Good evening all!

Saturday was our regular season finale, hosted for the first time by our friends at South, and it was a great day! Thank you to all the hard work they put in. I also want to give a special shout out to my wife, who helped shoulder some of the prep work leading up to the tournament while I was a) down with a horrible stomach virus (0/10, do not recommend), and b) handling Town Moderator duties for election day on the 11th. So thank you, Sara!

Ten schools came to play on Saturday, and boy howdy did they come to play. Three teams went 8-2, South, BG and Oyster River. South previously qualified for the tournament so we looked at BG and Oyster River, and BG had won their head-to-head match, and therefore held the tiebreaker. So they got the plaque and took the final qualifying spot for the State Finals. The BG j/v team also went 10-0 on the day, so congrats to them!

Here’s how the rest of the day looked: 

The season standings brought us our final three at-large qualifiers for the state tournament, these are Salem, Kingswood and ASD. And the award for best j/v performance of the year went to Merrimack! Congratulations to all!

Finals teams, you’ll be getting a separate email from me shortly about scheduling. As for the rest, it’s been another great season. Thank you all so much for all the work you do for quiz bowl in NH. I look forward to many more years to come!

Good morning and Happy Holidays everyone!

Thanks to all of you who came and visited me at home this Saturday. We had ten schools, and twenty teams in total, so it was a busy morning! I hope everyone had a good time!

I know we have a lot on our plates right now, so I’ll keep straight to the point this morning. Hanover went 10-0, but as they alre

ady qualified for the state finals earlier this season, the qualifying plaque went to South with a 9-1 record! Congratulations! The J/V bracket was topped by Salem, who went 10-0 and has me very excited for next year! 

Here are the full results:  

And the current standings: 

I hope everyone has a great holiday season! Good luck on Granite State Challenge to those who are participating, and we’ll see you all in Mascoma on February 1, 2025!

Good evening all!

We had a great day in Lisbon on Saturday, despite the weather that some of us experienced on the drive north! Franconia Notch was quite the Winter Wonderland! Fortunately, we all arrived safely and departed safely.

Here’s a message from Carlene: 

HI,

First, thanks for coming up to Lisbon, despite the iffy weather. And most of all, thanks for the food donations from the participating teams– it truly warms my heart. I hope we can continue doing that at other tournaments, as well– hunger and food insecurity is a common problem and we can all do our part. 

Have a good holiday season. Stay tuned for news about a for-fun invitational in March to be hosted at Lisbon… a “cabin fever reliever” type of thing! 

Take care,

Carlene

Ten teams played on Saturday, and since we had a small turnout, we all played in one bracket, falling back on old traditions, where the team with the most wins counted toward your varsity score. (With the exception of Plymouth, who, having already qualified, and signing up specifically for the j/v tournament, their points went for their season j/v points total). 

Hanover ruled the day, in the words of one student I overheard in the hall, they ‘cooked’. And they went 10-0, took home the plaque and will have a berth at the state tournament in the Spring. On the J/V side, the Salem B team went 5-5, and were the top J/V team of the day. 

Here are the full results and the overall standings after two tournaments.

Our next tournament is December 14th, at Salem High, my homepatch. Since it’s going to come very quickly after Thanksgiving, I’m including the sign up link for the tournament today. Also, please consider bringing a Middle School group if you have one. We’re hoping to have some middle school participation and those programs will play in their own group during the high school tournament, if we get enough sign ups! 

Have a great holiday, and see you soon!

BWC

So last year I did a terrible job updating the website, and this year, I will not make that mistake. All the pages have been updated, and we should be good to go! If you have any questions, let me know!

We held our first tournament of the year on Saturday, and here is the recap: We had a lovely day Saturday travelling to Plymouth for our first tournament of the season. It was a great turnout, with 10 teams competing in the varsity bracket! 

Before I cover off the results, let me highlight a couple of upcoming events. First, GHOST next weekend in Hanover. For more information, contact Murph! Also, the Plymouth NAQT event is coming up as well, so please reach out to Troy or Jay for more details on that, I’m sure they’d love to hear from you!

Lastly, our next tournament will be November 23, at Lisbon, stay tuned for more info coming soon!

For our tournament this past weekend, the host team from Plymouth went 10-0 and took home our first plaque of the year, and secured an automatic berth in the state finals. Congrats! On the j/v side of the bracket, the group from Merrimack also went 10-0 and took home the big bag of sour patch kids. Here are the full results and standings after our first tournament:

We look forward to seeing you all again soon! Have a great week everyone!

And just like that, the 2022-2023 Quiz Bowl Season came to an end on Sunday afternoon! It doesn’t quite seem possible, does it? Where does the time go?

Regardless, it was a fine afternoon for a tournament. I especially want to thank our host, Jon Canon and the staff at Bow High who opened their doors to us. Hopefully this will help encourage them to field a team someday! It was also great to have Jon as a reader for the day, I know that kids appreciated it!

