Hello! This weekend, The University of Iowa hosted 8 teams in the 1998 "This Tournament Goes to 11" tournament. It was an exciting event and a _long_ one -- but it seemed to work fairly well with the participants and so -- here are the results in brief. The way the tournament worked was that each participating school could bring a maximum of 8 players. All teams played a double round-robin with the first round robin consisting of submitted packs and the second consisting of in-house packets. The format was a new one, however. Each "round" had the option of two packets to play on. The teams of 8 players (or less) would then divide their team up based on the content or theme of the various packets being played. For example -- of Chicago's submitted packets, one was a subject packet (Military History) and one was a theme packet (Things painful to sit on -- where all the answers would be either realistically or thematically "painful to sit on.") So -- 4 players would go to play one packet and the other four players would play the other packet against another school. Teams earned tournament points based on final scores within games. A win was 3 points plus a bonus +1 point for every 40 points one team outscored the other in the game. A losing team earned only 1 point. A tie was 2 points per team (and the tie wasn't broken). Then teams were paired off in ranked rounds for 2 final games that would add to their cumulative score. The final top team results were: 1st Place: (170 Points) Chimera Team (Eric Hillemann, Mark Zimmer, Sarah Bruce, Matt Edelstein, Brian Lee, Joel Velasco). 2nd Place: (167 Points) Illinois 3rd Place: (139 Points) Carleton More detailed scores will be available later for everyone's pleasure. 8 medals were awarded for individual all-stars and upon double-checking some results, I see that we failed to have a playoff for the 8th place medal because it was a 3-way tie. We originally awarded the 8th-place Bronze to Rob Chenault (who left early) but we'd also like to extend our congratulations to Andy Felton of Carleton and John Roushkolb of Wichita State who were tied with Chenault at 30.0 ppg. Therefore -- we will get your medals to you in the mail and we apologize for the oversight. INDIVIDUAL MEDALIST ALL-STARS 1st GOLD 72.2 ppg Eric Hillemann Chimera 2nd GOLD 52.5 ppg Dan Lee Minnesota 3rd SILVER 45.6 ppg Chris Mayfield Iowa State 4th SILVER 38.8 ppg Karl Schmidt Illinois 5th SILVER 35.0 ppg Andy Wang Illinois 6th BRONZE 32.5 ppg Matt Edelstein Chimera 7th BRONZE 31.0 ppg Mark Zimmer Chimera 8th BRONZE 30.0 ppg Rob Chenault Chicago 8th BRONZE 30.0 ppg Andy Felton Carleton 8th BRONZE 30.0 ppg John Roushkolb Wichita State Lightning Rounds: We also had a lightning round competition that consisted of a field-wide preliminaries (with 40 questions read to 8 rooms of 6-8 players) and then a 32 person semifinal (4 rooms of 8 - 50 questions) and top 2 from each room advanced to the finals (70 questions with 5 eliminations). The winners were: GOLD Eric Hillemann (Chimera) SILVER Jonathan Green (Illinois -- also defending champion) BRONZE Karl Schmidt (Illinois) 4th Mark Zimmer (Chimera) 5th Chris Mayfield (ISU) 6th Cheryl Klein (Carleton) 7th Andy Felton (Carleton) 8th Matt Edelstein (Chimera) (?) I'm fuzzy on these results (despite the fact that I moderated the finals) so if anyone would like to post corrections, please do! Finally, we also awarded "spirit" awards for just general congeniality and fun. We awarded 2 awards at the ceremony but after the tournament was over, we realized that we needed to award a third one. The winners were: * Andy Felton -- Carleton * Karl Schmidt -- Illinois and the third award -- that we will also send in the mail (and that we graciously ask for forgiveness for this oversight!) * Stephanie Weaver -- Minnesota Sorry Stephanie! :) The first part of the tournament (Friday night) went very well for most of the time. As of round 6, we were only about 10 minutes behind schedule. This is a miracle for an Iowa tournament. :) However, somehow, somewhere, somebody set off the fire alarm in the building and everyone had to evacuate. Then a locked door delayed the night's lightning round in one room and we ended up 40 minutes behind for the night. There were some delays on Saturday, but no real crises. Well, there was one where a packet wasn't actually printed out and copied but that was rectified within 15 minutes. We got a little behind in stats but managed to catch up by the end of round 16 to properly do the seedings. Overall, the tournament ended late but not too late. And the tournament really ended on a high note with the extensive awards ceremony where we not only awarded the medals and the plaques to the teams and individuals -- but we also recognized the individuals who were the top scorers on all of the in-house packets and many of them took home prizes -- anything from beer to a Keith Haring flip-book to an autobiography of Mr. T. I'd like to make some huge public thank-you's to some people: First -- to Nichol Vogeler, my Assistant Tournament Director who helped me with a lot of the pre-tournament work in sorting, arranging and organizing the _36_ (!) packets plus doing the shopping, and showing a real vigor and interest in learning the ropes. Plus, when I could no longer endure the statkeeping process, she took over and got us all caught up in record time. THANK YOU NICHOL!!!!!!!!!!!!! Next, to all of the Iowa team members who took time out of their busy schedules to help this tournament run successfully! Thanks to Robert Trent, Corey Smith, Mary Moran, Matt Larson, James Erwin, Andrea Tawil, Aaron Twait, Wade Pfau, Jay Gorgia and Angie Lyon. Without you guys, this tournament would have fallen flat on its face. THANKS!!!!!!!!! Finally, thanks to all the teams for trying this experimental format out and for being such good sports throughout the tournament. And also for being patient through the unexpected (fire alarm) unexplained (unprinted packet) and the unavoidable (small delays here and there). A BIG THANKS TO ALL OF YOU! Also thanks to Ericka Hayes and Scott Powers from Wash U. who joined our group for a post-tournament celebration at nearby Malone's that included a terrific dinner, drinks and some NTN and then later at Robert Trent's, more drinks, food and watching Saturday Night Live (well, I fell asleep on the couch, but I'm sure it was a fun party happening around me). ----------- And as far as roster changes... Hmmm...barring anything unforseen, Iowa will have the WHOLE team back except for perhaps Robert Trent who will be comping soon, or perhaps in fall. (??) We also get a recharge with Matt Larson becoming eligible again -- a great CBI and NAQT force who played on many an A team in the '96-'97 season. So -- this year's #16 NAQT team of James Erwin, Mary Moran, Aaron Twait and myself will also be back and up-and-comers like Nichol Vogeler and Michael Ose will hopefully add some depth to an Iowa squad that is typically top-heavy. And who knows what first-years might pop up. Looking forward to next year, And thanks to everyone who made this a successful tournament, -Trevor Schultz Mad Planner -- 1998 This Tournament Goes to 11 Member of the #16 NAQT Nationals Team :) Caught up on his sleep too, mostly. :)