#10. Second Place (Tuesday, May 13, 2008)

#10. Second Place (Tuesday, May 13, 2008)

What was your best day…of coming in second place?

Obligatory context links to actual games: Reach for the Top (Canadian quizbowl), NAQT (U.S. quizbowl)

Before we dive into this one, I think it’s worth doing a quick recap of the timeline of my high school quizbowl career at Lisgar, as of the start of May 2008:

  • 2006 (sophomore year of high school): I’m not on my school’s main team for Reach for the Top (Canadian quizbowl); but I unexpectedly break out at the regional finals I’m not supposed to be at, and help us to a city title (#11). I don’t go to Provincials; there, despite being a 2-seed, we get upset by University of Toronto Schools (UTS) (9-seed) in the first TV round – they end up placing second in the country. Our team also becomes the first Canadian high school team to play NAQT (U.S. quizbowl), and place 50-something out of around 200 schools at their Nationals (I don’t go). That summer, I become a $1.50-a-question contract writer for NAQT (#52).
  • 2007 (junior year of high school): I’m on the main team as the fourth player/alternate, so I do go to Reach Provincials (which we qualified for easily) – my first ever quizbowl road trip (#59). We end up a 6-seed for the TV round, where we lose again to UTS in the first round, but we get the “highest-scoring-loser” wildcard into the second round. Where we lose to London Central and I have an atrocious game that essentially costs us a wildcard spot in the semifinals.
  • 2008 (senior year of high school, as of the start of May): I’m on the main team, along with my best friend Nigel Healey (senior captain), Colin Griffiths (senior), and Chelsea Barrett (junior). In March, we take part in a U.S. quizbowl tournament against a bunch of college teams, and Nigel and I end up being 1-2 in individual scoring (#22). So for the next two months, we (especially I) go hard-core in our studying – knowing we have a chance to shock the trivia world by winning the U.S. National Championship. We are aware that the U.S. Nationals in Chicago are being held the same weekend as Canadian Nationals in Edmonton; but we don’t think that’s likely to be an issue. I mean, our school has never qualified for Canadian Nationals before, even with a (presumably) better Reach team in past years; so why would that happen now? I, at least, am all-in on U.S. quizbowl.

In any case, we had qualified for Provincials easily, tying for first in the region with Merivale1. And with our trivia knowledge optimized and our killer instincts sharpened, we drive over to Toronto this Saturday all ready to go.

But throughout the round-robin on Sunday, it’s almost comical how badly we’re outplaying the other top regional teams from across Ontario. We destroy each of our seven opponents by at least 200 points; it’s like we’re on a completely different level from any of them.

And, with a 7-0 record and over 3600 points scored in total, we are the top seed. UTS, our bitter rivals, with a perfect record but only about 3200 points, is the second seed. While Merivale, our regional rivals, finish with the third seed.

We have never finished this high in the standings before. Now it was just time for us to get the deal done in the TV rounds – which Lisgar had qualified for in each of the past seven years, but never made it past the second round.

So on Monday, we arrive at the TVOntario studio (TVOntario is the main public broadcast network for the province, so being on TV is pretty big deal). We’re the first game on, so right away we put on the makeup (me feeling significantly less nervous than last time) and get on stage.

We’re playing the 10-seed South Secondary from London (who won a live tie-breaker2 against Sacred Heart, a team we beat my almost 300 points in the round robin, to get here). And we control the game, maintaining a decent lead from start to finish, and win 500-340. I contribute four answers: Lithium, Aung San Suu Kyi, Georges Seurat3, and Gemini.

Our work today is done, so we relax and then sit in the studio audience watching the other four first round games. UTS wins easily, but Merivale trips up and loses to 8-seed Vincent Massey (from Windsor) 360-340. And at the end of the day, Merivale and South have the same top losing scores, so Jake Ryerson and South’s captain Gary do an offscreen best-of-three…and Gary wins. Merivale is out; and we have to play South again next round tomorrow morning.

The next morning, I have a sinking feeling. We had beat South once; but could we beat them again, especially after that third wind that they just got? My legs are shaking at breakfast, so Ms. Coakley tells me to go take a walk outside while Nigel’s mom buys me a smoothie on the way to the studio. That calms me down a bit.

Our game is initially very close. South jumps out to a small lead for the first third (thanks to a 30-pointer on the St. Lawrence Seaway), but in the second third we finally pull ahead for good when there’s a 40-point section on OHL teams and Colin sweeps it. I answer a string of questions: cycling (2nd part of triathlon), Simon Whitfield, William Faulkner, Charles Marlow, to help seal it, and we run away with it in the last part to win 470-190. (Other answers: Johannes Brahms, Christine.)

So it’s on to the semi-finals against Vincent Massey. And the game is kind of sloppy by both teams (I get the sign wrong in a math question) – but we pull through 340-190. (I only get F. Scott Fitzgerald for Tender is the Night, and George Eliot).

That’s it. The finals. Lisgar vs. UTS. Their team is headed by Lijiang Lu (captain, total polymath, going to Berkeley) and Raul Koshechkin (physics and classics god, going to Columbia), and a rotation of four others.

The game is tight throughout. I answer a question on Crash early on (what was the lowest-grossing Oscar Best Picture winner since The Last Emperor?), but contribute nothing for the rest of the game. But Nigel and the others pick it up, and we head into the final 90-second lightning round down by 10.

And there, UTS takes over. We get the first one, but they get something like seven in a row, and that ends it. We lose the finals 430-340 as they hoist the provincial trophy.

But that’s not the end of it. This is only the Provincials. There’s the National tournament in two weeks, and the top two Ontario teams qualify for that. And of course, that’s the date we’ve already circled on our calendar as our moment of U.S. quizbowl glory. So now things are up on the air.

The organizers give us a few days to think over our decision. And with that, we take our second place medals, load into Ms. Coakley’s van, and start back to Ottawa: with one very difficult decision coming up.

  1. It’s complicated, and not particularly interesting. Let’s just say Nigel and Jake Ryerson (#56, their captain now) were both really good guys.
  2. Literally, they had the same 5-2 record and the same number of points. So in the courtyard where they were announcing the standings, they got Gary (from South) and Alex (from Sacred Heart) to face off with microphones in front of all 250+ people in a best-of-seven. Alex got up 3-1, but then failed to identify Toronto as the location of the (first-ever NBA team) Huskies, and Gary came back to win it. Looking back, that was an unfairly cruel and traumatic (for the loser) experience to impose on a pair of high school students.
  3. (A replica of) his most famous painting “La Grand Jatte” that the question was referring to was hanging right at the front of the lobby of the hotel/college residence all the teams were staying at. I nerded out big-time from seeing that…which ended up paying off.