The Ohio Quizbowl Forum

Congratulations to Solon A, who defeated Walnut Hills 400-265 to claim the championship of the 2021 Ohio NAQT Middle School State Championship. It was an exciting top bracket, with Northmont and Solon A going in 7-0 and Walnut Hills and Oakwood going in 6-1. In round 8, Walnut beat Northmont and Oakwood beat Solon, setting up round 9 with 4 teams at 7-1. The top scorers were Ethan Kral from Northmont at 117 PPG, Declan Mohler from Walnut Hills, and Joseph Hong from Oakwood.

I was especially impressed with Walnut Hills, who fought their way to second in the state in only their first MS tournament of the year.

Full Stats can be found here: https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6950/

Thank you to the amazing pool of readers we had today who knocked out 10 rounds by 4 PM. They included Alex Connor, Melissa Lopez, William Groger, Tyler Benedict, Tom Moore, Valerie Parillo, Frank Mularcik, Sean Scranton and our championship game reader Emily Bingham. Thanks for giving up your Saturday and for your support of quiz bowl in Ohio.

Hopefully next year we can do it in person!!

Coach Jones deserves a big shout-out -- I feel that this event ran as well as it did in large part because of his preparation, planning, and strong tournament-directing acumen. I hadn't read online at all this year, and David took a generous amount of time in the days leading up to today patiently walking me through the ins-and-outs on 'what to know' and 'how to do' when it came to buzzin.live, accessing the questions, ensuring the students are pinged-in and all other relevant nuances to Online Quizbowl. Alex Connor gave me some solid tips this week, too. Making sure each room had a scorekeeper was certainly a boon toward this strong tournament, as well.

There's an adage that a tournament only goes as well as the 'weakest' (read: slowest, inexperienced or whatever negating attribute that can be applied) reader, and 'Jones putting in the extra work (taking nothing for granted when it comes to each readers' abilities/knowledge) to make sure the event ran as a well-oiled machine deserves public praise.

All of the students in my room throughout the day were very well-mannered, patient and all in all a credit to their coaches, schools, communities and parents. I know that typically is the case with any event (although some exceptions come to mind.) But, between it being the tournament for the state championship multiplied by the less-than-ideal medium of Online and further factored by any multitude of reasons to be possibly frustrated as a result of it being online (e.g. connectivity, general VCaaS fatigue) I think it is worth noting the exemplary levels of sportsmanship and manners exhibited by all participants.