The awards ceremony from 2 years ago

I just realized that this story is not on my LJ, as it didn't exist at the time. However, I did write about it for my old Xanga. Copied straight from that (nearly), here it is:

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Saturday was the New Jersey NAQT competition, to qualify for the nationals. The competition itself was mostly unremarkable. However, the awards ceremony...

The awards ceremony was to be held in the auditorium. However, the auditorium, as it tunred out, was already in use.

I, of course, went there anyway.

Meanwhile, the awards ceremony was held outside, under an awning, away from the rain, with everybody huddled in a circle. The first awards given out were for highest individual score; 1st through 5th place all got prizes.

As for what those prizes were, I don't remember all of them. However, you may find it helpful to know that one of them was a VCD of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, while another was an exercise video entitled "Say Goodbye to Back Pain". 1st place got 1st pick, etc. I came in 3rd.

Of course, I was waiting outside the auditorium, wondering what was taking everybody so long. Finally, I go back, and I see the people huddled in a circle, and, after a second, I realize that this is the awards ceremony. While I was, as noted, in 3rd, I also arrived 5th. So, I got the one that was left - "Say Goodbye to Back Pain".

Coincidentally, I arrived just at the end of the highest individual score awards. Next came the, ah, award, for most negs. The prize? A trash can.

Well, sort of. You see, they decided to take it back right after they gave it to him.

Next came the team awards, which, seeing as how this determined who would get to go to the nationals, actually mattered. There were trophies for this, for the top 3 places. All 3 teams received their respective trophies.

But it doesn't end there, because that would be boring.

It also doesn't end there because the people running the tournament apparently had 2 LPs they wanted to give away. Rest assured that their level of bizarrity is on an equal footing with that of the earlier prizes. One of them was called, approximately, "Voices and Music of the Wolves".

This time, the 3rd place team got to pick first, then 2nd place... but there were only 2 LPs! So what, aside from their trophy and a trip to the nationals, did the 1st place team get?

The trash can.

NJ States

Apparently it was some other tournament at Rutgers that was canceled, not NJ States, which we went to today, with a team of me, Josh, Ben, Noam, and Bernadette.

Chris and others were at the science fair, which, interestingly enough, was *also* at Rutgers. (The science fair was the reason we couldn't get a bus, and that we were missing a bunch of people. While we were waiting around in the parking lot for Bernadette to arrive (as her mom was driving us down to Rutgers), and seeing many science fair people arrive, someone suggested that we just go on the bus with the science fair people. But we couldn't really do that.) On the way down, it was suggested that if we won, we would have to take our trophy and go over to the science fair people and gloat.

So, Bernadette arrived and we set off. At one point Bernadette's mom kind of swerved a bit, saying she was distracted by the car in the next lane, with an American flag painted on its back window.
Bernadette?: She's distracted by anything shiny.
?: Like a cat.
Me: Wait, cats are shiny?
[Actually a bit longer than that, but...]

From this came the suggestion for a new name for the team, the Chrome Cats. Or just as a new name for Bernadette.

Also somehow the Nations of the World song came up (I think I first mentioned it (probably thinking about it from reading ashleyisachild)), and apparently Bernadette had it on her iPod, so we listened to it in turn.

Now, Mr. Sayres had originally registered two teams, but we only had 5 people; the schedule had been very carefully planned, so an Impromptu team (that was its name) was created from alternates. I suggested Bernadette should join it, as she probably wouldn't actually get to play very much if she stayed with us... but, she stayed, and we actually ended up using her instead of Noam a good amount of the time.

Oh, the format! Round robin in 3 brackets (named Kermit, Fozzie, and Gonzo); then the top 2 teams (by win-loss) from each go into the Animal bracket, next 2 each to Miss Piggy, next 2 each to Skeeter, and the remaining 3 to Camilla. Then round robin within those brackets (except you don't play the other team in there from your original bracket), winners taken from Animal bracket, decided on win-loss record (combined from original 6 rounds and last 4).

So, round 1: Ranney School A. Pretty easy win. WIN 340-100.

...yeah, I don't really remember details of just about any rounds. Did collect some quotes, though, which will be later.

Round 2: HHH A. WIN 260-125.

Round 3: Union Catholic. WIN 375-25. They eventually dropped out of the tournament, with the result that there were only 2 teams in Camilla, not 3.

Round 4: Columbia A. "The only actually good people we're facing." (Remark by someone on some other team.) We WIN 345-250.

