Tim's blog - Scobol

Voss is...

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:33:01 -0400

...quintessentially Scholastic Bowl.

Voss and Maryrose race.

Today was our end-of-season Laser Quest party, and it was most excellent. I took first place in the first game, then lost by a rather wide margin to Ingrid, who showed up after soccer practice to destroy us all. She's actually really good - I underestimated her at first, and it cost me a good 50 points before I caught on. It's OK, though: I held the day's high score as we left, beating her by a narrow 12 points.

Afterwards we spent a good two hours at Barnaby's, the traditional Scobol restaurant, and chatted about anything and everything Scobol related. I found out that my personal four-year win-loss record was something on the order of 137-48 (I don't have the paper in front of me) and that I'm apparently the most valuable varsity player (which I really thought Aaron should win, but oh well). It was a blast, but at the same time, kind of sad - I realized that I'll never again introduce myself as "Tim, captain of the Lake Zurich High School varsity Scholastic Bowl Flynn team."
Continue reading "Voss is..."

Regional champs!

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:36:02 -0500

I know, I know, I was really slow in getting this up. Deal with it.

Tuesday we hosted Scholastic Bowl regionals and won! We got a buy the first match - I'm not sure who didn't show up, but it didn't really matter. We came into the second match against RB (don't ask me what that stands for, I don't remember) and took it by a hundred points, give or take. We finished and realized these were really long matches - 30 questions to our usual 16. Looking back, I think this played in our favor. We're more an endurance team than a speed team. Anyway, our last match was against McHenry, who we haven't seen since three years ago when they were in our conference. It was another relatively easy win, and another hundred-point margin.

I don't remember much about that night, but I remember the celebration afterwards. It started when McHenry left and Voss said something along the lines of "Oh yeah, I just remembered. I have something for you guys," then coming back with a massive championship plaque and showing it around. The next twenty minutes consisted of way too much hugging, team bonding, and dancing through the halls singing "We Are the Champions" at the top of our falsetto-strained lungs. The security guards are sure to have some strange footage of that night.

But the best was not to come until next morning, when Aaron snuck (OK, not snuck, more like magicked out of nowhere as ostentatiously as he could) an announcement in after the French Day speech about how we won. It went on for a good twenty seconds and included the phrase "Vosstonian era." I had gotten a pass signed so I could go watch from outside the office, and he was grinning like a madman the whole time. Hamilton yelled at him afterwards, of course, but he said later it was completely worth it.

Now we're headed on to sectionals on Saturday at Zion-Benton. Best of luck to us!

The Erick Schneider Rule

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:12:19 -0500

Today marks what was, to my recollection, the first and only practical application of the Erick Schneider Rule I've ever seen in actual play.

The Erick Schneider Rule, created last year, states that in a Scholastic Bowl, if a team is up by between 5 and 10 points on the last tossup and the other team answers the tossup incorrectly, NOBODY BUZZES. This rule is completely nonnegotiable and was created when its namesake answered an "easy" tossup on the last question, bringing us up to 20 above. The problem? The bonus was worth 20, and we got none and the other team swept it, bringing us to a tiebreaker tossup where, of course, we lose.

So today, we're facing (in conference, no less) one of the better teams in our division: Stevenson. It's a close game all throughout, with the second half seeing us start only about 50 points in the lead and losing ground. So of course all five of us are stressed and trying to keep the lead just a bit longer, and it comes down to the last question with us up by a mere five points.
Continue reading "The Erick Schneider Rule"