Thursday, October 6, 2011

Intramural Tournament

This Sunday, October 9th, is the Campus Intramural Quiz Tournament. Games will take place in the LDC as part of a double elimination tournament. Teams of up to four players (more people can be on a team, but only four can compete at one time), partial teams, or free agents can sign up by sending an e-mail by Friday night to gehrinca@carleton.edu with the name of your teammates. The top two teams will play for the championship at 7:00 PM on Saturday, October 15th, in Leighton as part of a Family Weekend event. Following the IM Finals, an IM All-Star game will take place, with the top four individual scorers from the IM tournament facing off against an All-Star team of Carleton faculty and staff members in a best of three matchup. This tournament is open to all Carleton students, and the glory is sitting there for anyone to take.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Novice Tournament

On Saturday, seven Carleton quizbowlers traveled up to the U of M to play in the Early Autumn Collegiate Novice Tournament. Carleton "A" consisted of Micheal Wheatman, Carolyn Harris, and Christopher Winter, and Carleton "B" was formed by Raghav Chandra, Edward Malnar, Charlie Gillmer, and Will Sheffer. The 8 team field of the tournament also had three teams from Minnesota, and one team from each of Augustana, Minnesota-Morris, and St. Thomas.

Both Carleton teams finished the day at 2-5, leaving them in fifth place. In addition to their similar records, both teams averaged about the same points per bonus, with A having 13.41 and B having 13.50, although A had the upperhand in the final match of the day between the two Carleton teams. Will's average of 35.71 points per game was good enough to get him sixth overall in scoring as well as a book prize, and Christopher also cracked the top 10 in individual scoring in ninth place with 23.57 points per game.

All in all, after only two practices to get prepared for this tournament, the Carleton (mostly) freshmen made a good showing and will have some more practices now to get ready for the next tournament in October.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Trash Results!

This past Saturday two teams of Carls played at Minnesota's mirror of Mike Cheyne's VCU Open trash tournament. Carleton A consisted of Scott Fox, Frank Firke, and recent graduate Andreas Stoehr ('11), while Max Henkel, Freddie Stein, and Jeff Berg played as Carleton B. (Each team was supplemented by an extra Minnesota player.) Also present were two unaffiliated teams, two teams from Drake, a Minnesota house team, and Iowa State.

Carleton A went 10-0 and swept the field, winning every match by at least 170 points. Carleton B tied for 2nd with two other teams at 6-4. Frank, Andreas, Scott, and Freddie finished 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th in individual scoring; Frank also picked up the neg prize with 10 negs, while Andreas finished with the impressive line of 20 powers and no negs.

Disappointingly for a trash tournament, there were no truly awful negs, but we did learn that Scott knows a lot about Maude, Frank knows the plot of Shaq Fu, and Andreas is an Alanis Morrissette devotee, so there's at least that.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

The Season Begins!

With classes starting tomorrow, the quizbowl season is upon us!

Our practices will be at the same place and time as last year: 6:30 on Monday and Wednesday, in Leighton 202 (turn left after walking in).

Our tournament schedule is as follows:

Sept. 17: VCU Open Trash at Minnesota (1st weekend)

This is a mirror of a trash (quizbowl jargon for pop culture) tournament to which we hope to send a team or two. 




Sept. 24: Early Autumn Collegiate Novice at Minnesota (2nd weekend)

The first proper tournament of the year, this is one of the ideal opportunities for new students to play. The tournament is restricted to novices and intended to provide the style of college quizbowl in a maximally welcoming environment.





October 15: MOO (Missiles of October) at Minnesota (5th weekend)

This is a regular difficulty tournament (i.e. intended for more experienced players but still worthwhile for newer players) written by the Universities of Virginia and Michigan.



October 22: MAGNI at Carleton (6th weekend)

We will host MAGNI, a tournament written by Jerry Vinokurov and players from Yale and UCSD, at Carleton. The tournament aims to be very accessible for newer players while challenging experienced ones as well. We will be hosting this tournament, which means much of the team will be staffing, though we will have a team or two playing.



November 5: ACF Fall at Carleton (8th weekend)

ACF Fall, a yearly lower-difficulty tournament regarded as one of the most consistently excellent in quizbowl, is being edited by our very own Carsten Gehring this year. We will be hosting this tournament as well, though it is likely that more of our team will be able to play than at MAGNI.

Monday, July 18, 2011

About The Carleton Program

The Carleton quizbowl team is one of the oldest continuously-running clubs in the country, having been active since the late 1980s. In recent years, we have sent teams to many regional tournaments in Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois as well as national championship tournaments in Chicago, Dallas, Maryland, and Pittsburgh. Highlights of the program's history include undergraduate national championships in 1999 and 2007 and a Division II national championship in 2008, while in the last two years the team has finished 3rd among undergraduate teams twice and placed 7th overall at the 2011 Intercollegiate Championship Tournament.

We invite all Carleton students to join the team, regardless of background or skill level. Playing in high school is not a requirement--indeed, two of our best players the past two years didn't play until arriving at Carleton. We practice twice a week (Monday and Wednesday nights, generally) and practices are open to all. In addition, we frequently send multiple teams to tournaments, so just about anyone who wants to can attend most tournaments.

If you have more questions about the team or getting involved, please contact Frank Firke (the president) at firkef AT carleton dot edu or Carsten Gehring (the treasurer) at gehrinca AT carleton dot edu.

About Quizbowl

Quizbowl is a competitive activity that tests knowledge in a wide variety of (mostly academic) disciplines. It's somewhat comparable to Jeopardy!, but played in teams using questions that are a lot longer and cover a much wider variety of topics in much more depth. Quizbowl is played at the high school, college, and open levels--for obvious reasons, our team mostly attends college-level tournaments, though we usually host a few high school tournaments each year for fundraising purposes.

For more information, you should check out the quizbowl wiki here; for the especially curious, lots of quizbowl news and discussion can be found at the forums here.