Scholastic Bowl
Mason Finishes in Fifth Place
In State Tournament
By
Margaret Lipman (March 4, 2005)
Two weeks
after a string of
unprecedented successes in the Region B competition, the George Mason
Scholastic Bowl team ended its season with two disappointing (and
largely
unexpected) losses in last Saturday’s State tournament at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. The team tied
for fifth place after losing the last two of three of the season’s
closest
matches.
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On Saturday morning, the team
walked to the campus for team photos and an opening assembly in the Student Center. The 24
competing teams (eight teams in each group: Group A, which included GM,
Group
AA, and Group AAA) also came face-to-face with Shawn Pickrell,
the tournament’s director and the man responsible for writing the vast
majority
of the questions featured in the Regional and State championships. A few minutes later, Round 1 of the
competition began. The Group A schools
consisted of the regional tournament winners and runners-up: Eastern Montgomery, Luray, James Monroe, Lancaster, J.J. Kelly, Rye Cove, Radford, and, of
course,
Region B winner George Mason. |
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Sophomore Margaret
Lipman,
left, and seniors
Alex Douglas, center, and Dan McDonald during last
weekend’s
tense matches for the State Championship
of the Scholastic Bowl at the College
of William and
Mary. After
finishing either first or second the past
several years, Mason came in tied for
fifth place.
|
The team was
once again led
by senior captain Alex Douglas with help from senior Dan McDonald and
sophomore
Margaret Lipman. Junior Bjorn Westergard, senior Casey Smirniotopoulos,
and freshman Peter Davis also contributed their knowledge to the
ever-eclectic
competition which featured questions on Isaac Dinesen’s
Out of Africa, Fairfax’s George Mason
University, the House Ways and Means Committee, Betty Friedan’s
The Feminine Mystique,
empirical formulas, the Stuart kings, the
Phoenician city of Tyre, and even Billy
Ray Cyrus’s
“Achy Breaky Heart.”
Mason’s first
opponent was
Region A runner-up Lancaster High School. The game
proved to be dramatically different than those at the Region B
tournament,
though. For the first time in over 10
matches,
the GM team found itself trailing behind for a large part of the
excruciatingly
close game. Mason finally pulled ahead,
but won by a mere five points.
The next game
was against
2004 State champions Eastern Montgomery High School, the
team that had defeated GM by 10 points in last year’s final match,
leaving
Mason as runner-up. This year’s game
against Eastern
Montgomery took place
in only the second match of the
tournament, however. The Eastern Montgomery team took an early lead in the game, but the
score
evened out with a stellar performance from Mason in the team round. The last portion of the game was extremely
close, but ended in Eastern
Montgomery winning
170-160.
Mason then
proceeded to take
on Luray High School, the
Region B runner-up and the team they had defeated twice in the regional
competition with margins of over 100 points.
In the State competition, however, the Mustangs were faced
with a very
different scenario. In a series of
events that no one had expected, Luray pulled ahead from the very start
of the
competition and Mason was unable to catch up as the game progressed. The game ended 175-115, Mason’s largest point
deficit of the season, and,
because of the double-elimination
set-up of the tournament, signaled the end of Mason’s bid at reclaiming
the state
title. Understandably disappointed, the
team left the competition in a tie for fifth place with Lancaster. J.J. Kelly
and Rye Cove tied for sixth place, Luray took fourth, Radford took
third, and Eastern
Montgomery took
second, leaving James Monroe as the new Group A
State champions. Charlottesville High School won
in the Group AA competition and Thomas Jefferson High School for
Science and Technology won in the Group AAA competition.
Although this
was obviously
not the outcome that the GM Scholastic Bowl team had hoped for, they
still
recognized just how far they had come from the beginning of the season
and
acknowledged that making it to the state tournament was an
accomplishment in
and of itself, especially given that no one on the team had really
participated
in Scholastic Bowl before this season.
Coach Jamie Scharff agreed with this assessment and made
it known that
he was still quite proud of everything his team had done.
Even though
the Scholastic
Bowl season is technically over, the Mason team will still continue its
weekly
practices and is considering possibly entering an invitational
tournament if
Coach Scharff is willing. Several
members of the team will likely be participating in Academic WorldQuest 2005 (another team game testing
participants’
knowledge of world affairs, history, geography, etc.) in early April. And, most importantly, the team is already
thinking about next year’s “It’s Academic” taping, Scholastic Bowl
season, and
possibly even participation in its fifth consecutive State championship.
