. Zion 2 kept strong through the whole match, Conestoga struggled. Zion 2 had 3 quiz outs, while Justin was the onl one able to quiz out. Conestoga lost 65 to 105. We were 0-1 in Group H. The quiz team didn't feel too good about losing their first match. They needed to get outside into the beautiful weather and bask in the sun. In the meantime, I looked at the early standings.
At 2:00 Conestoga had their second match vs. Bowmansville 1. This match I started Amanda over Kristy. The match did start slow with Bowmansville 1 getting an error, and Denise not getting the bonus. But then things turned around. Amanda, who has been somewhat dormant buzzed in on question 2 and got it right! This was followed by Denise who got a buzz-in correct. Now Bowmansville responded with scoring 30 points, but that was followed by 2 errors, allowing Denise to quiz out on our side and open a seat for Kristy. Joy and Kristy joined in and got a buzz-in correct, getting us team bonus! Conestoga was the winner, 95 to 65. We were now 1-1.
With an hour until our next match, everyone enjoyed a longer break. Most of the Conestoga quizzers had a make-shift game of softball, using Meredith's long wooden name tag as the "bat." I watched a quiz match between Hope of the Nations and E-Town 1, and went back and forth between the standings to see how they were unfolding. For the most part, they unfolded to our benefit and we had much potential to entering the playoffs.
3:00 came around and so did our match against RiverCorner. The music room was fairly empty with no large crowd watching us. The first 2 questions Joy and Densie buzzed-in correctly, giving Conestoga a strong 20 point lead. Questions 4 and 5 slowed down the match. On question 3, Denises errored and Megan Lehman from RiverCorner couldn't pick up the bonus. Question 4 went by without anyone buzzing in. It was ok; it was areally long question with a really long answer. Megan may have rebounded by getting the next buzz-in correct, but then Conestoga took control of the next 4 questions. Amanda kept going on fire with question 6 a correct buzz-in. Densise got her second question right on question 7. Justin buzzed in answered correctly on question 8, getting us team bonus. Denise kept going with right answers and quizzed out on question 9, giving Conestoga a 75 point lead. RiverCorner answered 4 questions correctly, but it wasn't enough. Joy got the last question and finalized the match. Conestoga was the winner against RiverCorner, 95 to 55.
Since we had back-to-back matches, we had to run from the music room to the Rutt Building for our match against Living Rock 2. Still on fire from our last match, we were ready to go. Amanda was the most on fire because she was the one who opened the match with a correct buzz in. Just must've not wanted to be the last one for team bonus again because he got the second question a buzz in correct. After taking a 20 point lead, we then errored twice, which Living Rock picked up easily. Then Living Rock 2 got a buzz in correct, answering 3 correctly in a row. But Joy buzzed in correctly on question 6 and Kristy on question 8, giving team bonus. It got scary when Living Rock 2 got 3 buzz-ins correctly and was one away from team bonus. But they never got it. Isntead, Kristy quizzed out on question 15, winning Conestoga the match 95 to 75. Conestoga was now 3-1 in Group H.
Conestoga's final match in the round robin was against Goods 2. We had quizzed against Goods 2 in the season and won greatly. We hoped to repeat. For the last round robin match, I went back to starting Kristy over Amanda. Conestoga got the first 4 questions right. Denise started off question 1 with a right bonus, then got a right buzz-in on question 2. Joy interruptted Denise's streak by getting her own buzz-in correct. Denise got her quiz out on question 4, putting Amanda in. There was no team bonus this team, but Kristy got her second consecutive quiz out, also on question 15. Conestoga once again was the winner, with a score of 90 to 45. After losing the opening match, Conestoga went on a 4-match winning streak to finish 4-1 in the group. Since Zion 2 had gone undefeated in our group, Conestoga's 4-1 record put the team 2nd place in Group H. We were going to the playoffs.
Sharon once again was kind enough to bring pizza for the quiz team, and so we all enjoyed a pizza picnic outside in the nice weather. Then the quiz team went to get ice cream, but I went back to the standings to get more information on what was happening. In Group H, Zion 2 finished 1st, Conestoga finished 2nd and Bowmansville 1 in 3rd. All were going to the playoffs. Our opponent in the playoffs would be Strasburg 4, the third place team in Group B, with a 3-2 record. We had closed the season quizzing against Starsburg 4, and we won. We hope to win again. Some other things to notice: the combined Petra team records was 23-2. 3 Petra teams went 5-0 and 2 Petra teams went 4-1. 3 of 5 Petra teams were the champions of their group. Also, 7 of the 8 group champions were 5-0.
I had a quick coach's meeting to go for bus assignments. Conestoga didn't get the bus seating we would have wanted, but Fred made sure we would on the way back. The meeting got over in enough time for the quizzing movie. After the quizzing movie was the Top 50 Bible Quizzers List. We (at least I) cheered loudly and wildly for our quizzer on the Top 50 Quizzers List: Denise. Denise finished in 35th with 575 points. Then afterward the playoffs were ready to begin.
So came our playoff match against Starsburg 4. Same quizzers, same line-up. Denise opened the quizmatch with a correct buzz, and Joanna from Starsburg 4 responded on question 2 with a correct buzz-in. Conestoga took a heavy lead into the quiz match. 4/5 the way through the match, we were winning 80 to 30, thanks to Denise and Joy quizzing out. Things sounded set. But the 30 points Strasburg 4 got was 3 buzz-ins by 3 different quizzes. On question 13, Joanna from Strasburg 4 got another question correctly, putting her one away from a quiz out. So with 2 questions left, Strasburg 4 was one question away from a quiz out and one question away from a team bonus. On question 14, Strasburg 4 got that 4th quizzer to buzz in correctly for the team bonus. The score was now Conestoga - 80, Strasburg 4 - 70. I was sitting on the bench thinking, "Anybody but Joanna, anybody but Joanna..." because if no one got it right, Conestoga won, if anyone of the conestoga quizzers got it right, Conestoga won, if any Strasburg 4 quizzer but Joanna got it right, it would be a tie and there would be overtime, but if Joanna got it right, Strasburg 4 would win due the 5 extra points for the quiz out. The worse case scenario happened. Joanna buzzed in, answered correctly, quizzed out and won the match for her team. Strasburg 4 was the victorius team, 85 to 80. Strasburg 4 would go on, but Conestoga was knocked out of the playoffs in the first round. Our day was done.
With Conestoga done, the quizzers went home, but I stayed to see the rest. In the second round, Strasburg 4 would lose their next match against Petra 1. I watched Petra 2 beat Petra 5. In the quarterfinal round, there was a re-match of the semifinal season match between Petra 2 and Slate Hill 1. The match started out close, but Petra 2 took a good lead and the win this time. In the semifinals, Petra 2 won against Gehman and Petra 1 won over Weaverland 2. The final match was Petra 2 vs. Petra 1. This also started out close, but Petra 1 would be the victorious team, winning 85 to 50. So the 2010 ACC Tournament ended with Petra 1 in 1st place and Petra 2 in 2nd place. Congratulations Petra 1 for winning the championship.
First, I believe owing God thanks and praise that he made all things work out for this Saturday. The previous Wednesday evening my grandmother passed away, and I wasn't sure if I would make it back from Connecticut for the tournament. But I believe God recognized my needed leadership in the ministry I was serving, so He made it so that the viewing was Friday and the funeral was Saturday. I spent all Friday morning driving up to Connecticut from home and all Saturday evening driving from Connecticut back to LBC so I could be with my team in a big tournament. Thank you God for being faithful to the calling you gave me.
The team met together for the Sunday School hour for quiz practice, and joined together in worship for the church service. After church all the quizzers met together around the ping pong table for lunch. Sharon, Amanda's mom, brought meatballs for meatball subs, along with sides and deserts. We all ate in good time and left in good time, even though we were pulling it close. We got to Lancaster Mennonite School exactly 2 minutes before 1 p.m., when the tournament started. Luckily for us, our first match wasn't until 1:20 anyway. So we waited out for our match to come, reviewing some questions, some lists and some footnotes.
Conestoga was in Group E with 5 other teams. Therefore, we quizzed 5 matches in the afternoon's round robin with other teams in our group. The first team we were up against was Zion 2. In the season, we had faced Zion 2 and had a close loss. Zion 2 started off the match quickly, while Conestoga had a slow start. Zion 2 kept strong through the whole match, Conestoga struggled. Zion 2 had 3 quiz outs, while Justin was the onl one able to quiz out. Conestoga lost 65 to 105. We were 0-1 in Group H. The quiz team didn't feel too good about losing their first match. They needed to get outside into the beautiful weather and bask in the sun. In the meantime, I looked at the early standings.
At 2:00 Conestoga had their second match vs. Bowmansville 1. This match I started Amanda over Kristy. The match did start slow with Bowmansville 1 getting an error, and Denise not getting the bonus. But then things turned around. Amanda, who has been somewhat dormant buzzed in on question 2 and got it right! This was followed by Denise who got a buzz-in correct. Now Bowmansville responded with scoring 30 points, but that was followed by 2 errors, allowing Denise to quiz out on our side and open a seat for Kristy. Joy and Kristy joined in and got a buzz-in correct, getting us team bonus! Conestoga was the winner, 95 to 65. We were now 1-1.