There were a lot of great matches today, several decided by only a point or two, or even in a tiebreak. But ultimately it was Hanover that brought home the banner, with a 6-1 record on the day. Congratulations to Murph and his crew!

Here’s the rest of the results:

It was a great season, thank you for all your support.

I’m still hoping to pull off an introductory tournament sometime in May, please stay tuned!

Good evening everyone!

Well, the weather we were worried about went south of us, and we ended up having a beautiful day to drive up north and spend a day in the mountains! Thanks to Carlene and her crew for rolling out the welcome wagon for us for the first time in SIX YEARS. It was great to see her again!

This was our final regular season tournament, and there was still lots to be decided aside from our final AQ slot for the state tournament. Two of the three at-large spots were up for grabs at the start of the day, so we would get some clarity today. 

Merrimack had a good day, going 9-1 (and they split their varsity team for me to make the grid even at 10, MerriJack, just Captain Jack from Merrimack, went 6-4 all by himself!) But they already had an AQ for the State Finals, so the bid went to Plymouth at 8-2 (tied with Hanover, also already AQ’d). On the J/V side, Merrimack J/V couldn’t be caught for best J/V of the year, but added to their total with 8 more wins, finishing the year at 35 overall.

The at-large race came down to Trinity, which started the day with 14, and the first slot essentially locked up, Salem, which had 5 to open the day, Fall Mountain with 3, and John Stark with 2. Trinity tacked on three wins, bringing them to 17, and made things official. Fall Mtn. gave a good performance with 7, and finished the season with 10 wins, good for the second at large spot, and then Salem picked up three, which was just good enough for them to finish the season with 8, and outpace John Stark, which had four wins today, and finished out the year with 6 overall, just on the outside looking in. 

Here are all the final results:

State finals are still TBA, because I’m playing phone/email tag with the folks in Concord. I will be following up this week to try and nail that down, so qualified teams, please stay tuned!

I am also hoping to have a middle school/ninth grade tournament in May, with John Stark as a potential host, but we need to nail down some dates, so stay tuned on that.

For everyone else, it was a great season. I look forward to next year with all y’all. I’ve got some new ideas I want to kick around, perhaps exploring some new options for tournaments, checking on a new question provider, and on the backside, I’m contemplating a major update to our website that has the potential to make my life much easier. (That’s a summer project!) 

Talk to you all soon! 

Good morning!

Despite the additional confusion by the competing event, we had a successful tournament on Saturday. I want to thank all of you who came down to visit with us! We had a great time having you.

Our next and FINAL regular season tournament of the year will be at Lisbon on March 11th, 2023. I will probably be sending registration info for that tournament before the end of February because the Winter Break will disrupt folks’ schedules, and I want everyone to have plenty of notice. Looking forward to visiting up North for the first time in a long time!

On to the results! St. Thomas had an excellent morning, going 8-2 overall and winning the tournament outright, and claiming the fourth slot at the State Tourney. Trinity J/V had a strong showing as well, taking an 8-2 record in the J/V bracket. Congrats to all. Full results are here:

And the current overall standings:

A wide open race for at-large slots shaping up going into our final tournament of the year. 

I will be nailing down a date for the state finals very soon, so stay tuned. Also hoping to hold a j/v-middle school exhibition tournament some time after the state tourney, so keep that in mind as well. If you are interested in hosting for the 2023-2024 season, start thinking now! I want to try and nail down those dates and locations before we all go home in June!

Thanks everyone!

Good evening all!

It was an incredible day on Saturday! Weather aside, and those folks who found themselves buried, I am sorry you were unable to make it, it was so great to see so many new faces at Quiz Bowl. We had 18 teams total, and that number would have been even higher if it hadn’t been for the storm. Easily our largest post-pandemic turnout…quiz bowl is alive and thriving in NH again. 

The folks at Merrimack always put on a great show, and they off course did not disappoint! There were snacks and so many Merrimack alumni back to quizmaster for us, it was great, all the new coaches could spend the day with their teams instead of having to read.

So, on to the important stuff. Merrimack’s varsity team had their way with everyone on Saturday, but since they’re already in the state tournament, we jumped down to the next level. St. Thomas and Nashua South, both newcomers (St. Thomas for the first time ever, I think (at least since I’ve been involved), and South has been in the past but not recently) finished at 8-2. But South held the tiebreaker over St. Thomas, and so punched their ticket to the state finals, congrats South!  On the J/V side, Merrimack E (the Merrimack J/V teams were oddly designated, and that’s on me and some of my organizational choices in the run up to the tournament, sorry) went 10-0, so congrats to them!

Here are the full results: 

and the standings:

So, our next tournament will be at the end of January/early February. I’m actually thinking that if GSC gets their tapings in with no weather delays, we might try for the last weekend in January, but we’ll check back in on that after the new year.

I’ve been asked about an online tournament, perhaps as well. We could conceivably do both, before heading off to Libson in March. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, happy holidays and happy New Year everyone! It’s been a great 2022, and hopefully quiz bowl continues growing into 2023! 

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!