Good afternoon all!

On Saturday, we gathered to usher in a new year of Quiz Bowl for New Hampshire! It was a beautiful, if long, drive out to Fall Mountain, and the hospitality was amazing. Thank you to Nick and his crew for being such gracious hosts!

Six schools participated, with 8 teams overall. Merrimack went 9-1 on the day, and took the first qualifying spot for the State Tournament in April. Merrimack J/V had a strong day as well, going 5-5 against mostly varsity opponents. 

Here are the rest of the scores: 

And the standings:

Stay tuned for announcements about GHOST and an October tournament soon. We should have most of the rest of the year’s schedule (beyond October) very soon, so watch for that (still looking for someone to host in February, in case anyone is interested!) 

Have a great day!

Good morning everyone!

Eight teams gathered on Sunday afternoon at Trinity High School to complete the 2021-2022 NHBQL Season. Despite the warmth and humidity, we made it through!

I want to thank everyone for helping to make this season a success, and I hope we’ll see you all again next year! Stay tuned for info regarding scheduling and hosting for next season, coaches! We need to get on that soon!

Anyway, it was quite a remarkable day, and the tournament and the season came down to a single match in the sixth round of play, where Merrimack and Hanover went to a tiebreak. Merrimack came away with the win, and went on to win their final match of the day for a 7-0 record, and unseated the 4 year defending champions Hanover. Congratulations to Sara and her crew!

Here’s how the rest broke down. And I gotta say, from a mathematical symmetry standpoint, these are interesting results. 

It’s been a great season, and again, thank you all for helping out, either by hosting, or just being there for your team. It’s been a rough couple of years for Quiz Bowl, just like all extracurriculars, but hopefully things are looking up! Have a good summer everyone! 

Good evening everyone!

Yesterday we had a great day at Oyster River for our final regular season tournament! Thanks to John and his crew for hosting us! It had been a while since we’ve been to that area of the state, and it was nice drive. Spring is almost upon us!

Our last tournament produced some unintentional drama, which I will elaborate on in a moment, but first, Fall Mt. went 9-1 and grabbed the last AQ slot for the state tournament! Our field is set for the finals! Joining the five AQ teams will be at-large qualifiers Pinkerton, Kingswood, and Trinity! I will be sending out an email about the State Finals to those coaches involved tomorrow AM!

The drama was on the J/V side, and I made a small mistake here. Plymouth J/V took the crown for the day at 7-3, which gave them 27 wins on the season. On Saturday, I announced they had won the J/V team of the Year crown outright by 1 over Merrimack (26) But I had forgotten that one of Merrimack’s J/V teams was playing up in the Varsity Bracket (to even the numbers, since we had 9 schools), and they had one more win than the Merrimack B team in the J/V grid, so Plymouth and Merrimack actually TIED at 27 wins. It’s too late now to go back and play a tiebreak, so I hereby declare that the teams will share the crown, and each will receive a trophy this year. Congrats to both teams!

Anyway, here are the full results and the final regular season standings:

It’s been a good year to get back to in person quiz bowl! I hope we will have even more teams next fall. We are looking to do an online exhibition sometime in May on an afternoon, so stay tuned on that. And stay tuned for more info on State Finals!

Good morning and Happy Monday!

It was a great day Saturday at John Stark! Thanks very much to them for hosting us! We look forward to heading back there soon.

Our last regular season qualifier will be held on April 16th, at Oyster River High School, so you can start planning. State finals will follow in the first full weekend of May (7 or 8), exact date and location TBA. Stay tuned!

So on to the results. Because we had uneven numbers all around on Saturday, we played all in one bracket to make life easier on the scheduling. Plymouth and Pinkerton both finished with 8-2 records, but Plymouth won their head to head matchup, giving them the tournament win this weekend. Congrats to Plymouth!

On the j/v side, the Plymouth j/v team went 5-5, notching Plymouth’s 2nd win of the day. 

Here’s the rest of the scores;

And here are the current standings:

Look forward to seeing you all at Oyster River!

Good morning everyone and Happy Monday!

On Saturday, we gathered in Salem for our third tournament of the year. I hope everyone had a good time! I know the timing was rough for folks who were on vaca this week, but we needed to squeeze it in. Our next date will be March 26th, so mark your calendars. Host is still in negotiations, but we’re looking at possibly heading to John Stark. I’ll keep you posted.

On to the results! Merrimack had a hot hand coming in, and took it to a 9-1 record to claim the third AQ slot for the state finals. Plymouth J/V went 7-3 on the day to take J/V honors for the tournament, though special shout out to Merrimack J/V, which played up in the varsity bracket to help even things out, and went 6-4, including handing their own varsity team their only loss!

Here’s the rest of the stats:

And the current standings:

Have a great Feb Break, and see you in March!

Hi everyone!