With an hour until our next match, everyone enjoyed a longer break. Most of the Conestoga quizzers had a make-shift game of softball, using Meredith's long wooden name tag as the "bat." I watched a quiz match between Hope of the Nations and E-Town 1, and went back and forth between the standings to see how they were unfolding. For the most part, they unfolded to our benefit and we had much potential to entering the playoffs.
3:00 came around and so did our match against RiverCorner. The music room was fairly empty with no large crowd watching us. The first 2 questions Joy and Densie buzzed-in correctly, giving Conestoga a strong 20 point lead. Questions 4 and 5 slowed down the match. On question 3, Denises errored and Megan Lehman from RiverCorner couldn't pick up the bonus. Question 4 went by without anyone buzzing in. It was ok; it was areally long question with a really long answer. Megan may have rebounded by getting the next buzz-in correct, but then Conestoga took control of the next 4 questions. Amanda kept going on fire with question 6 a correct buzz-in. Densise got her second question right on question 7. Justin buzzed in answered correctly on question 8, getting us team bonus. Denise kept going with right answers and quizzed out on question 9, giving Conestoga a 75 point lead. RiverCorner answered 4 questions correctly, but it wasn't enough. Joy got the last question and finalized the match. Conestoga was the winner against RiverCorner, 95 to 55.
Since we had back-to-back matches, we had to run from the music room to the Rutt Building for our match against Living Rock 2. Still on fire from our last match, we were ready to go. Amanda was the most on fire because she was the one who opened the match with a correct buzz in. Just must've not wanted to be the last one for team bonus again because he got the second question a buzz in correct. After taking a 20 point lead, we then errored twice, which Living Rock picked up easily. Then Living Rock 2 got a buzz in correct, answering 3 correctly in a row. But Joy buzzed in correctly on question 6 and Kristy on question 8, giving team bonus. It got scary when Living Rock 2 got 3 buzz-ins correctly and was one away from team bonus. But they never got it. Isntead, Kristy quizzed out on question 15, winning Conestoga the match 95 to 75. Conestoga was now 3-1 in Group H.
Conestoga's final match in the round robin was against Goods 2. We had quizzed against Goods 2 in the season and won greatly. We hoped to repeat. For the last round robin match, I went back to starting Kristy over Amanda. Conestoga got the first 4 questions right. Denise started off question 1 with a right bonus, then got a right buzz-in on question 2. Joy interruptted Denise's streak by getting her own buzz-in correct. Denise got her quiz out on question 4, putting Amanda in. There was no team bonus this team, but Kristy got her second consecutive quiz out, also on question 15. Conestoga once again was the winner, with a score of 90 to 45. After losing the opening match, Conestoga went on a 4-match winning streak to finish 4-1 in the group. Since Zion 2 had gone undefeated in our group, Conestoga's 4-1 record put the team 2nd place in Group H. We were going to the playoffs.
Sharon once again was kind enough to bring pizza for the quiz team, and so we all enjoyed a pizza picnic outside in the nice weather. Then the quiz team went to get ice cream, but I went back to the standings to get more information on what was happening. In Group H, Zion 2 finished 1st, Conestoga finished 2nd and Bowmansville 1 in 3rd. All were going to the playoffs. Our opponent in the playoffs would be Strasburg 4, the third place team in Group B, with a 3-2 record. We had closed the season quizzing against Starsburg 4, and we won. We hope to win again. Some other things to notice: the combined Petra team records was 23-2. 3 Petra teams went 5-0 and 2 Petra teams went 4-1. 3 of 5 Petra teams were the champions of their group. Also, 7 of the 8 group champions were 5-0.
I had a quick coach's meeting to go for bus assignments. Conestoga didn't get the bus seating we would have wanted, but Fred made sure we would on the way back. The meeting got over in enough time for the quizzing movie. After the quizzing movie was the Top 50 Bible Quizzers List. We (at least I) cheered loudly and wildly for our quizzer on the Top 50 Quizzers List: Denise. Denise finished in 35th with 575 points. Then afterward the playoffs were ready to begin.
So came our playoff match against Starsburg 4. Same quizzers, same line-up. Denise opened the quizmatch with a correct buzz, and Joanna from Starsburg 4 responded on question 2 with a correct buzz-in. Conestoga took a heavy lead into the quiz match. 4/5 the way through the match, we were winning 80 to 30, thanks to Denise and Joy quizzing out. Things sounded set. But the 30 points Strasburg 4 got was 3 buzz-ins by 3 different quizzes. On question 13, Joanna from Strasburg 4 got another question correctly, putting her one away from a quiz out. So with 2 questions left, Strasburg 4 was one question away from a quiz out and one question away from a team bonus. On question 14, Strasburg 4 got that 4th quizzer to buzz in correctly for the team bonus. The score was now Conestoga - 80, Strasburg 4 - 70. I was sitting on the bench thinking, "Anybody but Joanna, anybody but Joanna..." because if no one got it right, Conestoga won, if anyone of the conestoga quizzers got it right, Conestoga won, if any Strasburg 4 quizzer but Joanna got it right, it would be a tie and there would be overtime, but if Joanna got it right, Strasburg 4 would win due the 5 extra points for the quiz out. The worse case scenario happened. Joanna buzzed in, answered correctly, quizzed out and won the match for her team. Strasburg 4 was the victorius team, 85 to 80. Strasburg 4 would go on, but Conestoga was knocked out of the playoffs in the first round. Our day was done.
With Conestoga done, the quizzers went home, but I stayed to see the rest. In the second round, Strasburg 4 would lose their next match against Petra 1. I watched Petra 2 beat Petra 5. In the quarterfinal round, there was a re-match of the semifinal season match between Petra 2 and Slate Hill 1. The match started out close, but Petra 2 took a good lead and the win this time. In the semifinals, Petra 2 won against Gehman and Petra 1 won over Weaverland 2. The final match was Petra 2 vs. Petra 1. This also started out close, but Petra 1 would be the victorious team, winning 85 to 50. So the 2010 ACC Tournament ended with Petra 1 in 1st place and Petra 2 in 2nd place. Congratulations Petra 1 for winning the championship.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
More details on the 2010 Invitational in Kidron, Ohio
I want to thank everyone who supported the quiz team from a distance by checking our Twitter feed as we went through the tournament. Yet I could only put so much on the Twitter feed because I was only allowed 140 characters (letters+spaces) per post. So let me take you through our weekend in more detail.
FRIDAY:
I came into the Dutch Wonderland with the busses around 7:45 a.m. Justin came on his own at 7:50 with donuts for the team. Sharon brought the rest of the team at 8 a.m. At that time, the busses opened and we loaded all are things in the busses, and took our seats between the middle and the back. We were with Media, Parkesburg, Timberline and Living Rock on Bus 5 (or as they call it, Boat 5. lol). Around 8:45, Becky Yoder showed up. Becky was our "team mom" for the tournamet, and she brought lots of snacks, which we were all grateful for. The busses left at 9 a.m. For those of you who know about Pennsylvania's trips out to Ohio, that is extremely early, and we were happy for that.
The bus ride was pretty smooth with no traffic. We stopped around noon for lunch and around 4 p.m. for dinner. Each stop was for an hour. In Pennsylvania, we stopped at Somerset, as we do every year. Now eastern Ohio is not as fond of ACC Quizzing as Somerset, PA is. They didn't want us getting out all at one place. So each bus went to separate restaurants. Bus 5 went to a McDonald's. Some were upset about that because they were uninformed they only had one choice in Ohio and went to the McDonald's in Pennsylvania. They didn't want 2 McDonald's trips in a row. Those people sneaked over to the local gas station, such as the Conestoga quizzers. The Conestoga quizzers got pizza, soda, and snack foods. Amanda got a meat stick, which she loved, but could not eat because she could not eat meat on Friday (even though she had chicken for lunch). I held down the fort until they came back. The busses also did have 10-minute stand up break at a rest stop once we entered Ohio. The bus ride was fun and very load, with people screaming they were on a boat. There were a few games of mafia, but I was too far back, so I didn't want to play. I did play a few rounds of scum, though. A lot of time I was on my Nintendo DS, playing Pokemon. Through that, I found out that Laura from Parkesburg also was into Pokemon and we had 2 pokemon battles. She won 1 and I won 1.
