The other side of the table

Before I got into my TRASHionals roundup, I first have to note the passing of David Halberstam, one of my favorite authors -- although surprisingly the first thing I read by him was not any of the sporting books, but The Fifties, followed by much of his '60s-'70s history works for a variety of my classes. He will be sorely missed.

Now, on to the weekend, which was my first TRASHionals as a player after seven iterations writing/editing/administrating the tournament. I was both thrilled and slightly disappointed with a fourth-place finish, but in a field as loaded as this one was, I'll take whatever I can get. Besides, our team did hand the eventual champions their only loss of the weekend (congrats to Anne, Mike, Joe and Craig for winning back the belt).

Karma seemed to bite me briefly in the tournament as after I moved away from the South, I ended up losing to two squads full of players I faced regularly at Charlie's UTC tournaments. In fact, after losing that second game (in a row after winning the first seven straight), I thought we didn't even make the top playoff bracket before a surprising upset in the same round got us in there. Of course, we then lose our first playoff round match to the defending champs, which would eventually doom our chances at making the finals despite sweeping the rest of our matches. I'd like to say the bullpen failed us (much like the Yankees this past weekend), as we had leads going into question 16 of all three losses (including two leads of at least 105 points) before falling.

But as with many of the tournaments I attend, it's as much the people as it is the competition. And a big shindig like this was going to draw in lots of people I usually just see once or twice a year. Having a bunch of DC-based people coming out of the woodwork was a nice touch.

But to my surprise, I got to meet a bunch of Jeopardy-related people (including two past TOC winners -- too bad Mark Dawson is now in L.A. to make it three at once) I didn't realize were going to be at the tournament until the last second. That was a thrill matching up even more screen names to real people (in many cases, I'd already matched up faces thanks to their appearances on the show). I was also thrilled to meet the guy who runs Coverville, and even got to square off with him in my teammate Jeremy's audio theme round -- although the entire field got steamrolled by a guy from NYU. Finishing second was as much a badge of honor.

The tournament logistics were solid, and I'd like to think it's due in large part to the blueprint of the event I've tweaked over time. Maryland was a great host, and it helped to finally have good weather to help with the mood (even if we were inside for much of the two days). It was also nice to make a reasonably short drive to the tournament instead of flying, but that's just me -- I still had to make airport runs to get the rest of my teammates.

The questions were pretty good, but like any event, there's room for improvement. Some of the sports questions did border on the overly obscure (although not on par with the Littlejohn Flowers one at Trashmasters a few years back), and there was a bit of an age skew in some places -- although I was counting on my teammate Mark, who's two years younger than me, to pick up a lot of the older movies and TV questions. However, I'd like to think the addition of more video games and comic books helped to balance things out. In the end, younger players rightfully will have a beef over some of the older-skewing questions, while older players rightfully will have their issues over the video games and possibly the younger music, etc. It's a tough balance to suit everyone, especially if this event expands to draw in more than just people in college or a byproduct of the college quizbowl circuit.

It was great to play once again with Brian, Jeremy and Mark, as I think we have a good team dynamic where I'm not totally expected to carry the team but can if need be, and that if there's a buzzer race, it's probably going to be with someone on my side. In the end, it was another good -- if at times exhausting -- weekend, and I hope to do it again.