A History of OAC

Any posts that are outdated will be moved here. Please do not post any new topics in this forum.

A History of OAC

Postby Get Lynned » Fri May 01, 2015 12:42 am

Per the OAC website, in 1985 only 20 schools participated in the regional tournament. In 1989, a matter of four years, that number rose to 76. It is 2015 and 94 schools participated in this year's tournament. Is anyone familiar with the history of the tournament able to provide any details on how the tournament was designed in 1985 and what led to the sudden increase in participation over the matter of a few years?

What are the various venues that have laid host to the OAC final competition?

Also, I have heard that way back when, there used to be a relationship between the OAC and the Ohio Department of Education. I don't remember what the relationship was, but were the questions at one point in time written by the ODE or were there chairs on the committee for representatives from the ODE?

Thanks in advance, y'all!
Thomas Moore
Ohio Wesleyan '18

Retired from online, for good.
Get Lynned
Varsity
 
Posts: 309
Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2014 6:56 pm
Location: Self-Imposed Exile, 4ever

Re: A History of OAC

Postby QuizBoss » Fri May 01, 2015 8:49 am

My memories of OAC don't go back that far, but I remember that 2002 was the first year I had heard of the East Central region. Prior to that, according to Kilner and others, the Northeast region was held in East Liverpool.

If my memory does serve me correctly, though, the certificate papers that used to go out to all regional participants did bear the ODE logo, and the history of the Panasonic/NTAE tournament indicated that it was the state DOE's who were given the authority to choose which team represented their state at Disney, so it seems plausible that such a connection existed. This would beg the question as to when that affiliation ended and if this led to the activity being placed in the hands of Shawnee State at that time.

EDIT: Found the old RobertsEtc.com/theoac website via the Wayback Machine. It was last updated in May 2003. The top of the page refers to theoac.org. http://web.archive.org/web/201102090946 ... com/theoac
http://web.archive.org/web/200211300024 ... heoac.org/

Some of the links that work on the .org site indicate that 1999 was the first NW and SW Regional, with Wayne Trace and Northmont hosting in 2002. Other 2002 hosts included Shawnee State, Copley, and Jefferson County CC. Columbus State hosted the state tournament.

The Northeast Region had the most information, as one might expect. No records were found for the first three years (1985, 1986, 1987), but the Regional top 2 for every year from 1988 is here: http://web.archive.org/web/200305251327 ... cords.html

2003 was the first year for the West Central Regional. (I think I read at that tournament, including the final. Jonathan?) Beavercreek defeated Northmont to win it. Southwest records on http://web.archive.org/web/200305271125 ... cords.html go back to 1993.



I did manage to find my old webpage, including results from the 2004 East Central Regional at Jefferson County Community College, where I managed to (not for the first or last time) stick my foot in my mouth. Solon was assigned to this region, and I thought Solon had intentionally delayed turning in their paperwork to get assigned to EC rather than the meatgrinder that was NE. Of course, I was proven to be wrong, and it didn't matter anyway because Solon went 1-2. Full results here: http://web.archive.org/web/200502051458 ... EC2004.htm

The next year was when I was ejected from the EC tournament by former committee member and bracket guru (/SARCASM) Rich Gregor.
Greg Bossick, formerly Persona Non Grata
Mogadore '98, Youngstown State '02 and '22
Director of the Mahoning, Ashtabula, Portage, and Toledo Area Quizbowl Leagues
QuizBoss
Varsity
 
Posts: 295
Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2014 9:20 pm
Location: Ohio

Re: A History of OAC

Postby BobKilner » Fri May 01, 2015 11:10 am

Per Mike Bindis and Sue Korosa:

Mike:

I recall the state final being held at a Columbus-area high school when I was in it back in 1990, before it was at Columbus State. I just don't remember exactly where it was. Sandusky also hosted OAC regionals, in 1988. I can't speak to anything else after 1990, though.

Sue:

The first time Copley participated in regionals was 1989. The NE competition was held at Toronto (I think) HS near East Liverpool (so much for geography). The first time Copley made it to state was 1992 where the tourney was held at Big Walnut (I think was the name) in Columbus. I think that's the school you were remembering, Mike. Some (not I) felt it was not in a "desirable" neighborhood--thus the change to Columbus State which was free.