The busses pulled into Central Christian School in Kidron, Wayne County, Ohio at 6:30 p.m., which is also early compared to past years. I got out of the bus as coached and waited 10 minutes for our host family. The daughter in our host family met us. She pulled her car around to the busses so we can unload. We had to wait for someone else to come because her car could only fit 3-4 people beside herself. Once a second person could drive us, we completely loaded in both cars and drove to the house. Her house was 15 minutes away. We were surprised to see snow on the ground, but they told us that a couple days earlier Ohio got 1-3 inches of snow, depending on where you were. The house, although not big in area, had 3 bedrooms (not including the master bedroom the host family was in) and 2 1/2 bathrooms. But it wasn't all for us. We found out we were staying with another team. It was not another ACC team, but a West Liberty team. It was Covenant Fellowship 1. The team normally has 3 boys and 2 girls, but since one of the girls came up with family who was staying a hotel, that girl did not come, and the team only had 1 girl staying at the guest home. That one girl, Abigail, was tickled pink to find out her team, who was mostly boys, was with a team that was mostly girls. And I think it was good for Justin to have other guys with him. The teams got together to do rounds of questions for practice for an hour. Then they had the rest of the night to socialize and hang out. Some played the Wii our host had. Some played pool on the pool table. A lot of them ate and spent time with the family pet: an African gray parrot. Amanda was trying to teach it words like "Mountain Dew", "stick your finger in the cage" (because the host told us not to put fingers in because the bird would go after them) and her favorite: "meat stick." Everyone went to bed at a decent time, and I went to bed after watching March Madness. Needless to say I didn't get a lot of sleep out of excitement for the upcoming tournament.
SATURDAY:
Everyone woke up to our host making egg breakfast sandwiches. We all ate well and left by 8 a.m. so we could get to Central Christian school for the 8:30 announcements. We arrived in enough time, found our seats, and waited for the morning ceremonies to begin. When it did, the Wayne County cordinator made explained the building layout, and made sure everyone had the right schedule and bracket. After prayer, teams filed out of the performing arts center off to their matches. Since Conestoga didn't have a placement match until the 3rd round, we spent the first round watching our friends from Hope of the Nations quiz. To our surprise, they were quizzing against the Covenant Fellowship team we were staying with. In the beginning of the match, Hope of the Nations kept it close, but in the end, Covenant Fellowship took over and won the match. Still, it was an impressive job because we found out Covenant Fellowship 1 was the top team from the West Liberty conference, and Hope of the Nations is quite the opposite in our conference. In the second round, we just went to the classroom we were going to quiz in and hold out until it was our time.
Our first match was during the third round. It was a placement match, and it didn't matter if we won or loss, we were going into the double elimination bracket. The advantage of winning gave us more time until our next match. The match was against Sonirse 2, a NorthWest Ohio quiz team. The team's final record in the season was 6-9-2, but they had 2 of the Top 25 Quizzers in NorthWest Ohio. Since there was a couple minutes before the official start of the match, they asked a practice question, "Where are we?" Joy buzzed in and got it right by answering "Central Christian in Kidron, Ohio." When the real match actually started, Denise started the match by quizzing out on question 3 with all buzz-ins. It got scary when Sonrise 2 took the middle of match to catch up and then some. After 12 questions, Sonrise 2 was winning 55 to 45. Sonrise 2's top quizzer Jessica quizzed out, and their 2nd strongests quizzer Jacob was one away from quizzing out himself. On question 13, Jacob buzzed in, but errored, giving Joy a bonus. Joy got the bonus right, tying the score at 55. On question 14, Joy buzzed in and got it right, putting us up 65 to 55. Now with one question left, both Joy from Conestoga and Jacob from Sonrise 2 were one away from quizzing out. Jacob could take the match, and Joy could secure the match. On question 15, Jacob buzzed in, I held my breath. It seemed like it was going to be a repeat of our last match. Jacob gave an answser...and it was incorrect. Joy got the bonus question. She couldn't give a right answer either, but it didn't matter. Conestoga won the match, 65 to 55.
We didn't have to quiz again until 10:40. It was match no. 71 vs. Calvary. They were the 2nd strongest team in West Liberty. I knew Calvary from before because they hosted Spring City when the Invitational was in West Liberty. It took a while for them to recognize me, but I could only remember one quizzer because I didn't see Lauren there. And in 3 years, Lindy grew up quickly! I knew the strength that Calvary could be and warned my quizzers about it. But they handled it pretty well. Conestoga owned the first 6 questions. Densie took the first, Joy got question 3, question 4 went to Justin. Joy got questions 5 and 6 right to be the first one to quiz out. Questions 7 to 9 weren't too pretty. Calvary errored 3 times in a row, and Conestoga couldn't get any of those bonsues. It was worse for Calvary because that was their fifth error without points, and their scores were in the negative. But they were able to work it back up. After Denise quizzed out on question 10, Calvary took the last 5 questions. All of them were buzz-ins. They couldn't get team bonus because the buzz-ins were only among 3 quizzers, but Kate from Calvary did quiz out. Calvary had no more errors from there. Conestoga won 80-50. Conestoga was staying in the winner's bracket.
Conestoga's next match was at 11:20 vs. Strasburg 4. This was an ACC team we were too familiar with. We had created a history with them this year. The first time we quizzed against each other was for the final match of both of our seasons. In that match, Conestoga beat Strasburg 75-30. The second time was Conestoga's last match in the ACC Tournament. Both teams were quizzing against each other in the playoffs. In that match, Strasbug 4 won because the question 15 quiz out gave them the 5 points to win. So the Conestoga vs. Strasburg 4 series was tied 1-1 and this match would break the series tiebreaker and keep the team in the winner's bracket. Denise started off Conestoga with a nice lead with 2 right bonuses, but then she would error twice, giving 2 nice bonuses for Strasburg 4. It allowed Strasburg 4 to lead 30 to 20. Things seemed to turn around with Amanda, Joy and Justin consectively buzzing in and answering correctly for team bonus, jumping us ahead 40 points. But Joanna from Strasburg 4 quizzed out a brought it close again with a score Conestoga- 70, Starsburg 4- 55. Justin got another buzz in right, but then Deanna for Strasburg 4 quizzed out, making it closer with a 70 to 80 score. On question 14, Denise, attempting to quiz out, errored out. Furthermore, that was our 4th error. So just like the ACC Tournament match, after 14 questions, Conestoga was only up by 10 points. But this time Strasburg 4 couldn't get team bonus or a quiz out for a win. The worse case senerio would be Conestoga errors, 5 lose points, Strasburg 4 gets the bonus right, and wins the match. On question 15, Krista from Starsburg 4 buzzed in answered correctly for 10 points. It seemed like the series was meant to stay tied as our 3rd matchup was tied after regular questions! The teams and staff looked around as if their eyes were asking, "Now what?" Fred jokingly said, "Now we a flip a coin" :P But in all seriousness, we were going into an overtime with 3 extra questions. While the staff figured out new questions, the teams took a technical timeout. Since Denise was errored out, I gave her the option of staying up there or coming out, and she chose to sit up with her team and support them right there. I reminded the team of the 4 errors, but I also pointed that quiz outs would greatly help too. Conestoga owned the overtime questions, being the only ones to score. Conestoga won 105-80. As we shook hands with the other team, the Strasburg 4 coach said to me, "Let us never meet like this again."
The team was relieved to win and ready for lunch. Lunch was chicken, beans, cole slaw, applesauce and a roll. The applesauce was nowhere near as good as Becky's :). We found it funny the gave butter for our rolls but no knives. We improved with forks and spoons. Since seats were limited, by the time we got there, seats were all taken up. So Conestoga picniced on the floor with Hope of the Nations and Grace & Truth. Before the next match, I went to the brackets to fill out and find out our opponent. Instead of filling out a giant bracket, they did it on PowerPoint slides. It was a nice idea, but it went too fast and became very frustrating to write down.
Now in the sweet 16 of the winners bracket, the teams were getting harder. Our next match at 1 p.m. against Orrville, the championship team from hometown Wayne County. 3 of the Orrville quizzers were in the top 10 Wayne County quizzers. Orrville owned the whole match. Their top quizzer getting 2 errors was the worst that happened. Their top 2 quizzers quizzed out and got team bonus. The only points we got was 1 of the 2 bonuses. Else than that, we errored 4 times. When they scored 110 points after question 12, I called a timeout to honestly alert the team we lost it. Denise, tired and frustrated, asked to be taken out, and I fulfilled her wish. So Meredith came now. Now Meredith, having been in very little this year, was not about to let down just because we had lost. On question 13, the quizmaster asked, "Paul gave the brothers what, not solid..." and Meredith buzzed in. She answered, "Paul gave the brothers not solid food, but milk" and got it right! This was Meredith's first buzz in of the year, correct answer of the year, and points of the year. Of course I was crazy excited! Must have confused the other team to wonder why I was so excited despite losing so much. On question 14, we errored for 5th time, losing 5 points, but Joy got last question, giving us a few more. Conestoga lost against Orrville 25 to 130. This put us in the losers bracket. Surprisingly, it gave us a 2 hour break until our next match.
Two hours later we had a match in the losers bracket against Bowmansville 2. Conestoga had quizzed against Bowmansville 2 in the season and won 95-30. Bowmansville 2 fought through 2 E-Town teams to get to this point and weren't backing down now...or were they? Bowmansville 2 did start off the first question answering the buzz-in correctly, but they didn't get anymore points until question 9. In fact, all they got was 3 errors. Denise got back into the game and quizzed out on question 6. From questions 7 to 10 Tim Horst errored twice, causing him to error out, but Meredith continued her streak answered both bonuses correctly, giving her 30 points for the day and the year. Dan from Bowmansville quizzed out, but they couldn't bring the score closer. Conestoga won against Bowmansville 2, 95 to 55.
