Schedule - Charter Academic Bowl

2004-05 Schedule

October
- 30 - The team travels to the Long Island Fall Tournament at Northport HS (cohosted by Kellenberg). Any day in which 3 teams make the playoffs is a good day. Abhi, Arun, Austin, and Terry finish 5th out of 32 teams. Claire, Mike, Reeti, and Roderick finish 9th. Craig, Greg, John, and Sean also make the octo-finals finishing 15th. Both of the remaining teams finish with 3 wins apiece. That meant Charter's lowest team (E) was still ahead of 3/8 of the field. Since Mr. Tressler watched both the B and A teams lose a playoff round, he is banned from future viewings.
November
- 13 - Charter hosts Fifth Delaware Fall Open. Richard Montgomery swept the tournament, winning both the Varsity and JV brackets. Charter JV teams finish 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.
- 20 - The team travels to Princeton. Charter sends five teams, who collectively go 32-21. Charter A and B each had eight wins, and we think Charter A should have been the 16 seed, but Princeton miscalculated records. This wouldn't have happened without the brave efforts of our seniors on Charter C, who denied State College B a win in the last round and sent them home.
  
  Missing the playoffs wasn't necessarily a bad thing: some teams in the playoffs got home well after midnight.
January 2005
- 22 - The Middle School Charter Challenge gets snowed out.
- 29 - The team travels to Siesta Bowl at Howard (Ellicott City, Maryland). Channeling memories of last year's Blue Hen, Charter "E" (Abhi, Mi, Raja, Roderick) makes it to the octo-finals. The other teams all had 3-3 or 2-4 records.
February
- 5 - Our TV team (Abhi, Arun, Austin, Greg, Terry) wins their preliminary bracket in the Comcast tournament. The road to the Final Four:
  - Round 1 versus Ursuline: 235-210
  - Round 2 versus Indian River: 360-45
  - Round 3 was a bye since neither Delmar nor Dickinson showed up
  - Winner's Bracket final versus Archmere: 355-120
  - Championship versus Archmere: 365-240
  It should be noted that Ursuline and Archmere (Match 2) led in their matches for significant portions of the round. We had to come from behind in the "stump the experts" round to win. Sanford was third and Mount Pleasant was fourth in our part of the bracket.
- 19 - For the third consecutive year, we win the Comcast Academic Challenge. The matches in the state championship:
  - Winner's bracket semis versus A.I. duPont: 320-260
  - Winner's bracker final versus Salesianum: 320-250
  - Championship versus Salesianum: 240-150 (in 1 match)
  In one of those "the stars are aligned for this" moments, in the A.I. round, the first four tossups were answered by (in order) Terry, Arun, Austin, and Abhi.
  
  Greg, Arun, and Austin now join Beryl and Jason as team members who have won twice. The team has won 18 (!) consecutive matches in the Comcast tournament over the past three years.
March
- 19 - University of Delaware's Blue Hen. Since this tournament is the bane of our existence, we'll mention only the positive: Charter had four teams make the quarterfinals, with final standings of 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 8th. This is the third year in a row that Charter A and B have been in the quarters, and the second year that the C team made it.
April
- 16 - No storm is going to hold us back. Charter Challenge I happens, with teams from seven schools in attendance. Newark Charter sweeps the day, and a H.B. duPont team (containing siblings of our members) finishes fourth.
Nationals
- May 27-31: The team travels back to New Orleans. (This was three months before hurricane Katrina devastated the city.) The Sheraton Hotel worked out very nice, and we played poker often enough for Abhi to make a straight flush. Oh, and we went to the tournament. We either went 4-2 or 3-3 in the prelims, depening on the interpretation of "energy levels" as applying to electron orbitals. Granted a spot in the playoffs, we were knocked out in the round of 16. Though the wins weren't easy to come by, the strength of the team is reflected in the point totals: we were 6th out of 114 in terms of points scored.
- June 3-5: NAQT Nationals in Chicago was a lot of fun. On Friday, team members visited the Science Musuem, the University of Chicago, and Chinatown. On Saturday, we went 6-4, earning us the 19 seed out of 39 playoff teams. On Sunday, we won two more rounds, including one against past national champion St. John's (TX). Overall the team finished tied for 13th. We went all the way to Chicago to get eliminted by Richard Montgomery A. The team also had the opportunity of having their picture taken with Jeopardy! megachamp Ken Jennings.
  
  And during the poker game Abhi outdid himself, this time he made a royal flush.