Check-in for Spring 2017

News and notes for spring 2017.

1. There won't be an Ontario Quizbowl Provincials for 2016-17. We were unable to properly schedule and book this a championship this year -- we apologize for the screw-up. For the teams disappointed, we hope you are making do with other HS quiz activities, and we promise to have some great tournaments next year.

When we have high-school quizbowl ready for 2017-18, we'll make sure the events are posted on this site, on our Twitter and Facebook, and on the general Ontario Quizbowl Facebook page.

2. Reach has completed its local leagues and has their provincial championships coming up soon. Their website and social accounts have been quiet this year, but all their circuits are active. There have also been independent Reach tournaments at Lisgar, McMaster, and possibly a few other schools.

Ben Smith has been doing some Reach coverage and compiling stats at his Reach Scores blog. He has audio recordings of games from the Lisgar tournament in February, plus scores and strength-of-schedule comparisons for four of the Ontario leagues.

3. History Bee and Bowl just held their Canadian championship in Ottawa. They'll eventually have stats up at their results page, which currently has all the stats for their local tournaments. Joe Su posted a rough list of all their medal-winners.

Gareth Thorlaksen and his UTS team won the varsity tournaments, well ahead of the top Lisgar players. Ben now says UTS is the best team in Ontario. When I saw the finals, I was really impressed with Gareth's knowledge -- he first-lined a ton of questions, especially on military and "pure history" topics. UTS also had very strong players in the middle school division.

4. The US championships are still coming up. Lisgar is the only school we know to be playing in any of those. At last ranking, they were 81st in the world, but they hit that rank without playing a full A-team for quizbowl yet.

5. There is still an active university quizbowl circuit in Canada. McGill and U of T had great finishes at the US Nationals this year. Tournaments in Canada usually draw teams from those schools plus McMaster, Waterloo, and Ottawa. There are also busy clubs at Queen's and Carleton.

(A disproportionate number of top university players are former Lisgar and UTS students.)