Yes- there was a connection with the ODE--they provided postage (so generous) and two readers that we (Alice and I) not so affectionately called "Frick" and "Frack". They are the ones who would not take the answer Sun Also Rises from a kid from Elyria because he did not say "THE". We were appalled. They also allowed the St. Charles' coach (not either of the ones today) to interrupt one of our kids while he as giving a 4 part matching answer by saying, "He's doing it as he goes." I do NOT have fond memories of OAC and ODE's association. Maybe Alice can remember the name of the guy. I have repressed it. Cathy Mullins may know more.

Mike--you know more about stuff earlier than I if you played at Sandusky. What school? Who ran it?

A person who may know more is the coach at Genoa HS if he's still there. HIs name is Bill Bundy. I do not have an email address for him.
Bob Kilner
Secondary Admin, ohioqbforum.com
Former Coach, Garfield Heights HS (2001-2008), North High School (2015-19, 21-22)
Kent State '06 / Boise State '10
BobKilner
Site Admin
 
Posts: 402
Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2014 5:43 pm
Location: Garfield Heights OH

Re: A History of OAC

Postby BobKilner » Fri May 01, 2015 11:13 am

I've posted this as a comment on one of David's facebook posts addressed to Mrs. Roberts the longtime Northmont coach to see what she knows.
Bob Kilner
Secondary Admin, ohioqbforum.com
Former Coach, Garfield Heights HS (2001-2008), North High School (2015-19, 21-22)
Kent State '06 / Boise State '10
BobKilner
Site Admin
 
Posts: 402
Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2014 5:43 pm
Location: Garfield Heights OH

Re: A History of OAC

Postby BobKilner » Fri May 01, 2015 11:24 am

Sue also commented that two of the early people who ran it, one from Jefferson County and one the coach from Wheelersburg, have both since passed away. I also tried looking up Bill Bundy but he's not listed on the Genoa HS staff site anymore, leading me to believe he has retired.
Bob Kilner
Secondary Admin, ohioqbforum.com
Former Coach, Garfield Heights HS (2001-2008), North High School (2015-19, 21-22)
Kent State '06 / Boise State '10
BobKilner
Site Admin
 
Posts: 402
Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2014 5:43 pm
Location: Garfield Heights OH

Re: A History of OAC

Postby BobKilner » Fri May 01, 2015 11:35 am

And how ironic and funny is it that the only person ever ejected from an OAC regional goes on to become the head of the OAC nine years later. That whole thing was a fiasco that should have never happened.
Bob Kilner
Secondary Admin, ohioqbforum.com
Former Coach, Garfield Heights HS (2001-2008), North High School (2015-19, 21-22)
Kent State '06 / Boise State '10
BobKilner
Site Admin
 
Posts: 402
Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2014 5:43 pm
Location: Garfield Heights OH

Re: A History of OAC

Postby AlexConnor » Fri May 01, 2015 12:53 pm

[old man voice]
WELL BACK IN MY DAY...
[/old man voice]

States was still held at Columbus State, but in 00, 01, and 03 at least it was double elimination. In 2002, however, they switched to a two-bracket round robin format similar to what we have today. I'd be curious to know from Sue or whoever as to why the change was made and why it was changed back after just one year. One thing I recall (I hope someone can correct me if I'm wrong) is that they split up the two divisions by putting all the regional champs in one, and all the regional runners-up in the other. So we kind of lucked out that year because it was the one time in my 4 years that Fisher beat us for the Southeast title.

An extra weird thing was that the semifinals were not crossover. We had to play North Olmsted for a second time. I think we beat them the first time but then lost to them in the semi and therefore finished third. The third place game may have been against Beavercreek. If Jonathan Graham reads this I hope he remembers more details than I do about how that year worked.
Alex Connor
Coach, St. Charles Preparatory
AlexConnor
Rookie
 
Posts: 33
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2014 5:33 pm

Re: A History of OAC

Postby BobKilner » Fri May 01, 2015 1:14 pm

The qtcentral yahoo group is still up for those of you that were members back in the day (the one Justin Held from Turpin ran before the OAC forum came into being). There's some interesting posts on there, especially between 2003-2005. I managed to pick fights with a whole bunch of people, Cathy and Carol included. There's a lot of older results and things from regionals and states and other tournaments those years. I think only Greg, Joe and I might have been members of the people that frequent this board however.
Bob Kilner
Secondary Admin, ohioqbforum.com
Former Coach, Garfield Heights HS (2001-2008), North High School (2015-19, 21-22)
Kent State '06 / Boise State '10
BobKilner
Site Admin
 
