On January 27th, several teams from Western PA and West Virginia gathered for the only non-college hosted event in Western Pennsylvania on the schedule so far. The day produced some highly entertaining results.
The tournament ended in an event Pennsylvania quizbowl has not seen: a four way tie. House team Allderdice A, State College A, Winchester Thurston A, and George Washington, a team from West Virginia, shared the honors. Normally this would have been played off with a semifinal/final structure, but the tournament had to be out of the building so the tie stood unbroken. All these schools performed very well on the day to show fantastic parity in Western PA, as seems to perennially be the case. Thurston negged just six times on the day, an impressively efficient rate. State College finished with 21.95 ppb, the highest of the bunch, while Allderdice, a bit undermanned as a few players moderated, did the home school proud. I was also highly impressed by GW, who put up 55 powers, most in the tournament.
Behind them, Shady Side A and Camp Hill tied for 5th. Shady Side’s Will Davis led the event in points per game with an impressive 104 prelim average, about 50% more than any other individual. Camp Hill looked their sharpest yet this year, and could look for some strong finishes down the stretch. State College and Allderdice’s B teams rounded out the playoffs. Indiana tied Winchester Thurston B at the top of the middle bracket. Allderdice Invitational also featured a first time pyramidal entrant in Burrell, plus the return of Eden Christian Academy and Penn Hills from last year. Keystone Oaks also rounded out the troop. All were welcome as the tournament produced a number of fierce games.
Allderdice should be commended for putting together an efficient event, which Pennsylvania always needs more of. The use of timed rounds caused many games to be very short on account of fairly inexperienced staff however, so fewer house teams may be a consideration for future events. Overall, this was a solid tournament and helped set up the key late game for the Western PA teams, which will kick off with Carnegie Quiz next month.
-Ben
GPQB 