It was a rainy day in Merrimack, and slippery in some places I gather. We were sorry to have missed the folks from John Stark, but we 110% approve of being safe! We hope that the weather will be better in February….(Yeah, I know how that sounds…)

In any case, 5 varsity and 3 j/v teams gathered at MHS for our tournament and a good time was had by all. Sara and her folks did a fabulous job getting things set, and they even had a full complement of readers, so nobody had to get drafted in to read! Many, many thanks! 

We welcomed Trinity for the first time in quite some time to NHQBL, and we hope they will join us for many tournaments to come! 

Onto the results! It was a very good day for Salem, as the team rolled up 10 wins to take the bid to the state tournament without dropping a match! (I’m super proud of them). On the J/V side, Merrimack j/v ran up a 6-4 record. Here are the rest of the results:

And the standings:

I hope everyone has a great holiday and a happy new year! We are on hiatus until after GSC finishes taping in January, but I will be emailing soon to try and set the remainder of our schedule for the season, so watch your email boxes! 

See you in 2022! (hey, that rhymes!) 

Hello everyone!

Today was a significant milestone for us! Today we held our first in-person tournament since March 2020, when we gathered at Kingswood. I remember standing there, talking with Murph and several others about whether or not we would need to alter our schedule (we had another tournament coming up at the end of the month), and all of us kind of saying…”well…maybe? But probably not.” How wrong we were.

Anyway, it was a beautiful drive to Plymouth. (Not the seacoast….sorry. You had to be there…) And it was great to see so many of you in person! We had six varsity teams, and four J/V teams. Want to give a special shoutout to Michele from John Stark for restarting that program! It was great to have them!

Hanover won the day for varsity, going 9-1, and taking home the first plaque of the year! Congrats to Murph and the gang! Merrimack J/V also went 9-1, getting the J/V race off to a good start. Full results below:

In terms of upcoming events, GHOST is next weekend at Hanover! Contact Murph directly if you plan to attend. Sara and I won’t be there, we have kid commitments of our own for Halloween, but I hope everyone has a blast. Our next qualifier is December 11th at Merrimack, and I’ll sent out info closer to the date. Good luck if you’re taking the GSC qualifying test in November!

Hello!

We are currently in the process of creating our schedule for 2021-2022. Due to the ongoing pandemic situation, our schedule is subject to change at short notice. We are hoping to secure four in-person tournaments this year, and one online virtual tournament. Crossing all our fingers! So far, we have the following dates confirmed.

October 23, 2021: At Plymouth

December 11, 2021: At Merrimack

Further dates and locations to be announced. 

We look forward to seeing everyone soon!

Good afternoon everyone!

We completed out 2020-2021 Season on Saturday morning finishing out what I hope will be our only all-virtual season. We are kicking around the idea that we may retain at least 1 virtual tournament next year, to assist those teams who may have travel difficulties. Coaches will be discussing this in the coming weeks.

We held our typical 7 round final, and while we had a couple of technical snafus (my fault, sorry!) it mostly went off without a hitch.

Hanover carried the day with a perfect 7-0 record, which means that this year’s championship banner is headed for Lebanon Street. Congratulations to Murph and his squad for a great season, I’ll be mailing that out this week sometime.

We had one substitution, with PCA not being able to participate on Saturday, Coe-Brown stepped up and participated in our state tournament for the first time. There was also a communications issue, and Profile did not play on Saturday morning. But here are the rest of the result:

Thank you again to everyone who made this season possible. Thank you to the coaches for your flexibility, thank you to the students for their patience. I will be doing the end of the year paperwork processing (paying the bills, preparing the annual report) in the next week or so, and then I’ll start sending out emails to plan for next season. 

Have a great summer!

Good morning everyone!

Our final regular season event was held on Saturday morning. We had 11 teams, (6 varsity, 5 j/v.) We played a 12 team bracket with a bye, one team volunteering to play without (thanks to Merrimack varsity! Since they were already qualified their wins/loss record was moot). 

Salem and Pinkerton were the only teams playing that hadn’t yet qualified for the state tournament outright, and Pinkerton came away with that one win edge, to take the last automatic qualifying spot for next Saturday. 
Here are all the results. The bye counted as a win, for the purposes of making the accounting come out even.

And the final overall standings:

Merrimack gets the honors this year for best J/V performance of the year. I will be getting them their trophy as soon as practicable, as well as sending the last plaque up to Derry!

State Finals this Saturday will feature BG, Plymouth, Hanover, Merrimack, Pinkerton, Salem, PCA and Profile! Coaches, info will follow shortly!

Thanks to all who made this season as success! I am SO looking forward to having in person quiz bowl next fall! Please watch your email for end of season follow ups and for scheduling for next year, sometime before the end of the school year! Best of luck to everyone and talk to you soon!