Round 5: Livingston C, our first round in Room 104, where the moderator talks too fast. WIN 305-95.

Round 6: Bye. Noam tells Mr. Sayres he should tell his IGS teacher (who was it?) to lighten up. Noam was annoyed that she actually made them sit with their IGS during assemblies. So does Mr. Sayres. Mr. Sayres says that, when they were first throwing around the idea of student IDs, he had suggested implanting chips in each student. This leads to the idea of putting an electric fence around the school, which of course would result in students running headlong off the school grounds and seeing who could make it the farthest. Mr. Sayres says this reminds him of the speed slushy-drinking competitions they had when they were kids.

Round 7: Seton Hall Prep B. WIN 225-170. Yay undefeated! Time for lunch.

We go to the student center and find Mr. Dr. Crane there (for the science fair, of course). We tell him about some of the questions we got:

One person on another team negged saying "Halliburton" on a question asking about a company given a no-bid contract to build cellphone towers in Iraq.

We get a bonus asking us about animals that belonged to Odin, specifically what sort of animal they are.
Moderator: Sleipnir was one of these that could fly; he was notable for having 8 legs.
Me (without bothering to consult team): Horse.
Noam: Oh, I was thinking it was a spider.

One of the other teams got a bonus asking about numbers associated with covalent bonds. One part had an answer of bond order, including, among the clues, that it could be fractional if there was resonance. Their answer? "4."

On to the final 4 rounds... we go back and find out the brackets for the final rounds. We were in Animal, of course; the others were Millburn A, Seton Hall Prep A, Columbia A, Newark Academy, and Livingston A.

Round 8: Livingston A. We're behind a bit at the half, but at the very end, we're catching up... only to lose by 5 points. LOSS 255-250.

Round 9: Seton Hall Prep A. ...yeah... we got totally smashed... LOSS 275-45.

Round 10: Newark Academy. We're playing Jason! WIN 100-325.

Round 11: Millburn A. Blech, another LOSS, 335-155.

So, we won 1 out of 4. Ah! But winners are decided by record including the first 6 games; so we're not 1-3, we're 7-3. Which just might do it...

The awards ceremony was not nearly as good as that of two years ago. There were no crappy prizes for the individual (or other) winners, and there was no "most negs" award. Actually, we can't be entirely certain of the individual rankings, as the Miss Piggy bracket actually wasn't done yet, but I got 4th... 3rd was some guy from... Impromptu?! Wow... no, no, that's just a joke. So I got 3rd individual again, but no "Say Goodbye to Back Pain" video. (I wonder what ever happened to that?) No-one else on the team got an individual award. Now, as for team rankings... the important part...

The final ranking of the teams in Animal was

6. Newark Academy
5. Columbia A
4. Livingston A
3. Us
2. Seton Hall Prep A
1. Millburn A

It seems we've been getting a lot of 3rds lately...

However, 21 teams * 15% rounded up makes 4, so we get to go to the nationals!

After this there was some debate about whether we were actually qualified to go to the nationals *anyway*. After coming in 2nd in NJ in the KMO, we had gotten something from them about going to some national tournament, which nobody seemed to want to go to... Mr. Sayres said it was NAQT nationals, but I was pretty sure it wasn't... you can't get to that through the KMO... he said the letter telling us said, you can get to it through an NAQT tournament or through the KMO. Well, the NAQT website makes no mention of the KMO as a way to qualify... but we're in now through NJ states.

Other quotes and things that happened:

After Noam had gotten a few negs, Bernadette started calling negs "Noam points".
Noam: They're -5, not Noam points... I will fight you all!

One math question had an answer of exactly 5280 feet... everyone's response was "Aw, that's so cute!"

We got a bonus asking what geological period, in North America, was divided into the Mississipian and the Pennsylvanian. "Oh! I don't remember!" I shouted... nobody else on the team knew it. "Oh! I remember now! It was the Carboniferous!"

We got a bonus asking to answer these 3 related questions. The first answer was salmon. The second was Portland. The third asked who was Secretary of the Treasury under Lincoln. Ben knew the answer: Salmon Portland Chase. Apparently it's an ancestor of his.

Both Noam and I could not remember the name of King Achashverosh (from the Purim story!)

One one question about heliocentrism, the other team buzzed in with "Copernicus". Minus 5. Before he even gets back to the question, I buzz in with "Galileo." "That was unnecessary." Later Ben did the same thing, although I totally forget the question, so my recording of the answers given isn't really much good...

-Sniffnoy