We had a one match break until until our next match. It was match 211 of the day in the 19th set. Our opponents were Petra 4. The irony behind this was Petra 4 we last quizzed during the opening week, which we tied (and since it was season, there are no tiebreakers). So coach Andrew Jensen (who was a quizzer when I was a quizzer) and I joked that we were going to take this match in a tie all the way up to sudden death question. But this match indeed would determine the tiebreaker. Just like our first meet together, both Amber and Nic on Petra 4's side quizzed out, as well as Denise from our side. The only difference was the season match we had Kristy quiz out for us, and this Invitational match, no second person could make that quiz out. That's what made the difference. So Petra 4 beat Conestoga, 80 to 55. We advanced one spot too far to enter one of the smaller single-elimination brackets, so our tournament was done.
Since we still had 50 minutes until dinner, the quizzers went off enjoy the rest of the trip on their own. Some watched quiz matches and others went to the gym. I spent most of the time trying to update our bracket, competing with the quickly moving slides. At 4:30 p.m. we had a dinner of pizza. This time we found a table. After dinner we all moved to the Performing Arts Center for the final matches of the day.
Before we got to the serious matches, it opened with a fun match among 5 teams. It was the top quizzers from each conference and a staff team, consisting of a staff member from each conference, elected by the quizzers on the all-star team. The quizzers on the all-star teams were as followed (sorry, I didn't know the staff):
NORTHWEST OHIO: Whitney Stamm - Sand Ridge; Hannah; Eliot Nofziger - Lockport 1; Seth Nofziger - Lockport 1.
WEST LIBERTY: Lindy Stapleton - Calvary; Katie King - Calvary; Christopher - Crossway; Gabriel Campbell - Covenant Fellowship 1
ACC: Megan Lehman - RiverCorner; Joel Cristophel - Zion 2; Nic Hurst - Petra 4; Caleb Putney - Timberline 1.
WAYNE COUNTY: Kelli Flemming - Orrville; Olivia Ressler - Sonnenberg; Nathaniel Steiner - Living Water; Michelle Raber - Longenecker.
Now it's interesting on the different approach to this match according to the conferences. It seemed like the Ohio conferences saw this as an all-star match, in which they needed to win to prove they were the greatest conference. The Wayne County fans even brought signs to cheer on their all-star team. But on the Pennsylvania side of things, our quizzers saw it more as a fun match. They were having the time of their lives up there. My favorite is when Megan Lehman buzzed in on "What did the Corinthians..." and Megan started off with saying, "Well, the Corinthians did a lot of things, and also didn't do a lot of things, some things they should have done and some things they shouldn't have done..." While Northwest Ohio had 2 quizzers quiz out (Whitney and Seth), and West Liberty had 2 quizzers quiz out (Katie and Christopher), and even Wayne County had a quizout (Kelli), the ACC team had 5 errors and lost points. Point proven. On the last question, with ACC bound to finish in last place with 5 points, even to the staff who had 10 points, Megan buzzed in early, guesssed, and got it right, giving the ACC 15 points. First place team was NorthWest Ohio with 60 points, second place was West Liberty with 50 points, 3rd place was Wayne County with 35 points, 4th place was the ACC team with 15 points (and 5 errors, lol), and 5th place was the staff with 10 points, which was a buzz-in I believe.
Now with the fun match out of the way, it was time to get serious again with the tournament. There was 3 consecutive matches in the Performing Arts Center to wrap up the night. The first match was the final match in the winners' half of the bracket. The winner would go into the final match without a loss, thus giving them a second chance if they lose in the final match. It was between Sand Ridge, NorthWest Ohio's champion team, vs. Orrville, Wayne County's champion team. Now Orrville had never lost to this point, and it was a total turn around for them. When their top quizzer Kelli errored out, you know they were doomed. Whitney quizzed out, and was replaced by Galen Short. Now my team hadn't watch a Sand Ridge match yet. We were surprised when Galen took the seat because...well, let's say his last name describes his stature. We were saying among ourselves, "there is no way he's in 7th grade." But there he was, and he even gotten a question right. Of course, Sand Ridge won. Their next match would be the final match Sunday morning.
The rest of the matches were on the Losers bracket. Next was Petra 2 vs. Slate Hill 1, two ACC teams. These 2 teams quizzed each other in the season semifinal and the ACC Tournament quarterfinal. Slate Hill 1 was the winner in the season match, and went on to win the season championship. Petra 2 was the winner in the ACC Tournament match-up, and they would go to be the runner-up in the final match of the ACC Tournament. The Slate Hill 1 vs. Petra 2 series was tied 1-1, and this was the tiebreaker. The loser would finish 4th place in the Ohio Tournament, and the winner would live for another match. The two teams made it epic as always, but Slate Hill 1 would win the match, win the series, and would go on in the tournament. But I congratulate Petra 2 for finishing in a strong 4th place.
The last match of the night was between Slate Hill 1, the ACC champion team, vs. Orrville, the Wayne County champion team. While Orrville had a one match break, Slate Hill 1 had to quiz consecutively. Orrville totally turned around from their last match. Kelli went from an error out to a quiz out. But Orrville's effort would not be enough. Slate Hill 1 would be the winner, moving on to the final match against Sand Ridge. Orrville's lost had their finishing 3rd.
So that match ended all the matches for the night. When I rounded up all the quizzers, our hosts drove us back the house. She once again had a wide range of food out there for us. As we ate, we talked about the tournament, mainly discussing how we we thought some quizzers on a certain team were too old or too young. Nevertheless, we were pleased with our tournament results. For the rest of the night, some played wii, some played pool, some read, some just sat around and talked, which includes talking to the parrot. The hostess's daughter showed us clips on YouTube of the smartest African gray parrots. Needless to say, we all went to bed at a decent time and I finished the night by watching March Madness before going to bed.
SUNDAY:
Everyone got up in good time to the smell of our hostess making breakfast for us. She even made waffels at the special request of some of the Conestoga quizzers. Amanda took at last shot at teaching the parrot "meat stick" and "stick your finger in the cage" but to no avail. However, the Covenant Fellowship quizzers thought it was so funny that they left the house saying "meat stick" over and over. So while Amanda was able to get the parrot to repeat the words "meat stick" there are now a bunch of Ohio quizzers saying "meat stick." lol. Before we left the house one last time, the team gave our host family a gift from Bauman's back home. We left the house at 8:30 a.m., heading towards Central Christian.
We got to Central Christian a little before 9 a.m., enough time to take our bags to the bus. We had now moved from bus 5 to bus 3 with Hope of the Nations, Grace & Truth, Bowmansville and E-Town. The team entered the gym, found seats in the bleachers, and the ceremonies started shortly. Not a minute was wasted as we started with the final match between Sand Ridge vs. Slate Hill 1, the champion teams from NorthWest Ohio and ACC respectively. Things didn't seem good from the the start. Slate Hill 1 errored early in the match, and I thought they were going start losing points. They got the 4 errors, but no more than that. Sand Ridge picked up on every one and then some. On the last question, "What can flesh..." Sand Ridge buzzed in, completed the sentence "flesh and blood not inherit the kingdom of God" and took the question and the match. Sand Ridge won, 110 to 50. So the final tournament results were this...
Double Elimination Bracket
1st place: Sand Ridge (#1 NorthWest Ohio)
2nd place: Slate Hill 1 (#1 ACC)
3rd place: Orrville (#1 Wayne County)
Single Elimination Brackets
Resurrection of the Dead: Maple Grove 3 (ACC)
Final Warnings: Chestnut Ridge (Wayne County)
Believers Freedom: Weaverland 2 (ACC)
God of All Comfort: Strasburg 1 (ACC)
Our worship leader and speaker was Matt Wilkinson. He did a good job leading us in worship with only his voice and guitar, and he also gave a good testimony. To wrap up the tournament weekend, Fred got up to speak. That could only mean one thing: the Invitational would be coming to Lancaster next year. Sure enough, it is. But what's next year's quizzing material. It was going to be the rest of Genesis. The previous year we started with Genesis 1-30, the next year would be Genesis 31-50. It was ironic because Denise, when frustrated, would ask, "Can we go back to Genesis?" So Densie got her wish after declaring her retirement. Once the final anouncements were given, the Pennsylvania teams exited in a giant mob to the busses, with some stopping the bathrooms quickly. We left Kidron at 11:45 a.m.
This ride back was more muggier than the sunny trip up, so we were confined to either the busses or restaurant the whole ride. On a brief rainless stop, Bus 3 played ninja before getting on the bus. Knowing our friends better, we had a lot more fun, active ride. We played a few mafia games. For some everyone wanted to kill me off the first round, so I never made it past the first round most of the time. So one time, I said, "Can I be the narrarator? It's the only way I will survive past the first round." I was, but still the mafia tried to kill me off. Near the end, we played a game that wherever Mikey's laserpointer you slapped it...which was most of the time on people. For our stops, in Ohio we went to Wendy's, which was a relief to Conestoga who had to go to McDonald's twice last trip. At Somerset we got whatever choice we wanted. We made good time with only one traffic slow down. We got back to Lancaster, PA by 8:30 p.m.
