Palmcroft went into Summit this year with a new goal. Not only did we have five quiz teams for the first time ever, we also intended to get all five of those teams into the medal rounds. We'd been practicing since September for this one day, with the hopes that it would be for two days (Platinum round is on a separate day). When the day finally arrived my team did an amazing job in the early rounds and took 2nd in their first room and 1st in their second room and easily advanced. They were calm and collected the entire time and worked really well together. I was more than pleased with their performance.
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| Palmcroft Baptist #4 |
Sadly, at the end of the participation rounds Palmcroft only had four teams still competing. But the eliminated team's attitude was positive and they were excited to cheer everyone on and even more excited about coming back next year. Following lunch the remaining four teams dispersed to their assigned rooms for the Silver Rround. After getting my team seated (Palmcroft #4...check!) I was waiting while they called out the other teams in the room. Next thing I know they're calling for another Palmcroft team. None of the other Palmcroft teams were supposed to be assigned to that room, so I assumed they had a mix-up and were wanting one of our teams that had gone to another room. And then it hit us...they were calling our eliminated team. After a long delay with calculations and teams being called and us running around getting all the members of our eliminated team, we found out that there had been some miscalculations. A few teams had accidentally been told that they weren't still going even though they were. All five Palmcroft teams making into into the medal rounds? Check!
Two of our teams got knocked out in the Silver round but I'm incredibly proud of both of them. The one team that we thought had been eliminated got to experience the Silver round and had a great time doing so. I'm really glad that I got to see them participate in that round as it was the first time that day that my team had been in the same room as another one of our teams.
The last round of the day was the Gold round and the competition was down to 15 teams (there were other teams competing the next day, as 50% of the teams compete on one day and 50% compete the next day). It was the toughest round of Bible quizzing that I've ever seen. The teams that were in there were fierce and the buzzing was crazy fast. I was happy to finally get to see our all girls team and our all boys team competing since I hadn't been able to see them in competition yet. Although I am happy that our teams didn't have to face each other early on.
In order to make it out of the Gold round you have to take one of the top five places. The Palmcroft teams placed 5th, 6th, 11th in the gold round. The boys team took 6th place by 10 points. Wanna know which team took 5th in the Gold round? I'm proud to say I was the coach of four amazing students who earned their way into the Platinum round.
As for the Platinum Round...it was also craziness. This year they did a full set of 50 questions for Platinum which is a format that I like a lot better than the shorter, timed round that they did last year. My team answered all of the multiple choice questions correctly and buzzed in on two speed questions for 40 points each. They would have answered more, but during the second half of the round a few other teams crashed and burned and more or less ruined the rest of the speed questions by buzzing in too early. It was unfortunate that the second half of the round didn't play out better for everyone's sake, but it was a good round of competition nonetheless.
For those of you still reading at this point... my team ended up being awarded 3rd place (in the nation). They kept their cool during the crazy buzzing spree that some other teams went on and did an amazing job. I'm proud of hard they worked, I'm proud of how well they worked together, I'm proud of how well they kept their cool, and I'm proud of their attitudes throughout the entire experience
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| On the stage during the Platinum round |
And now quizzing is over for the year. What in the world am I going to do with all this free time that I now have? ;)
