• High School
• MOQBA Fall Championship
• 2019

2019 MOQBA Fall Championship Recap

A tournament record 36 teams attended the fifth annual MOQBA Fall Championship at Columbia College on November 23, 2019.

The teams were originally divided into 6 pools of 6 for preliminary rounds 1-5.

The top 2 teams in each pool advanced to the championship tier, remaining eligible to win the tournament. The third place teams advanced to Consolation 1, the fourth place teams to Consolation 2, the fifth place teams to Consolation 3, and the sixth place teams to Consolation 4. Each consolation pool played a round robin in rounds 6-10.

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 place teams advancing to the same pool. This resulted in two parallel pools consisting of the first and second place teams from three of the six pools. Each of these pools played a crossover playoff, with games in rounds 6-9 and one preliminary game carrying over.

After round 9, North Kansas City, St. Joseph Central, College Heights Christian, and Hallsville advanced to the superplayoffs, while the remaining championship tier teams played round 10 placement games. After round 11, undefeated College Heights was declared the champion outright, as the other three superplayoff teams were tied with two losses each. To break the tie, Central defeated Hallsville 170-75 in a half game, awarding Hallsville fourth place, then North Kansas City won the second place half game 200-90. As the only small school eligible team to reach the superplayoffs, Hallsville was the small school champion for the third consecutive year.

On the strength of their performances, the top nine teams (College Heights Christian, North Kansas City, St. Joseph Central, Hallsville, Thayer, Kickapoo, Washington, Helias Catholic A, and Calvary Lutheran A) have qualified for the PACE National Scholastic Championship, which will be held June 6-7 at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare in the suburbs of Chicago. 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 incredible support of our talented moderators, scorekeepers, and statisticians. We are so thankful for each and every one of our amazing staff volunteers who donated their time and energy on Saturday: Kadence, Hunter, Harrison, Luke, and Zachary from Hallsville; Aadyn from College Heights; Jessi and Tyler from Houston; Selena Allen, Cris Cristea, Ganon Evans, Sheryl Evans, Brett Kelley, Steven McClary, Michael Menkhus, Caden Stone, Felix Wang, and April Wickham; coaches Scott Allen, Jackie Cleveland, David Dennis, Michael Flandermeyer, Ginger Luetkemeyer, Josh Malecki, Levi Maxwell, Angie Odom, Jason Pounds, and Tara Winn; and fellow MOQBA members Jacob Billingsley, Audrey Brandon, Jon Deering, Stephanie Hull, Jason Loy, Lisa McClary, Sean Phillips, Kevin Stockman, and Shelley Swoyer. Special thanks to Kyle Hill, Jacob O'Rourke, and Alex Smith for their invaluable help in the control rooms, and to Kyle, Stephanie, Jacob, and Alex for assisting with additional tasks before and after the tournament. Because of all of these amazing people, we were actually overstaffed, which is no easy feat for a tournament of this size. Thanks to coaches Mike Kopec and Jean Miller for also being available to moderate.

In addition, we are immensely thankful for the unmatched support we always receive from Columbia College to help our events run smoothly. We are always amazed by the incredible amount of effort that Kerri Coley and the rest of the Columbia College team put into making each tournament we host on their campus a great pleasure to run.

Thanks to everybody in attendance for helping to make this the largest and most successful Fall Championship to date! We sincerely hope that everyone had as great of an experience as we had directing the tournament. 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 thirteenth annual NAQT Missouri Qualifier on February 29. Registration opens on Wednesday, December 4 at 6:00 AM.

Best of luck to each of your teams as they compete the rest of the season, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Jeffrey Hill and Matt Chadbourne
Co-Directors, 2019 MOQBA Fall Championship