Posts: 402
Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2014 5:43 pm
Location: Garfield Heights OH

Re: A History of OAC

Postby Get Lynned » Fri May 01, 2015 4:15 pm

Man, this generated a healthy response! Thanks Bob, Alex, Greg et al for posting on this topic and seeking out information from Mike Bindis and Coach Korosa. Keep at this thread if possible!


I'm going to assume state finals were held at Walnut Ridge, which is on the east side of Columbus where as Big Walnut is held in the comfortable bedroom community of Sunbury to the NE of Columbus. I'm pretty sure through cursory searches that I've come across Walnut Ridge participating in Chip Beall's NAC competition before, but this would have to be decades ago. My mother graduated from Walnut Ridge in the early '70s and according to her Walnut Ridge was an incredibly massive high school in Ohio terms of enrollment (between 2,500-3,000) 10-12, so going off some anecdotes in previous conversations between us I do recall her saying Walnut Ridge had (in her words) an active quiz bowl program even back then. In the Know's website indicates it had an active program that at the very least did In the Know well into the 1980's, so that makes sense it was host of OAC finals one year.
Thomas Moore
Ohio Wesleyan '18

Retired from online, for good.
Get Lynned
Varsity
 
Posts: 309
Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2014 6:56 pm
Location: Self-Imposed Exile, 4ever

Re: A History of OAC

Postby dxdtdemon » Fri May 01, 2015 6:56 pm

AFAIK, 2002 was the only year with five regions, as the east central was created that year. In 2000 and 2001, the state tournament was an 8-team double elimination format, and in 2003, it was 12-team double-elimination after the southwest got split into southwest and west central. In 2000-2002, the southwest regionals happened at Northmont as did the 2003 west central regional. I vaguely remember one of the years before the split that they had to figure out how to do a 25(or some other oddball number close to that)-team double elimination tournament (I don't think there was a field cap and so the numbers were all over the place), and there was so much time that elapsed between the time Beavercreek won the winners bracket and the final that when we saw a bus from our school district in the Northmont parking lot and a team with Beavercreek colors on the baseball field, we were able to catch the end of that game and the entire next game of a doubleheader. I think that in the second game, eventual Indians pitcher Justin Masterson got a CG shutout. I'm thinking this was in 2001 when Northmont had just joined our athletic league.

Back to the oddball 2002 state tournament. So I'm not sure if they had a 10-team double elimination tournament planned out or not, but Sycamore didn't show up because they were in the National Science Bowl that day. Therefore, we were the only team there that was representing the southwest region. I don't remember if we were in the bracket of 4 or the bracket of 5, but there was a round-robin within the bracket as well as a crossover game that didn't count towards the standings, although there must've been some byes involved as well. We were so mad that we lost to Copley by a margin that was less than or equal to three in the semifinal that we also lost to St. Charles in the third-place game. I agree that it was strange that they had the top two teams from each of the prelim brackets play each other in the semifinals. I hope somebody still has a schedule of this tournament just to figure out how bizarre this actually was.
Jonathan Graham
Beavercreek(1999-2003), Ohio State (2003-07), Wright State(2012-fall14)
occasional question writer
dxdtdemon
Rookie
 