In the end, we were all tired out, but we had fun this whole trip and were satisfied with how far we got in the tournament. This was a great bunch of quizzers I got to work with. I enjoyed every minute of it. I couldn't have chosen a better group.
FRIDAY:
I came into the Dutch Wonderland with the busses around 7:45 a.m. Justin came on his own at 7:50 with donuts for the team. Sharon brought the rest of the team at 8 a.m. At that time, the busses opened and we loaded all are things in the busses, and took our seats between the middle and the back. We were with Media, Parkesburg, Timberline and Living Rock on Bus 5 (or as they call it, Boat 5. lol). Around 8:45, Becky Yoder showed up. Becky was our "team mom" for the tournamet, and she brought lots of snacks, which we were all grateful for. The busses left at 9 a.m. For those of you who know about Pennsylvania's trips out to Ohio, that is extremely early, and we were happy for that.
The bus ride was pretty smooth with no traffic. We stopped around noon for lunch and around 4 p.m. for dinner. Each stop was for an hour. In Pennsylvania, we stopped at Somerset, as we do every year. Now eastern Ohio is not as fond of ACC Quizzing as Somerset, PA is. They didn't want us getting out all at one place. So each bus went to separate restaurants. Bus 5 went to a McDonald's. Some were upset about that because they were uninformed they only had one choice in Ohio and went to the McDonald's in Pennsylvania. They didn't want 2 McDonald's trips in a row. Those people sneaked over to the local gas station, such as the Conestoga quizzers. The Conestoga quizzers got pizza, soda, and snack foods. Amanda got a meat stick, which she loved, but could not eat because she could not eat meat on Friday (even though she had chicken for lunch). I held down the fort until they came back. The busses also did have 10-minute stand up break at a rest stop once we entered Ohio. The bus ride was fun and very load, with people screaming they were on a boat. There were a few games of mafia, but I was too far back, so I didn't want to play. I did play a few rounds of scum, though. A lot of time I was on my Nintendo DS, playing Pokemon. Through that, I found out that Laura from Parkesburg also was into Pokemon and we had 2 pokemon battles. She won 1 and I won 1.
The busses pulled into Central Christian School in Kidron, Wayne County, Ohio at 6:30 p.m., which is also early compared to past years. I got out of the bus as coached and waited 10 minutes for our host family. The daughter in our host family met us. She pulled her car around to the busses so we can unload. We had to wait for someone else to come because her car could only fit 3-4 people beside herself. Once a second person could drive us, we completely loaded in both cars and drove to the house. Her house was 15 minutes away. We were surprised to see snow on the ground, but they told us that a couple days earlier Ohio got 1-3 inches of snow, depending on where you were. The house, although not big in area, had 3 bedrooms (not including the master bedroom the host family was in) and 2 1/2 bathrooms. But it wasn't all for us. We found out we were staying with another team. It was not another ACC team, but a West Liberty team. It was Covenant Fellowship 1. The team normally has 3 boys and 2 girls, but since one of the girls came up with family who was staying a hotel, that girl did not come, and the team only had 1 girl staying at the guest home. That one girl, Abigail, was tickled pink to find out her team, who was mostly boys, was with a team that was mostly girls. And I think it was good for Justin to have other guys with him. The teams got together to do rounds of questions for practice for an hour. Then they had the rest of the night to socialize and hang out. Some played the Wii our host had. Some played pool on the pool table. A lot of them ate and spent time with the family pet: an African gray parrot. Amanda was trying to teach it words like "Mountain Dew", "stick your finger in the cage" (because the host told us not to put fingers in because the bird would go after them) and her favorite: "meat stick." Everyone went to bed at a decent time, and I went to bed after watching March Madness. Needless to say I didn't get a lot of sleep out of excitement for the upcoming tournament.
SATURDAY:
Everyone woke up to our host making egg breakfast sandwiches. We all ate well and left by 8 a.m. so we could get to Central Christian school for the 8:30 announcements. We arrived in enough time, found our seats, and waited for the morning ceremonies to begin. When it did, the Wayne County cordinator made explained the building layout, and made sure everyone had the right schedule and bracket. After prayer, teams filed out of the performing arts center off to their matches. Since Conestoga didn't have a placement match until the 3rd round, we spent the first round watching our friends from Hope of the Nations quiz. To our surprise, they were quizzing against the Covenant Fellowship team we were staying with. In the beginning of the match, Hope of the Nations kept it close, but in the end, Covenant Fellowship took over and won the match. Still, it was an impressive job because we found out Covenant Fellowship 1 was the top team from the West Liberty conference, and Hope of the Nations is quite the opposite in our conference. In the second round, we just went to the classroom we were going to quiz in and hold out until it was our time.
Our first match was during the third round. It was a placement match, and it didn't matter if we won or loss, we were going into the double elimination bracket. The advantage of winning gave us more time until our next match. The match was against Sonirse 2, a NorthWest Ohio quiz team. The team's final record in the season was 6-9-2, but they had 2 of the Top 25 Quizzers in NorthWest Ohio. Since there was a couple minutes before the official start of the match, they asked a practice question, "Where are we?" Joy buzzed in and got it right by answering "Central Christian in Kidron, Ohio." When the real match actually started, Denise started the match by quizzing out on question 3 with all buzz-ins. It got scary when Sonrise 2 took the middle of match to catch up and then some. After 12 questions, Sonrise 2 was winning 55 to 45. Sonrise 2's top quizzer Jessica quizzed out, and their 2nd strongests quizzer Jacob was one away from quizzing out himself. On question 13, Jacob buzzed in, but errored, giving Joy a bonus. Joy got the bonus right, tying the score at 55. On question 14, Joy buzzed in and got it right, putting us up 65 to 55. Now with one question left, both Joy from Conestoga and Jacob from Sonrise 2 were one away from quizzing out. Jacob could take the match, and Joy could secure the match. On question 15, Jacob buzzed in, I held my breath. It seemed like it was going to be a repeat of our last match. Jacob gave an answser...and it was incorrect. Joy got the bonus question. She couldn't give a right answer either, but it didn't matter. Conestoga won the match, 65 to 55.
We didn't have to quiz again until 10:40. It was match no. 71 vs. Calvary. They were the 2nd strongest team in West Liberty. I knew Calvary from before because they hosted Spring City when the Invitational was in West Liberty. It took a while for them to recognize me, but I could only remember one quizzer because I didn't see Lauren there. And in 3 years, Lindy grew up quickly! I knew the strength that Calvary could be and warned my quizzers about it. But they handled it pretty well. Conestoga owned the first 6 questions. Densie took the first, Joy got question 3, question 4 went to Justin. Joy got questions 5 and 6 right to be the first one to quiz out. Questions 7 to 9 weren't too pretty. Calvary errored 3 times in a row, and Conestoga couldn't get any of those bonsues. It was worse for Calvary because that was their fifth error without points, and their scores were in the negative. But they were able to work it back up. After Denise quizzed out on question 10, Calvary took the last 5 questions. All of them were buzz-ins. They couldn't get team bonus because the buzz-ins were only among 3 quizzers, but Kate from Calvary did quiz out. Calvary had no more errors from there. Conestoga won 80-50. Conestoga was staying in the winner's bracket.
Conestoga's next match was at 11:20 vs. Strasburg 4. This was an ACC team we were too familiar with. We had created a history with them this year. The first time we quizzed against each other was for the final match of both of our seasons. In that match, Conestoga beat Strasburg 75-30. The second time was Conestoga's last match in the ACC Tournament. Both teams were quizzing against each other in the playoffs. In that match, Strasbug 4 won because the question 15 quiz out gave them the 5 points to win. So the Conestoga vs. Strasburg 4 series was tied 1-1 and this match would break the series tiebreaker and keep the team in the winner's bracket. Denise started off Conestoga with a nice lead with 2 right bonuses, but then she would error twice, giving 2 nice bonuses for Strasburg 4. It allowed Strasburg 4 to lead 30 to 20. Things seemed to turn around with Amanda, Joy and Justin consectively buzzing in and answering correctly for team bonus, jumping us ahead 40 points. But Joanna from Strasburg 4 quizzed out a brought it close again with a score Conestoga- 70, Starsburg 4- 55. Justin got another buzz in right, but then Deanna for Strasburg 4 quizzed out, making it closer with a 70 to 80 score. On question 14, Denise, attempting to quiz out, errored out. Furthermore, that was our 4th error. So just like the ACC Tournament match, after 14 questions, Conestoga was only up by 10 points. But this time Strasburg 4 couldn't get team bonus or a quiz out for a win. The worse case senerio would be Conestoga errors, 5 lose points, Strasburg 4 gets the bonus right, and wins the match. On question 15, Krista from Starsburg 4 buzzed in answered correctly for 10 points. It seemed like the series was meant to stay tied as our 3rd matchup was tied after regular questions! The teams and staff looked around as if their eyes were asking, "Now what?" Fred jokingly said, "Now we a flip a coin" :P But in all seriousness, we were going into an overtime with 3 extra questions. While the staff figured out new questions, the teams took a technical timeout. Since Denise was errored out, I gave her the option of staying up there or coming out, and she chose to sit up with her team and support them right there. I reminded the team of the 4 errors, but I also pointed that quiz outs would greatly help too. Conestoga owned the overtime questions, being the only ones to score. Conestoga won 105-80. As we shook hands with the other team, the Strasburg 4 coach said to me, "Let us never meet like this again."
