• High School
• MOQBA Fall Championship
• 2022

2022 MOQBA Fall Championship Recap

34 teams from a tournament record 30 schools attended the seventh MOQBA Fall Championship at Columbia College on December 10, 2022.

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

The top two teams in each pool advanced to the championship tier, remaining eligible to win the tournament. The third place teams advanced to Consolation 1 and the fourth place teams advanced to Consolation 2. The top five fifth place teams by points per game advanced to Consolation 3, while the remaining teams advanced 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, Fair Grove, Parkway West, Ladue A, and Mexico advanced to the superplayoffs, while the remaining championship tier teams played round 10 placement games. Fair Grove and Ladue A were the only remaining undefeated teams entering their scheduled round 11 match, effectively beginning a best of three final. Ladue won the first game 355-320 to take the advantage in the final, while Fair Grove won the second game 380-310 to force a third game. Fair Grove won the third game 375-280 to become the first small school champion to also win the overall MOQBA Fall Championship title! In round 11, Mexico defeated Parkway West 385-145 in what was effectively the third place game.

On the strength of their performances, the top nine teams (Fair Grove, Ladue A, Mexico, Parkway West, Washington, St. Joseph Central A, Sullivan, Houston, and College Heights Christian) have qualified for the PACE National Scholastic Championship, which is scheduled for June 10-11 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 would not have been possible without the unwavering support of our exceptional moderators, scorekeepers, and statisticians. We are so thankful for all of our amazing staff volunteers who donated their time and energy on Saturday: Parker from Calvary Lutheran; Addison from Fair Grove; David and Jaden from Houston; Christine from Rock Bridge; Kenny from Sullivan; Sam Bailey, Garrett Blum, Bob Case, Gabe Forrest, Abigail Gilmartin, Matt Hudson, and Sharon Lorinskas; coaches Kathy Brandon, Seth Brummond, Jeff Carter, David Dennis, Logan Durk, Jason Loy, Ginger Luetkemeyer, Josh Malecki, Jean Miller, Jason Pounds, Dale Schenewerk, Patrick Troy, Adam Vandiver, Scott Walker, and Tara Winn; and fellow MOQBA members Audrey Brandon, Alex Dzurick, Ganon Evans, Sean Phillips, Max Ryle, and Kevin Stockman. Special thanks to Kyle Hill for his continued dedication to enhancing the HILLSheets scorekeeping system; Michael Menkhus for additional assistance the morning of the tournament; and Jacob O'Rourke for entering the stats into YellowFruit, ordering the awards, and handling payments.

Additional thanks go to Tolton Catholic coach Scott Henderson for offering to staff before we dropped to 34 teams; Bayless High School for splitting into two teams to allow all teams to remain active playing questions in all ten rounds, avoiding a suboptimal 33 team format; Glasgow High School in Kentucky for the Scottie question set; and Fair Grove High School and Parkway South High School for using different question sets for their tournaments to accommodate our need to use the Scottie for this thirteen round tournament.

In addition, we continue to be amazed by the incredible support we always receive from Columbia College. The assistance of Amy Grus, Kristen Neeley, Teri Dishman, the Technology Services team, Campus Safety, and the rest of the Columbia College team is critical to ensuring these tournaments run as smoothly as they do. We can't wait to return again in March!

Thanks to everybody in attendance for making this another successful Fall Championship! 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 fifteenth NAQT Missouri Qualifier on March 4. Registration opens on Wednesday, December 14 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, 2022 MOQBA Fall Championship