<p>Hindoo, here's some more detail:</p>
<p>A team of four Carleton freshmen proved themselves the best novice collegiate team in the nation--indeed, on the continent--by winning the "Division 2 (novice teams)" title at quizbowl's NAQT Intercollegiate Championship Tournament this past weekend in St. Louis. Carleton's super-frosh are Austin Bell, of Mercer Island, Washington; Michael Servis, of East Lansing, Michigan; Tom Sullivan, of St. Paul, Minnesota; and Andreas Stoehr, of Mound, Minnesota. (Note: Servis left to play in this tournament some 14 hours after taking the mound at the Metrodome as Carleton's starting pitcher in a varsity baseball game versus Augsburg. Such are the wonders of the small liberal arts college.)</p>
<p>Carleton reached the championship finals with a 12-1 record over the two-day tournament, giving them a one game advantage over a surprising University of Western Ontario team they had defeated 325-140 in an earlier match. Thus Carleton needed to win only one of two games to take the title; Western Ontario would need to win twice. The Carleton team got off to a quick start, taking a 130 to 50 lead, but Western Ontario roared back to score the next 105 points, and held on to take the first game 245-170. But in the decisive Game 2 of the final Carleton left nothing to chance, taking a 180-15 lead into halftime, and ending with a 310-170 victory.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in Division 1, where Carleton's top team entered as defending undergraduate national champions, the foursome of seniors Trevor Burnham and Richard Leavelle, and juniors Ted Kuhn and Garrett Ryan finished 6th in the undergraduate competition, and 15th for the overall title. The same Harvard team that Carleton had beaten in the 2007 final won the undergraduate title this year, with Dartmouth second and the University of Minnesota third. Ryan, however, shone as the intercollegiate championship's top undergraduate individual scorer, and the #4 scorer overall, behind three graybeard graduate students. Carleton's Division 1 wins included victories over Oklahoma, UCLA, Dartmouth, Florida, Florida State, and Virginia Commonwealth. They dropped a thriller to Williams 190-185, that would have moved them up in the standings had it gone the other way.</p>
<p>Sixty-four teams qualified for the intercollegiate championships--32 each in Divisions 1 and 2--with outstanding performances at sectional championships in February, and Carleton was one of only four schools to qualify three teams. (The others were Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford.) Carleton's third team, sophomores Chris Burke, Emily Kawaler, and Nathaniel Snell, plus freshman Marc Boyce, finished tied for 14th in Division 2. Carleton is one of only three schools--the others are the University of Chicago and University of Florida--to have placed a team in the Division 1 field all twelve years this tournament has been held.</p>
<p>Carleton's Division 2 champions began their title march by going 7-0 in their preliminary bracket, humbling in succession Brandeis, Tulsa, Swarthmore, South Georgia, Lawrence, Valencia, and--this was exciting--Canada's Carleton University. (Carleton Archivist and Quiz Team Coach Eric Hillemann says that as far as he knows this may have been the first competition of any sort between Carleton College and Carleton University. It was suggested that the loser be required to change their school's name, which had coach Hillemann worried about how he was going to break the news to President Oden if our guys lost, but the contest was never in doubt, with the College defeating the University 335-35.) Carleton then started the playoff rounds with a loss to Cornell University, 310-235. This was the first game Bell, Servis, Sullivan, and Stoehr had ever lost while playing together, a streak that began last fall when this foursome won Carleton's campus intramural tournament. (Teams that lost to them in the campus tournament may take solace from the news that this was in fact the best novice team on the continent this year...) Carleton recovered by squeaking out a close 235-220 win in their next match, a game decided only by Carleton's beating MIT on the last tossup, to which the answer was ... calculus! (Take that, institute of technology...) Carleton then defeated Princeton, Dartmouth, Western Ontario, and Truman State to reach the final.</p>
<p>After the victory, the entire 17-person Carleton contingent enjoyed a celebratory feast at Landry's Seafood House in downtown St. Louis. Yum.</p>