The team was relieved to win and ready for lunch. Lunch was chicken, beans, cole slaw, applesauce and a roll. The applesauce was nowhere near as good as Becky's :). We found it funny the gave butter for our rolls but no knives. We improved with forks and spoons. Since seats were limited, by the time we got there, seats were all taken up. So Conestoga picniced on the floor with Hope of the Nations and Grace & Truth. Before the next match, I went to the brackets to fill out and find out our opponent. Instead of filling out a giant bracket, they did it on PowerPoint slides. It was a nice idea, but it went too fast and became very frustrating to write down.
Now in the sweet 16 of the winners bracket, the teams were getting harder. Our next match at 1 p.m. against Orrville, the championship team from hometown Wayne County. 3 of the Orrville quizzers were in the top 10 Wayne County quizzers. Orrville owned the whole match. Their top quizzer getting 2 errors was the worst that happened. Their top 2 quizzers quizzed out and got team bonus. The only points we got was 1 of the 2 bonuses. Else than that, we errored 4 times. When they scored 110 points after question 12, I called a timeout to honestly alert the team we lost it. Denise, tired and frustrated, asked to be taken out, and I fulfilled her wish. So Meredith came now. Now Meredith, having been in very little this year, was not about to let down just because we had lost. On question 13, the quizmaster asked, "Paul gave the brothers what, not solid..." and Meredith buzzed in. She answered, "Paul gave the brothers not solid food, but milk" and got it right! This was Meredith's first buzz in of the year, correct answer of the year, and points of the year. Of course I was crazy excited! Must have confused the other team to wonder why I was so excited despite losing so much. On question 14, we errored for 5th time, losing 5 points, but Joy got last question, giving us a few more. Conestoga lost against Orrville 25 to 130. This put us in the losers bracket. Surprisingly, it gave us a 2 hour break until our next match.
Two hours later we had a match in the losers bracket against Bowmansville 2. Conestoga had quizzed against Bowmansville 2 in the season and won 95-30. Bowmansville 2 fought through 2 E-Town teams to get to this point and weren't backing down now...or were they? Bowmansville 2 did start off the first question answering the buzz-in correctly, but they didn't get anymore points until question 9. In fact, all they got was 3 errors. Denise got back into the game and quizzed out on question 6. From questions 7 to 10 Tim Horst errored twice, causing him to error out, but Meredith continued her streak answered both bonuses correctly, giving her 30 points for the day and the year. Dan from Bowmansville quizzed out, but they couldn't bring the score closer. Conestoga won against Bowmansville 2, 95 to 55.
We had a one match break until until our next match. It was match 211 of the day in the 19th set. Our opponents were Petra 4. The irony behind this was Petra 4 we last quizzed during the opening week, which we tied (and since it was season, there are no tiebreakers). So coach Andrew Jensen (who was a quizzer when I was a quizzer) and I joked that we were going to take this match in a tie all the way up to sudden death question. But this match indeed would determine the tiebreaker. Just like our first meet together, both Amber and Nic on Petra 4's side quizzed out, as well as Denise from our side. The only difference was the season match we had Kristy quiz out for us, and this Invitational match, no second person could make that quiz out. That's what made the difference. So Petra 4 beat Conestoga, 80 to 55. We advanced one spot too far to enter one of the smaller single-elimination brackets, so our tournament was done.
Since we still had 50 minutes until dinner, the quizzers went off enjoy the rest of the trip on their own. Some watched quiz matches and others went to the gym. I spent most of the time trying to update our bracket, competing with the quickly moving slides. At 4:30 p.m. we had a dinner of pizza. This time we found a table. After dinner we all moved to the Performing Arts Center for the final matches of the day.
Before we got to the serious matches, it opened with a fun match among 5 teams. It was the top quizzers from each conference and a staff team, consisting of a staff member from each conference, elected by the quizzers on the all-star team. The quizzers on the all-star teams were as followed (sorry, I didn't know the staff):
NORTHWEST OHIO: Whitney Stamm - Sand Ridge; Hannah; Eliot Nofziger - Lockport 1; Seth Nofziger - Lockport 1.
WEST LIBERTY: Lindy Stapleton - Calvary; Katie King - Calvary; Christopher - Crossway; Gabriel Campbell - Covenant Fellowship 1
ACC: Megan Lehman - RiverCorner; Joel Cristophel - Zion 2; Nic Hurst - Petra 4; Caleb Putney - Timberline 1.
WAYNE COUNTY: Kelli Flemming - Orrville; Olivia Ressler - Sonnenberg; Nathaniel Steiner - Living Water; Michelle Raber - Longenecker.
Now it's interesting on the different approach to this match according to the conferences. It seemed like the Ohio conferences saw this as an all-star match, in which they needed to win to prove they were the greatest conference. The Wayne County fans even brought signs to cheer on their all-star team. But on the Pennsylvania side of things, our quizzers saw it more as a fun match. They were having the time of their lives up there. My favorite is when Megan Lehman buzzed in on "What did the Corinthians..." and Megan started off with saying, "Well, the Corinthians did a lot of things, and also didn't do a lot of things, some things they should have done and some things they shouldn't have done..." While Northwest Ohio had 2 quizzers quiz out (Whitney and Seth), and West Liberty had 2 quizzers quiz out (Katie and Christopher), and even Wayne County had a quizout (Kelli), the ACC team had 5 errors and lost points. Point proven. On the last question, with ACC bound to finish in last place with 5 points, even to the staff who had 10 points, Megan buzzed in early, guesssed, and got it right, giving the ACC 15 points. First place team was NorthWest Ohio with 60 points, second place was West Liberty with 50 points, 3rd place was Wayne County with 35 points, 4th place was the ACC team with 15 points (and 5 errors, lol), and 5th place was the staff with 10 points, which was a buzz-in I believe.
Now with the fun match out of the way, it was time to get serious again with the tournament. There was 3 consecutive matches in the Performing Arts Center to wrap up the night. The first match was the final match in the winners' half of the bracket. The winner would go into the final match without a loss, thus giving them a second chance if they lose in the final match. It was between Sand Ridge, NorthWest Ohio's champion team, vs. Orrville, Wayne County's champion team. Now Orrville had never lost to this point, and it was a total turn around for them. When their top quizzer Kelli errored out, you know they were doomed. Whitney quizzed out, and was replaced by Galen Short. Now my team hadn't watch a Sand Ridge match yet. We were surprised when Galen took the seat because...well, let's say his last name describes his stature. We were saying among ourselves, "there is no way he's in 7th grade." But there he was, and he even gotten a question right. Of course, Sand Ridge won. Their next match would be the final match Sunday morning.
The rest of the matches were on the Losers bracket. Next was Petra 2 vs. Slate Hill 1, two ACC teams. These 2 teams quizzed each other in the season semifinal and the ACC Tournament quarterfinal. Slate Hill 1 was the winner in the season match, and went on to win the season championship. Petra 2 was the winner in the ACC Tournament match-up, and they would go to be the runner-up in the final match of the ACC Tournament. The Slate Hill 1 vs. Petra 2 series was tied 1-1, and this was the tiebreaker. The loser would finish 4th place in the Ohio Tournament, and the winner would live for another match. The two teams made it epic as always, but Slate Hill 1 would win the match, win the series, and would go on in the tournament. But I congratulate Petra 2 for finishing in a strong 4th place.
The last match of the night was between Slate Hill 1, the ACC champion team, vs. Orrville, the Wayne County champion team. While Orrville had a one match break, Slate Hill 1 had to quiz consecutively. Orrville totally turned around from their last match. Kelli went from an error out to a quiz out. But Orrville's effort would not be enough. Slate Hill 1 would be the winner, moving on to the final match against Sand Ridge. Orrville's lost had their finishing 3rd.
So that match ended all the matches for the night. When I rounded up all the quizzers, our hosts drove us back the house. She once again had a wide range of food out there for us. As we ate, we talked about the tournament, mainly discussing how we we thought some quizzers on a certain team were too old or too young. Nevertheless, we were pleased with our tournament results. For the rest of the night, some played wii, some played pool, some read, some just sat around and talked, which includes talking to the parrot. The hostess's daughter showed us clips on YouTube of the smartest African gray parrots. Needless to say, we all went to bed at a decent time and I finished the night by watching March Madness before going to bed.
