ResultsJ.W. Booth Mem. Tourn.Our team of Fred Bush, Jessica Harbour, Larry Miller, and Greg Ingber finished 5-4 at this trash tournament, placing fifth. Blue Jay BashJoe Robins, Josh Miller, Christine Lattin, and Ed Cohn traveled to JHU, placing second in a field of eleven. The team had a 7-3 record in the round robin, before beating Vanderbilt in the semis and losing to Maryland A in the finals. Ed was the fourth highest scorer. Bigger Cooler Buzzer ConvocationPaul Arandia and Joe Robins teamed up with James Dinan (a former GW player and the current TRASH sports editor) as the "Swarthmore World's Finest" team at this trash tournament; they placed second to (you guessed it!) the Univ. of Maryland's Insane Clown Trash Posse. In one weeked, the team thus came in second at two tournament after making the finals of a tournament only once before within the institutional memory of the team. And they managed this feat without the services of Fred Bush, the team's resident TRASHmaster, who was stuck at a wedding in upstate New York. Beaver BonspielThe streak lives on! Ed, Fred, Jess, and Josh rode fourteen hours on a bus this weekend to reach the MIT tournament, where we swept our division with an 8-0 record. We beat Dartmouth Kyle 305-145 in the quarterfinals, and Yale Statler 385-50 in the semis, before losing a close rematch with Harvard Juicemaster 140-124 in the finals match. The finals were messy: neither team could get any traction on the packet (featuring eight pop culture or sports tossups and the most evil conjunction bonus in history). In the words of Harvard's Jeff Johnson, "It was like two woolly mammoths in a tar pit. They're not trying to win so much as escape." Nevertheless, Swarthmore continued its streak of appearances in the finals, while Ed and Fred were the 1st and 2nd scorers in their division (ranked 3rd and 5th overall). It was, in short, a very successful weekend. NAQT Atlantic ConferencesOur team of Ed, Fred, Josh, and Christine finished with a 12-5 record at this hard-fought tournament, placing either fourth or fifth (we're not sure of the tie-breaker). Ed, a tournament all-star, was the fourth leading scorer, while Fred was eighth. The team lost by sixty points or fewer to Virginia A and GW, the second and third place teams, and was defeated on the last tossup by both Maryland B and Penn A. Buzzer FestWe ended our fall semester in style, winning the annual Princeton tournament after losing in the semis for two straight years. Fred, Ed, Jess, and Josh were the members of our team, and we won our bracket with a 9-1 record (losing one match to Dartmouth on the last tossup, and decisively beating Cornell, the bracket's second-place team). Then we edged out Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh in the quarterfinals, beat Cornell again in the semis, and defeated Maryland A for the first outright tournament win in the team's memory. PennBowlWe sent one team to PennBowl 007, the largest invitational of the year, and fell just short of the playoffs in the tournament's most hotly contested bracket. Our bid to make the octofinals came down to our match with Johns Hopkins A: whichever team won the game would advance. At the half, we led 125-(-5), but Hopkins came back to win 150-120. Ed won an award as the "most discerning" player at the 62-team tournament, with the highest score among all players who didn't neg. J.C. Viscerra Mem. Tourn.Our 3-man team of Fred, Ed, and Josh finished with a 9-3 record; we placed second in our divisional round robin, before going 2-2 in the winners' bracket to tie for third. NAQT SectionalsPlaying short-handed once again, our team of Ed, Fred, and Josh (a k a "Jed") placed second in a field of 22 teams. We finished 9-1 in our bracket, losing only a match with the Harvard A dynamo of Jeff Johnson, J.J. Todor, Mark Staloff, and Guy Jordan (who actually trailed us by 85 points at the half); then we defeated Williams B and Harvard B in the first two rounds of the playoffs and won an exciting come-from-behind victory over MIT A on the final tossup of the semifinals. In the finals, we lost once again to Harvard A. Ed was the second highest scorer at the tournament (behind Harvard's Jeff Johnson) and Fred was tenth. ACF RegionalsWell, transportation problems almost foiled our plans, but we still managed to do well at the new ACF Mid-Atlantic Regional. For four rounds Friday night, only Fred and Ed were there, but we managed to hold off all our opponenets (except Maryland A, the eventual champion) until Josh arrived with a Swat van later that evening. In the end, we placed third behind Maryland A and Virginia A, losing only our matches to those two teams and the "Usylum" masters' team. Fred won a spot on the tournament all-star team as the third highest scorer. Intercollegiate Championship Tourn. (NAQT)The NAQT ICT marked the conclusion of the most successful year in the team's history. Ed, Fred, Josh, and Joe finished with a 9-7 record -- enough for 11th place among the 46 teams at the event, and first place among all undergraduate teams (giving Swarthmore its first ever national title in academic competition). We ended our first night of play with a 3-2 record (losing to Carleton and Chicago), but came back strong on the second day. We began with a win over Vanderbilt and compiled an 8-4 record by the end of round 12, giving us the ninth seed going into the playoffs. Unfortunately, though, we dropped a game to Georgia Tech by negging away our 5-point lead on the final tossup (Fred) and then dropped a game to BYU, but we defeated Maryland and played a strong game against Michigan A to round out our most successful ICT (and season) ever. Maintained by Adrian Packel. For more information, contact Chris White. |