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.