Posts: 43
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 5:12 pm

Re: A History of OAC

Postby dxdtdemon » Fri May 01, 2015 10:00 pm

Here are some anecdotes from what I think I remember and a few files that I still have that say some things:
Beavercreek won the winner's bracket and the first game of the final at all of the regionals at Northmont from 2000-03. I'm not sure how many other teams have gone undefeated at regionals in a four-year span. The runner up in 2000 and 2001 was St. Xavier, 2002 was Sycamore, and 2003 was Northmont. I think that was Northmont's first-ever appearance at the state tournament.
2000 was rather uneventful, although I remember that St. X kept complaining about my parents' moderating skills and were ticked that one of them was going to be the scorekeeper in the final. I think that one of the people from Northmont read.
Beavercreek went undefeated in the 2000-01 school year, and in one of the rounds at regionals, they won by 63 points.
In 2002, we won each game by more than 30 points. Our closest margin of victory came in round one against a team who regularly played in tournaments that involved calculators, and were really ticked off when they couldn't use them. We won a game by 61 points, and were disappointed that we couldn't match the 63 from the previous year. One of those two games was against London. I'm not sure who the other opponent was. This is probably one of the few times a superintendent showed up to watch an academic tournament.
In 2003, we almost lost to Carroll, which was then a new team coached by our former assistant coach, in round one. My teammates had a conflict in the afternoon, and so I played the final with three random friends, since we didn't have a B team since we knew the program was going to be cut at the end of that school year. We still beat Northmont handily.

The 2000 state tournament is probably one of the few in OAC history for which Fisher Catholic didn't qualify. The eight teams were Beavercreek, St. X., St. Charles, Granville, Oberlin, Hawken, Copley, and a team from the NW region I don't remember. St. Charles beat Beavercreek in the winner's bracket final. At the time, the remaining teams in the loser's bracket were Copley and Hawken. For some reason, there was a random draw about which two of the three teams got to play next instead of having Copley play Hawken with the winner then playing us. Hawken drew the bye. Copley had just won the previous few OAC state tournaments, and still had a pretty good team that year. In the middle of the category round, they were leading by double digits, but then the lead began to be chipped away. At the time, the lightning round was ten one-point questions, and so they thought their lead of four going into the round was relatively safe. After the ninth question, the game was tied. On the last question, the first word was either an article or a preposition, but definitely something you couldn't buzz off of. A Copley player had an accidental buzz right after that first word. Ironically, the question asked what the then-new acronym LOL stood for. A member of our team got it, and the "LOL incident" was one of the funnier anecdotes of OAC history for a few years. A member of Hawken had just edged out a member of our team to be on the national math team not too long before the tournament happened, and so while the member of our team didn't play on the A team that often, he was allowed to get his revenge on Hawken. He did, and beating St. Charles twice after that didn't seem too big of a feat with all the momentum of the previous two rounds.

The 2001 state tournament was also rather uneventful. Most coaches and players around the state that year claimed that our B team (which I was still on due to off-buzzer issues) was the second best team in the state that year, and we only beat the A team once in practice all year. One interesting feat that year was that Beavercreek beat St. X in the winner's bracket final at regionals, the regional final, the winner's bracket final at state, and the state final. I'm not sure if any equivalent feat has happened before or since. I think that there were some oddball teams that made state that year for the first time that may not have been back since.

I think I described what I remember about the 2002 tournament in the other post.

2003 was a disappointing state tournament for a lot of teams. Most of the good teams that year were all-senior, and the fact that this tournament happened at the end of AP week was one of the causes of the fatigue factor for a lot of the favored teams, of which I think there were about six that had some reasonable expectation of winning. I think if you rated those teams one to six, St. Charles would've been number six on everyone's list, but the other five just played like crap. I think two of the three teams that finished between second and fourth were not among the six. One interesting feat we almost pulled off happened in the round we got sent to the loser's bracket. That year, the lightning round was twenty one-point questions. We came into the lightning round down by 19 to Fisher Catholic. We got the first 16 questions in the lightning round. On the 17th question, two of my teammates had a buzzer race. The guy whose buzzer lit up gave the wrong answer, and got slapped by the girl who lost the buzzer race and would've had the correct answer. Fisher Catholic finally locks up the game by giving the right answer, but I'm not sure if that would've been the biggest comeback in state tournament history or if there have been bigger ones.
Jonathan Graham
Beavercreek(1999-2003), Ohio State (2003-07), Wright State(2012-fall14)
occasional question writer
dxdtdemon
Rookie
 
Posts: 43
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 5:12 pm

Re: A History of OAC

Postby AlexConnor » Fri May 01, 2015 11:18 pm

2000 was fun. One senior had been kicked off the team and another had quit. This left our star senior, Daniel Nguyen, and the second-best senior, Ben Lampson (random factoid: his younger brother is a goalkeeper for Columbus Crew SC). To fill the last two spots, Dr. Vandermeer chose two freshmen: me and Alexander Cueto. Along with Tony Bendinelli we had become a 3 freshmen Varsity B team. We had no clue what to expect, but ended up winning the Southeast region.

