Boardman participated in the Mellon Bowl at Carnegie Mellon today as the only team from Ohio. We finished 6-1 in the morning with a loss to Allderdice A and a thrilling victory over eventual champions Alagar Homeschool, but poor seeding caused us to fall to the consolation bracket, where we easily went 4-0 and finished 7th.
While the questions and readers were great, there were some serious issues with the logistics of the tournament. First of all, seeding Alagar and Allderdice A, the #4 and #10 teams in PA according to the GPQB poll, along with us shows a lack of research into the teams participating. All three teams ended up with over 20 PPB in the morning rounds, and those were the three highest PPB's in the entire 24-team field. One of these three teams would have to go to consolation based on the way the brackets were organized, and that hurts both that team as well as everyone else in the consolation bracket.
In addition, the tournament directors originally wrote down the standings for the playoffs on the chalkboard with Allderdice A and Boardman the top two in bracket H based on PPG. However, they later erased the board and declared they were going to have a three-team tiebreaker of tossup-only half packets; this caused all three teams involved to plead their cases, leading to at least a 30 minute delay. The original seeding was blatantly incorrect, and along with that, there was no plan set in place for a potential tiebreaker. The playoff rounds ended around 5:30, at which time an advantaged final for Alagar was deemed necessary. However, Allderdice agreed to forfeit so everyone could go home.
We enjoyed playing a variety of teams we don't usually get to see, and the teams themselves, including Alagar and Allderdice, were fun to play against, friendly, and empathetic. However, it is unlikely we will come back to this tournament in the future.
I will post a more detailed explanation of our grievances on the national forums later. Congrats to Alagar on the win!