MITBAT
Today was one long day. I went to the MITBAT: leaving home for 11 hours (10 min).
I got up at 6:30, in order to get to school certainly by 7:40 to go to the MITBAT. Ironically, I was one of only a few who took the 7:40 time particularly seriously. However, by 8:00 AM we (the Needham High School Academic Bowl Club, & Andy Li) collected ourselves into 15 (3 teams of 4 and 3 adults) on 4 cars.
We eventually arrived piece-meal in the proper room at MIT by 9 AM. There, we reconfigured our three Needham Teams to stand thusly:
Needham A= {Matt Harris (Senior), Jon Silverman (Senior), Ried Niziak (Senior), and Andrew Kieler (Freshman)};
Needham B= {Tom Boston (Senior), Charles Heisler (Junior), Jeff Wong (Junior), Peter S Panov (Junior)};
Needham C= {Chris Wellington (Junior), Andy Li (Junior), Mike Wetmore (Junior), Todd Sharpe (Freshman)};
The idea behind these teams was to make A>B>C in skill while balancing the specialization of team-members. However, things didn't quite turn out that way.
Around 10 AM, we finally began actually competing in Rounds. There were a total of 6 10 question (with 3 or more bonuses for each question answered correctly) rounds. In the first, my team, Needham B, lost by a small margin (about 30 pts) to Georgestown. We were not to lose again until the playoffs. We did surprisingly well, surpassing Needham A with some fairly powerful scores such as, in one round, 415 to 45 (I think) (Although there was another round where we won by a bare 15 pts-- a good game).
We somehow managed to complete each round sufficiently rapidly to have a huge amount of time to burn waiting for the rest of the tournament to move on. At first, our attempts were numerous, but by the lunch break between rounds 3 and 4, we began a "game" of drawing-countries-on-paper. We created, over the course of a number of breaks, a complex setting with 7 separate nations in a complicated network of trade and political activity. One of them happened to be a Constitutional Robocracy (see America the Book by Jon Stewart & Co.)
Moving on from such works of boredom, by the end of the 6th round, we were tied for second (listed as 3rd). Needham A-- tied for fourth (listed as 9th). We moved on to the Playoffs- and were defeated with a 55 point margin in the first round. We were pummeled by a set of infortuitous circumstances (in terms of questions) combined with a strong opposing team. However, we still consider ourselves to have done well. The details of who wins which round are mostly random when the margins are sufficiently low, but overall we did rather well.
And that was pretty much my whole day...
Peter
I got up at 6:30, in order to get to school certainly by 7:40 to go to the MITBAT. Ironically, I was one of only a few who took the 7:40 time particularly seriously. However, by 8:00 AM we (the Needham High School Academic Bowl Club, & Andy Li) collected ourselves into 15 (3 teams of 4 and 3 adults) on 4 cars.
We eventually arrived piece-meal in the proper room at MIT by 9 AM. There, we reconfigured our three Needham Teams to stand thusly:
Needham A= {Matt Harris (Senior), Jon Silverman (Senior), Ried Niziak (Senior), and Andrew Kieler (Freshman)};
Needham B= {Tom Boston (Senior), Charles Heisler (Junior), Jeff Wong (Junior), Peter S Panov (Junior)};
Needham C= {Chris Wellington (Junior), Andy Li (Junior), Mike Wetmore (Junior), Todd Sharpe (Freshman)};
The idea behind these teams was to make A>B>C in skill while balancing the specialization of team-members. However, things didn't quite turn out that way.
Around 10 AM, we finally began actually competing in Rounds. There were a total of 6 10 question (with 3 or more bonuses for each question answered correctly) rounds. In the first, my team, Needham B, lost by a small margin (about 30 pts) to Georgestown. We were not to lose again until the playoffs. We did surprisingly well, surpassing Needham A with some fairly powerful scores such as, in one round, 415 to 45 (I think) (Although there was another round where we won by a bare 15 pts-- a good game).
We somehow managed to complete each round sufficiently rapidly to have a huge amount of time to burn waiting for the rest of the tournament to move on. At first, our attempts were numerous, but by the lunch break between rounds 3 and 4, we began a "game" of drawing-countries-on-paper. We created, over the course of a number of breaks, a complex setting with 7 separate nations in a complicated network of trade and political activity. One of them happened to be a Constitutional Robocracy (see America the Book by Jon Stewart & Co.)
Moving on from such works of boredom, by the end of the 6th round, we were tied for second (listed as 3rd). Needham A-- tied for fourth (listed as 9th). We moved on to the Playoffs- and were defeated with a 55 point margin in the first round. We were pummeled by a set of infortuitous circumstances (in terms of questions) combined with a strong opposing team. However, we still consider ourselves to have done well. The details of who wins which round are mostly random when the margins are sufficiently low, but overall we did rather well.
And that was pretty much my whole day...
Peter