SUNDAY:
Everyone got up in good time to the smell of our hostess making breakfast for us. She even made waffels at the special request of some of the Conestoga quizzers. Amanda took at last shot at teaching the parrot "meat stick" and "stick your finger in the cage" but to no avail. However, the Covenant Fellowship quizzers thought it was so funny that they left the house saying "meat stick" over and over. So while Amanda was able to get the parrot to repeat the words "meat stick" there are now a bunch of Ohio quizzers saying "meat stick." lol. Before we left the house one last time, the team gave our host family a gift from Bauman's back home. We left the house at 8:30 a.m., heading towards Central Christian.
We got to Central Christian a little before 9 a.m., enough time to take our bags to the bus. We had now moved from bus 5 to bus 3 with Hope of the Nations, Grace & Truth, Bowmansville and E-Town. The team entered the gym, found seats in the bleachers, and the ceremonies started shortly. Not a minute was wasted as we started with the final match between Sand Ridge vs. Slate Hill 1, the champion teams from NorthWest Ohio and ACC respectively. Things didn't seem good from the the start. Slate Hill 1 errored early in the match, and I thought they were going start losing points. They got the 4 errors, but no more than that. Sand Ridge picked up on every one and then some. On the last question, "What can flesh..." Sand Ridge buzzed in, completed the sentence "flesh and blood not inherit the kingdom of God" and took the question and the match. Sand Ridge won, 110 to 50. So the final tournament results were this...
Double Elimination Bracket
1st place: Sand Ridge (#1 NorthWest Ohio)
2nd place: Slate Hill 1 (#1 ACC)
3rd place: Orrville (#1 Wayne County)
Single Elimination Brackets
Resurrection of the Dead: Maple Grove 3 (ACC)
Final Warnings: Chestnut Ridge (Wayne County)
Believers Freedom: Weaverland 2 (ACC)
God of All Comfort: Strasburg 1 (ACC)
Our worship leader and speaker was Matt Wilkinson. He did a good job leading us in worship with only his voice and guitar, and he also gave a good testimony. To wrap up the tournament weekend, Fred got up to speak. That could only mean one thing: the Invitational would be coming to Lancaster next year. Sure enough, it is. But what's next year's quizzing material. It was going to be the rest of Genesis. The previous year we started with Genesis 1-30, the next year would be Genesis 31-50. It was ironic because Denise, when frustrated, would ask, "Can we go back to Genesis?" So Densie got her wish after declaring her retirement. Once the final anouncements were given, the Pennsylvania teams exited in a giant mob to the busses, with some stopping the bathrooms quickly. We left Kidron at 11:45 a.m.
This ride back was more muggier than the sunny trip up, so we were confined to either the busses or restaurant the whole ride. On a brief rainless stop, Bus 3 played ninja before getting on the bus. Knowing our friends better, we had a lot more fun, active ride. We played a few mafia games. For some everyone wanted to kill me off the first round, so I never made it past the first round most of the time. So one time, I said, "Can I be the narrarator? It's the only way I will survive past the first round." I was, but still the mafia tried to kill me off. Near the end, we played a game that wherever Mikey's laserpointer you slapped it...which was most of the time on people. For our stops, in Ohio we went to Wendy's, which was a relief to Conestoga who had to go to McDonald's twice last trip. At Somerset we got whatever choice we wanted. We made good time with only one traffic slow down. We got back to Lancaster, PA by 8:30 p.m.
In the end, we were all tired out, but we had fun this whole trip and were satisfied with how far we got in the tournament. This was a great bunch of quizzers I got to work with. I enjoyed every minute of it. I couldn't have chosen a better group.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Conestoga's 4 last season matches
My apologies for not keeping the updates with the Conestoga quiz team. I had Spring break this week, and thus last week the professors at my college tried to jam as much work in beforehand as possible. I'm not going to go into every detail on what happening in the two Sundays, but I will inform you on the details for each match. Then I will go into details on how the season ended in the ACC as a whole.
On Sunday, March 7, Conestoga had 3 matches, and its first 2 matches were in the first 2 rounds of the quizmeet. This Sunday the quizzers had the brilliant idea of wearing wigs. I went down to the match while the quizzers put on their new pieces. It was quite the sight to see Justin with longer brown hair, Joy with punky black hair, Kristy gone to a short blonde hair, Meredith with Rageddy Ann red hair, Amanda with her bright blue hair looking like an anime character, and Denise with all those colors like a clown! Of course all the cameras came flying out. When the commotion settled down, Joy, Denise, Kristy and Justin sat down as the team's starters against Living Rock 1. Now Living Rock 1 at the time was only ranked 20th in our league, with an average of 45 points per match. Not a problem, right? Wrong. Conestoga errored 5 times, losing 5 points. Surprisingly, Living Rock 1 only got 1 of those bonuses right. What really separated us from them is when Living Rock 1 got team bonus and a quiz out. Nevertheless, Joy got 2 buzz ins correct and Kristy got a bonus. But still we lost to Living Rock 1, 20 to 110.
We had to quickly get our next match, and I had to quickly encourage the team to forget about last match and keep going into the next match. Our next match was against Hinkletown 3, who was ranked slightly higher than Living Rock 1, but after our Living Rock match, I wasn't so sure. But the team was about to give me good reason to reaffirm my faith in them. The team decided that the wigs didn't help, so they ditched the hair pieces. It might have worked. Denise, frustrated by getting only 2 errors the previous match, buzzed in the first 3 questions, got them all right, and quizzed out by question 3. It was only question 4 and our first substitute was already in. The team bonded together to get team bonus on question 9. Justin would be our second quiz out on question 11, and Joy would be the third quiz out on question 13. Conestoga won, 135 to 10. That was on 2nd best match this year. In fact, our 2 greatest matches were both against Hinkletown teams.
Then we had to wait 3 rounds until our last match of the night against E-Town 1. E-Town 1 was ranked higher than we were, and after that Living Rock match, it gave us fear entering this match. I was even more terrified when I watched E-Town 1 quiz agains Living Rock 1 and saw them win with a score of 160 points - 4 quiz outs and team bonus (and they only have 4 quizzers!). We didn't get much of a word in. Conestoga was only able to buzz in 3 times, and only one of them were right. All the rest was E-Town buzzing in. They did give Conestoga 4 bonuses, but even with the full question, our quizzers struggled. E-Town 1 got team bonus, and 3 of their 4 quizzers quizzed out. We lost, 10 to 135. It was sad to see us go from our second best match of the season to our worst match of the season. (In fact, if you notice, we lost to the same score we won with the previous match.
After that March 7 evening, we scored 165 points, increasing our total to 1495 points in the 20 matches so far, averaging 75 points per match. It put us 11th place in League B. Now Strasburg 4 was ahead of us by 145 points with only 1 match left, just like us. Underneath us was Bowmansville 2. Their average was 4 less than ours. Statistically, we were locked into 11th place. While possible, it would have taken a lot for Bowmansville 2 to pass us, and even though Strasburg 4 was our next opponent, we could only pass them with a blow out. I pointed this out to the quizzers, so I suggested to consider this last match as practice for the tournament, yet they should still give thier best.
When the Sunday came, Conestoga had their one match against Strasburg 4. Kristy was not there because she went to meet her first nephew enter the world, so Amanda got to start, and Meredith was the first sub. This would be good practice for the Ohio Tournament. Denise quizzed out by question 6. Justin and Joy would each get a buzz-in right, but we couldn't get the 4th correct buzz in for team bonus. Amanda did get 2 bonuses correct. In the end, Conestoga won 75 to 30. But once again, it would not effect standings. But it meant we maintained average.
Conestoga finished its season at exactly a .500 percentage: 10-10-1. Conestoga scored a total of 1570 points, averaging 75 points per match. This average placed us 11th place in our league. Our top quizzer was Denise. She had 575 points this season. Our 2nd best quizzer was Joy. She had 350 points this season. That is how Conestoga finished their season. Now here is how ACC Quizzing finished the season.
While the staff is trying to find out the final team standing to figure out who makes it to the playoffs and in which order, there is a fun match. This year there was going to be a 5-way match. Who was going to be in it? The top quizzer from every church. When I heard this, do you know what I was thinking? "Where was this when I was a quizzer? I would have made the all-star fun match 4 times." The match would be 18 questions longThere were to be no time-outs, limited contests, and only 2 bonuses. Quiz outs were 2 questions right and error outs were 2 questions wrong. There were only 2 subs, they the first team(s) to get quiz outs would get them. These are the teams
TEAM 1: Abbie - Maple Grove (1); Ethan - E-Town (2); Stephanie - Hope Community; Jon - Hinkletown (2)
TEAM 2: Megan - Rivercorner; Michael - Slate Hill (1), Austin - Strasburg (1); Caleb - Timberline (2)
TEAM 3: Chelsea - Parkseburg (1); Joel - Zion (2); Nic - Petra (4); Charleton - Media; Jake - Grace&Truth [sub]
TEAM 4: Jesse - Bowmansville (3); Julie - Forest Hills; Kim - Goods (1); Matthew - Weaverland (2); Nate - Hope of the Nations [sub]
TEAM 5: David - Living Rock (2); Denise - Conestoga; Maranda - Gehman; Carissa - Ridgeview (1)
In the match, Jesse from Bowmansville was the first to quiz out, and Nate from Hope of the Nations took his seat for Team 4. The second quiz out went to Charleton from Media, and Jake from Grace&Truth became the sub for Team 3. There were many quiz outs during the match, including our very own Denise, who quizzed out on 2 bonuses. If I counted correctly, there were 8. The final score was Team 1- 45; Team 2- 50; Team 3- 25; Team 4- 50; Team 5- 50. There was a 3-way tie. Now it was time for the serious playoff matches for the season win. The semifinal matchs were going to be Petra 1 vs. Petra 4 and Petra 2 vs. Slate Hill 1.