At States, Ben said to Doc at the start of the day "I just hope we can win one game." We approached the tournament as though we were playing with house money. We ended up winning the winner's bracket. My recollection was that the final match was against Copley, with Alexander shotgunning a tossup about parts of an airplane that clinched the victory. Beavercreek had to win twice to win the tournament, and they crushed us. They definitely deserved it that day.

That's funny that you thought we were the lowest seeded of the contenders in 2003. Bob Kilner has said something similar, about our title that year being a surprise. We approached it as though it was ours to lose. We had only dropped two games in 4 years in the Southeast Regional. We had a state runner-up and third place finish under our belts. We knew we could win states and we wanted it BAD. It was a great field that year and we had to earn it. I think we were most likely the most balanced team that year. All 5 of us - the super freshmen, plus James Pease and Mike Lewandowski (who is now teaching at SC) - each knew the others' strengths and kept out of the way. I recall Moeller being a surprise finalist. As it turns out they were runners-up the next year as well. But in 2003 they were relatively new and seemed mostly happy just to get that far.
Alex Connor
Coach, St. Charles Preparatory
AlexConnor
Rookie
 
Posts: 33
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2014 5:33 pm

Re: A History of OAC

Postby dxdtdemon » Sat May 02, 2015 1:12 am

You definitely deserved to win in 2003, regardless of how the other favorites played. I think that if any of the six teams won, they would have deserved it. That year, it had seemed like every significant regular season tournament had a different winner, and so I think a lot of people were biased towards the players that had won more earlier in their careers, instead of expecting everyone to beat each other up like they should have. I think most of the people expected us or Copley to win based on track records. I think the people who expected us to win did so because they thought we had the most knowledge of any of the teams, and the Copley crowd thought that they had the combination of enough knowledge and a good enough gaming of the rules to be able to beat teams that knew more than they do. I think that a lot of people underestimated your team's knowledge level.
Jonathan Graham
Beavercreek(1999-2003), Ohio State (2003-07), Wright State(2012-fall14)
occasional question writer
dxdtdemon
Rookie
 
Posts: 43
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 5:12 pm

Re: A History of OAC

Postby AlexConnor » Sat May 02, 2015 10:13 pm

Good point. I know teams in the northeast would have been less familiar with us. We played the events at Case but otherwise stayed in Columbus and Dayton. At that point there wasn't the statewide circuit like there is now, with the best teams meeting often.
Alex Connor
Coach, St. Charles Preparatory
AlexConnor
Rookie
 
Posts: 33
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2014 5:33 pm

Re: A History of OAC

Postby BobKilner » Sun May 03, 2015 11:42 am

We only played Jonathan's team once (at Turpin) during the 2002-03 season and they beat us in the semifinals by like 10 or something. I remember being really impressed at their depth of knowledge and how well they worked together though and that they had one of the best/most-aggressive girls I've ever coached against on the buzzer (prior to Sarah from Fisher).

I remember playing Alex's team that year 4 or 5 times (at Case a couple times, Copley and I think we went down to OSU or something down that way at some point) - every time we played them I remember thinking I wanted to punch all of them in the face. Looking back now, I don't think it was actually them being cocky and arrogant as much as just enjoying themselves, but I was pretty high-strung back then and always looking for an argument with somebody.

That year was interesting for me from a coach standpoint because we were a decent team, but not great - but it was where our program turned the corner because we graduated like ten players that year and started the 'reloading' process the next year where I actually had to build up all of our younger players. I didn't really know what I was getting into up until that point because all of our juniors and seniors had been on the team with me when I was a senior and they were younger. 2004 was an ok year but then 2005 is when we really started turning it up and getting the program going.
Bob Kilner
Secondary Admin, ohioqbforum.com
Former Coach, Garfield Heights HS (2001-2008), North High School (2015-19, 21-22)
Kent State '06 / Boise State '10
BobKilner
Site Admin
 
Posts: 402
Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2014 5:43 pm
Location: Garfield Heights OH


Return to Old/Outdated Posts

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 12 guests

cron