2003 National Champions (Again!!!)
Fresh off winning its first NAQT ICT (community college national championship), Valencia began its 2002-2003 campaign at a new tournament, the Seaside Academic Tournament, held at Gulf Coast Community College in October. Valencia sent two teams, and the Red team fell in the semi-finals to Abraham Baldwin (ABAC), a Georgia college. Nonetheless, Amy Harvey was the third-highest scorer in the tournament, John Gorman was 10th, and a good time was had by all.
Next up was the usual November gauntlet of the ACF Fall tournament, our own Valencia Fall Invitational, and the USF Novice. The ACF Fall is open to students of all levels, including graduate students, but they did separate into a Division I (open to all levels) and Division II (undergrad only). Valencia finished second in Division II to FSU, and Amy Harvey again scored mightily, finishing second among Div. II players.
Twenty-eight teams then converged on Valencia’s West Campus for the seventh Valencia Fall Invitational, informally called the “Delta Burke” tournament after Valencia’s most famous attendee. After breaking into two 14-team divisions and playing a 13-match round robin, these eight teams made the playoffs: ABAC, Bainbridge, Broward A, Central Florida A, Dalton, Okaloosa-Walton A, Valencia Red, and Valencia Gold. ABAC again did in Valencia (Gold, specifically) in the semi-finals 195-185, and Bainbridge beat Central Florida 240-175. Bainbridge then won the title by edging ABAC by 10. Elissa Caffery, playing in her first tournament after only three weeks of practice, finished as the fourth-high scorer, answering 66 toss-ups and getting only one interrupt! Amy Harvey was seventh and Angelina Fadool eighth.
At the USF Novice, Valencia’s Red team was edged in the final match by UF 220-175; Amy Harvey again was a force, finishing as the number three scorer. Valencia’s Black team also made the playoffs, but was also defeated by a UF team, darn it. Valencia’s Jim Baker, held out of fall competitions as a coaches’ decision (it was his third year and we thought we wouldn’t inflict him on newer players) played in the tournament with Chip Thomas from UNF, and they pretty much crushed everyone; though as a mixed team their results didn’t count, it was an harbinger of the spring to come.
The fall season was closed out with another new tournament, the Palm Beach CC Invitational, at which Valencia teams finished first and second. Valencia Gold (due to a miscommunication from Chris, the A team wasn’t designated as Red, which is usual), featuring Elissa Caffery and Amy Harvey (aka the Glimmer Twins) playing together, wrecked the field and finished one-two in scoring, with 60.5 and 56.8 ppg averages, respectively. Further, John Gorman of Valencia Black finished third, with 38.6, and Barbara Kahn of Valencia Red (who went 1-10!) finished fourth, with 37.7.
January was busy as usual. First up was UF’s Sunshine State Invitational, where Valencia Red avenged its second-place finish to FSU from 2002 by beating the Noles 220-210 in the Division II championship. Elissa Caffery saved the day by hitting the last toss-up, on John Singer Sargent's painting "Madame X." Amy Harvey was the number two Div. II scorer with 45.7 ppg, barely edging Elissa Caffery, who had 45 on the nose. Oseirus of FSU was fourth, but he seemed fatigued in the later rounds of the day.
Next up was the venerable Dalton Invitational at Tallahassee CC, which Valencia had never won. Well, that finally changed, as Valencia Red rampaged over a very good Bainbridge team in the final, 250-130. Amy was the number two scorer, and shocked much of the audience watching the final by answering a question on Shania Twain after only a date of birth and place in Canada had been read, showing the value of watching VH1 seven or eight hours a day. Adam Samons (aka Ermal Putnummer), playing for the Black team, was the fifth high scorer, clearly pointing out the predominance of pop culture and current events at that tournament (Trash is the staple of Adam’s quizbowl diet).
February is the month of qualifying tournaments. First, Valencia again hosted the NAQT Sectional, the qualifier for the Intercollegiate Tournament, which awards the national title for community colleges. Eighteen teams competed, with Valencia Red winning with a perfect record of 11-0, just ahead of Valencia Black, which lost only to Red, in a match that came down to the last toss-up. The teams’ make-up was a bit skewed, as the coaches wanted to create two strong teams, both of which could qualify for the ICT. Thus, Red was Jim Baker (unleashed again), Adam Samons, Jason Thorpe and Angelina Fadool, while Black was Amy Harvey, Elissa Caffery, Taz Zifos, and John Gorman. The coaches planned to put the Glimmer Twins with Baker and Zifos at the ICT to create our strongest team, but we wanted to bring as many players to Los Angeles as we could, leading to the odd team make-up. Baker was the high scorer, averaging an absurd 112.5 ppg, with Caffery second with 54.4 and Harvey fourth with 39.4. Kevin Kelley, playing in his eighth or ninth year for Valencia, was seventh with 35.6, while Gorman was eighth with 30. Kelley actually recorded what is almost certainly the worst play in Valencia quizbowl history when he achieved what will forever after be known as the “Kelley Triple”: he didn’t hit the buzzer before speaking, didn’t wait for recognition (obviously, as without a buzzer going off one can’t be recognized), and got the question wrong. Chris Borglum, who was reading, had to leave the room as soon as the match ended to keep from doing disfiguring and permanent violence to Kevin. Most important, however, both Red and Black earned trips to UCLA to compete in the ICT and defend our national title. And as Kevin’s defenders point out, he did get three powers in the same match in which his triple occurred. And remember, Kevin can befriend dogs.