I watched Petra 2 vs. Slate Hill 1. Boy, that was quite the match to watch. After 14 questions, Slate Hill 1 was winning 80 to 50, and seemed to have the match. But then the one quizzer on Petra 2 who could get them team bonus buzzed in on "about whose" and answered it correctly for team bonus! The score ended tied, with each team having 80 points and 4 errors The match was going into extra questions. But then Slate Hill 1 dominated overtime. Slate Hill 1 got team bonus, while Petra 2 errored and lost points. Slate Hill 1 was victor after 18 questions, with the score 130 to 75. I didn't see the other match, but I heard Petra 1 beat Petra 4 105 to 65.
So the final match of the season was Slate Hill 1 vs Petra 1. This was the same final match that occurred in 2007. I remember it being a huge upset with Slate Hill 1 winning. Would it happen again? Well, Slate Hill had deja-vu with the last match because once again, the scored was tied at question 15 because of team bonus. But this time, it was Slate Hill 1 who got the late team bonus. After question 15, the score was 95 all. Now the difference was this time, the over time was close too. After question 17, the score was tied at 110. On question 18, Slate Hill 1 buzzed in and answered correctly. Congrationals to Slate Hill 1 for another season championship.
On Sunday, March 7, Conestoga had 3 matches, and its first 2 matches were in the first 2 rounds of the quizmeet. This Sunday the quizzers had the brilliant idea of wearing wigs. I went down to the match while the quizzers put on their new pieces. It was quite the sight to see Justin with longer brown hair, Joy with punky black hair, Kristy gone to a short blonde hair, Meredith with Rageddy Ann red hair, Amanda with her bright blue hair looking like an anime character, and Denise with all those colors like a clown! Of course all the cameras came flying out. When the commotion settled down, Joy, Denise, Kristy and Justin sat down as the team's starters against Living Rock 1. Now Living Rock 1 at the time was only ranked 20th in our league, with an average of 45 points per match. Not a problem, right? Wrong. Conestoga errored 5 times, losing 5 points. Surprisingly, Living Rock 1 only got 1 of those bonuses right. What really separated us from them is when Living Rock 1 got team bonus and a quiz out. Nevertheless, Joy got 2 buzz ins correct and Kristy got a bonus. But still we lost to Living Rock 1, 20 to 110.
We had to quickly get our next match, and I had to quickly encourage the team to forget about last match and keep going into the next match. Our next match was against Hinkletown 3, who was ranked slightly higher than Living Rock 1, but after our Living Rock match, I wasn't so sure. But the team was about to give me good reason to reaffirm my faith in them. The team decided that the wigs didn't help, so they ditched the hair pieces. It might have worked. Denise, frustrated by getting only 2 errors the previous match, buzzed in the first 3 questions, got them all right, and quizzed out by question 3. It was only question 4 and our first substitute was already in. The team bonded together to get team bonus on question 9. Justin would be our second quiz out on question 11, and Joy would be the third quiz out on question 13. Conestoga won, 135 to 10. That was on 2nd best match this year. In fact, our 2 greatest matches were both against Hinkletown teams.
Then we had to wait 3 rounds until our last match of the night against E-Town 1. E-Town 1 was ranked higher than we were, and after that Living Rock match, it gave us fear entering this match. I was even more terrified when I watched E-Town 1 quiz agains Living Rock 1 and saw them win with a score of 160 points - 4 quiz outs and team bonus (and they only have 4 quizzers!). We didn't get much of a word in. Conestoga was only able to buzz in 3 times, and only one of them were right. All the rest was E-Town buzzing in. They did give Conestoga 4 bonuses, but even with the full question, our quizzers struggled. E-Town 1 got team bonus, and 3 of their 4 quizzers quizzed out. We lost, 10 to 135. It was sad to see us go from our second best match of the season to our worst match of the season. (In fact, if you notice, we lost to the same score we won with the previous match.
After that March 7 evening, we scored 165 points, increasing our total to 1495 points in the 20 matches so far, averaging 75 points per match. It put us 11th place in League B. Now Strasburg 4 was ahead of us by 145 points with only 1 match left, just like us. Underneath us was Bowmansville 2. Their average was 4 less than ours. Statistically, we were locked into 11th place. While possible, it would have taken a lot for Bowmansville 2 to pass us, and even though Strasburg 4 was our next opponent, we could only pass them with a blow out. I pointed this out to the quizzers, so I suggested to consider this last match as practice for the tournament, yet they should still give thier best.
When the Sunday came, Conestoga had their one match against Strasburg 4. Kristy was not there because she went to meet her first nephew enter the world, so Amanda got to start, and Meredith was the first sub. This would be good practice for the Ohio Tournament. Denise quizzed out by question 6. Justin and Joy would each get a buzz-in right, but we couldn't get the 4th correct buzz in for team bonus. Amanda did get 2 bonuses correct. In the end, Conestoga won 75 to 30. But once again, it would not effect standings. But it meant we maintained average.
Conestoga finished its season at exactly a .500 percentage: 10-10-1. Conestoga scored a total of 1570 points, averaging 75 points per match. This average placed us 11th place in our league. Our top quizzer was Denise. She had 575 points this season. Our 2nd best quizzer was Joy. She had 350 points this season. That is how Conestoga finished their season. Now here is how ACC Quizzing finished the season.
While the staff is trying to find out the final team standing to figure out who makes it to the playoffs and in which order, there is a fun match. This year there was going to be a 5-way match. Who was going to be in it? The top quizzer from every church. When I heard this, do you know what I was thinking? "Where was this when I was a quizzer? I would have made the all-star fun match 4 times." The match would be 18 questions longThere were to be no time-outs, limited contests, and only 2 bonuses. Quiz outs were 2 questions right and error outs were 2 questions wrong. There were only 2 subs, they the first team(s) to get quiz outs would get them. These are the teams
TEAM 1: Abbie - Maple Grove (1); Ethan - E-Town (2); Stephanie - Hope Community; Jon - Hinkletown (2)
TEAM 2: Megan - Rivercorner; Michael - Slate Hill (1), Austin - Strasburg (1); Caleb - Timberline (2)
TEAM 3: Chelsea - Parkseburg (1); Joel - Zion (2); Nic - Petra (4); Charleton - Media; Jake - Grace&Truth [sub]
TEAM 4: Jesse - Bowmansville (3); Julie - Forest Hills; Kim - Goods (1); Matthew - Weaverland (2); Nate - Hope of the Nations [sub]
TEAM 5: David - Living Rock (2); Denise - Conestoga; Maranda - Gehman; Carissa - Ridgeview (1)
In the match, Jesse from Bowmansville was the first to quiz out, and Nate from Hope of the Nations took his seat for Team 4. The second quiz out went to Charleton from Media, and Jake from Grace&Truth became the sub for Team 3. There were many quiz outs during the match, including our very own Denise, who quizzed out on 2 bonuses. If I counted correctly, there were 8. The final score was Team 1- 45; Team 2- 50; Team 3- 25; Team 4- 50; Team 5- 50. There was a 3-way tie. Now it was time for the serious playoff matches for the season win. The semifinal matchs were going to be Petra 1 vs. Petra 4 and Petra 2 vs. Slate Hill 1.
I watched Petra 2 vs. Slate Hill 1. Boy, that was quite the match to watch. After 14 questions, Slate Hill 1 was winning 80 to 50, and seemed to have the match. But then the one quizzer on Petra 2 who could get them team bonus buzzed in on "about whose" and answered it correctly for team bonus! The score ended tied, with each team having 80 points and 4 errors The match was going into extra questions. But then Slate Hill 1 dominated overtime. Slate Hill 1 got team bonus, while Petra 2 errored and lost points. Slate Hill 1 was victor after 18 questions, with the score 130 to 75. I didn't see the other match, but I heard Petra 1 beat Petra 4 105 to 65.
So the final match of the season was Slate Hill 1 vs Petra 1. This was the same final match that occurred in 2007. I remember it being a huge upset with Slate Hill 1 winning. Would it happen again? Well, Slate Hill had deja-vu with the last match because once again, the scored was tied at question 15 because of team bonus. But this time, it was Slate Hill 1 who got the late team bonus. After question 15, the score was 95 all. Now the difference was this time, the over time was close too. After question 17, the score was tied at 110. On question 18, Slate Hill 1 buzzed in and answered correctly. Congrationals to Slate Hill 1 for another season championship.
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