• High School
• MOQBA Fall Championship
• 2018

2018 MOQBA Fall Championship Recap

24 teams attended the fourth annual MOQBA Fall Championship at Columbia College on December 8, 2018.

The teams were initially divided into four pools of six for preliminary rounds 1-5.

The top three teams in each pool advanced to the championship tier to play for first through twelfth place. The remaining teams advanced to the consolation tier.

In the championship tier, two roughly equal pools were seeded based on the points per bonus of the top team from each preliminary pool, with the corresponding second and third place teams advancing to the same pool. This resulted in two parallel pools consisting of the top three teams from two of the four pools. Each of these pools played a crossover playoff, with games in rounds 6-8 and two preliminary games carrying over. The consolation teams were divided similarly into two parallel pools of six teams each.

After round 8, St. Joseph Central, Hickman A, Hallsville A, and Louisiana advanced to the final four superplayoff pool. The middle two teams in each championship pool played crossover games in rounds 9 and 10 to determine fifth through eighth place, while the bottom two teams played for ninth through twelfth. Similar top 2/middle 2/bottom 2 crossover games were played in the consolation tier during rounds 9 and 10.

After round 10, Central, Hallsville A, and Louisiana each had one loss in a set of evenly matched superplayoff games: Hallsville won by 10 points over Louisiana in round 8, Louisiana won by 5 points over Central in round 9, and Central won by 15 points over Hallsville in round 10. This set up a two stage final, seeded by points per game within the superplayoff pool. Hallsville won the first game 385-200 over Louisiana to earn the small school title and advance to the championship game against Central. Central won the final game 320-260 to earn the title of tournament champion for the second consecutive year.

On the strength of their performances, the top six teams (Central, Hallsville A, Louisiana, Hickman A, Calvary Lutheran A, and Jefferson City A) have qualified for the PACE National Scholastic Championship, which will be held June 8-9 at the Hyatt Regency Reston in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Information on this national championship event can be found at pace-nsc.org.

This tournament could not have run as well as it did without the gracious support of our volunteer moderators and scorekeepers. We would like to offer heartfelt thank-yous to everyone who donated their time and energy on Saturday: Andrew, Madelyn, and Molly from Hallsville; Emily Day, Shaina Vangilder, and April Wickham; coaches Scott Allen, Andrew Darr, Jon Deering, Shelly Kiesling, Ginger Luetkemeyer, Josh Malecki, Levi Maxwell, Andrew Reynolds, and Tara Winn; and fellow MOQBA members Lisa McClary, Sean Phillips, Kevin Stockman, and Shelley Swoyer. Special thanks to MOQBA members Kyle Hill, Stephanie Hull, Jacob O'Rourke, and Alex Smith for not only staffing the tournament but also assisting with additional tasks before and after the tournament.

In addition, we are also extremely grateful for the amazing support we always receive from Columbia College to help our events run smoothly. The tireless efforts and event planning expertise of Kimberly Craig, Kerri Coley, and the rest of the Columbia College team continue to make each tournament we host on their campus a great pleasure to run.

Thanks to all of our wonderful teams, staff, and Columbia College, we were able to start the first round earlier than scheduled, finish round 10 for most teams by 4:35, and complete the entire twelve round event and have full statistics uploaded before 6:00! We appreciate every single person who attended this tournament and helped make it one of the most enjoyable tournaments we have ever directed, and sincerely hope that everyone had a similarly great experience. We always welcome any comments or suggestions you have toward improving our future events.

Finally, we would like to remind everyone that thanks to the fantastic administration and admissions staff at Columbia College, the Missouri Quizbowl Alliance will be returning to their campus to host the twelfth annual NAQT Missouri Qualifier on March 2. Registration opens on Wednesday, December 12 at 6:00 AM.

Best of luck to each of your teams as they compete the rest of the season!

Jeffrey Hill and Matt Chadbourne
Co-Directors, 2018 MOQBA Fall Championship