The next weekend the team drove through the orange groves to South Florida CC in Avon Park, which hosted the FCCAA Regional, a qualifier for the state tournament. Here Valencia again finished first and second, though it was Valencia Black beating Red for the title. Elissa Caffery had fallen ill before the tournament, so Red missed her services, losing their best chance to answer most of the science questions, which make up 25% of state packs. Thus the team was ready for the state and national championship tournaments.
First up was the FCCAA State Tournament, held at Brevard CC. Valencia Red coasted through the tournament undefeated, despite being the lower seed from its Regional. Black lost both to Red and to Broward, thus missing out on the tournament final match. Red played Broward in the final, pulling away pretty clearly in the second half to win 620-425.
On the first weekend in April nine Valencia players and coaches Borglum, Lois McNamara, and Boris Nguyen caught a plane to LA for the ICT. Some of the team checked out the Getty Museum on Thursday night, though it was a rushed visit (we missed James Ensor’s “Entry of Christ into Brussels,” darn it), while on Friday morning another group went to the beach and checked out bookstores. Matches began Friday evening, and the Red team lost only one match, a close one to Florida, of all people (eventually the Gators finished 16th, 14 spots behind Valencia, but we didn’t beat them once all year). On Saturday things got crazy. The Red team rolled, beating teams like Stanford, Rice, Virginia and MIT. Finally, the Red team found itself playing Michigan, the odds-on favorite in Division II, down by 40 points with less than a minute to play. Jim Baker powered a toss-up on the British poet Wilfred Owen (NAQT offers 15 points for questions answered very early, more than the ten points normally given). The bonus asked the team to answer questions about a certain Russian novel, which turned out to be The Idiot, by Dostoevsky. Baker got all three parts for 30 points, giving the Matadors (that’s Valencia, by the way) a stunning five point upset at the buzzer. This led to a three-way tie between Valencia, Cal-Berkeley, and Michigan. Valencia knocked Michigan out in a half-match victory, leading to a championship match with Berkeley. Despite a furious second-half comeback, Valencia couldn’t make up the gap and lost 350-250.
Thus, not only did Valencia win the CC national title again (our friends from Bainbridge were the next highest CC team in Division II, at 19th), but we finished second overall among all Division II teams (Division II refers to teams composed of undergraduate players with three or fewer years of playing in NAQT tournaments, meaning many of the four-year school players were juniors or seniors). On Saturday night following the tournament, driving down Santa Monica Boulevard looking for a place to eat, the team bizarrely came upon an Uzbekistani restaurant, leading Jim Baker, our resident Central Asiaphile, to begin hooting like a wounded howler monkey. So the team (sans Samons, Harvey and Caffery, who wimped out by eating at Burger King) chowed down on various dishes of lamb, yogurt, and other assorted quadripedal meat animals native to the steppes near Samarkand. Later that night, Coach Borglum reasserted his alpha dog status by defeating Baker, Kelley and Samons in a swim race at the hotel pool. As always, a good time was had by all.
Only one official tournament was left: the Moon Pie Classic in Chattanooga. A team of Zifos, Harvey, Baker and Caffery found themselves trailing Emory 190-85 after 11 toss-ups, but then went on a monster 155-5 run to win 240-195. This win finished off a year in which Valencia won seven tournaments and had numerous other second- and third-place finishes. Clearly, it was our best year ever, and the 2002-2003 team set the bar nearly impossibly high for future teams.
Though the year was officially over, a small Valencia contingent decided to spend its own money to travel to Chicago for the Chicago Open, perhaps the toughest invitational tournament anywhere. Anyone can play, and the tournament regularly attracts the very best current and semi-retired players. Amy Harvey, Taz Zifos, Jim Baker, Adam Samons and Angelina Fadool made up the Valencia team, traveling with Coach Chris Borglum and team friend Raj Dhuwalia, who were teaming up themselves. The group was able to visit the Art Institute and, as usual, some bookstores. The Valencia team won only one match out of 11, but had a good time. However, Borglum and Dhuwalia, teaming with Kentucky players Kelly Mackenzie and Seth Kendall, won the tournament. In the singles tournament the next day, Harvey ended up in the top bracket, while Borglum and the others found themselves in the bottom bracket. So much for alpha dog status. Still, it was a great trip to finish out what will always be the annus mirabilis (look it up!) of Valencia Brain Bowl.