Not only the football team’s playoff chances were jeopardized by Valter, when the quiz bowlers awaken the following morning to drive to Zachary for the LQBA Fall Invitational South, they do so to news that make people squirm across town:
“Myriam has left the quiz bowl team!” Pablo tells his parents before texting Audrey about the loss of the player who was hitherto the captain of the VAs’ quiz bowl team.
“Why did Myriam leave the quiz bowl team?” Pablo’s mom asks him.
Shoot. It won’t be long before this deluge of bad news related to VA puts Jennings firmly behind mathletics, unless quiz bowl or girls’ basketball can right the VAs’ ship! Pablo ruminates about the communal implications of losing both that football game and Myriam leaving the quiz bowl team.
“Her mental health has deteriorated. I won’t go into details right now, but I suspect that her gambling addiction has worsened”
“Huh?” Pablo’s mom rolls her eyes, “Myriam, a gambling addict? I knew her dad was in jail because of gambling, but she never seemed affected by gambling!”
“She always said that she was gambling in her mom’s name. More specifically, she wagers on horse races!”
He hastily gets dressed, wearing his football jersey as he always does in quiz bowl tournaments, and eats hastily, too. But this time around, he’s picked up by the coach, who also picks up other players prior to driving to Zachary. With his homework in tow, to the extent he can do it in the car.
“How are we going to win the HSNCT with Myriam gone?” Nadine laments after hearing about Myriam’s departure from the team.
“Stay strong, Nadine, and we will need to shoulder the science burden together. Myriam brought mostly science to the table, but was still able to contribute somewhat to other areas” Pablo tells her.
“Me, too, I will need to learn more about science, but because the basketball season is about to start, Pablo will need to step up to the plate!” Audrey tells him.
After Myriam announced her departure from the team in the dead of night, I emailed the teachers teaching core academic subjects to underclassmen asking for a intellectually curious student that didn’t already eat up both their Rule of Two allowances, Warren ruminates on the consequences of Myriam’s departure.
“The notice is too short, so the B-team must play with three players today. Also, because Gerard underperformed, he will stay on the B-team for now!” Warren announces to Gerard in the car, while everyone else does homework.
By the time they arrive in Zachary, everyone on the team finish their homework, with Pablo still a little in pain from last night’s game. The two kiss each other before they check in:
“Now that we’re going to play together for the rest of the season... may this be the sweetest thing of this season!” Pablo tells Audrey before the kiss.
“And may we play together at the HSNCT! It’s the first time we even play quiz bowl together even!”
“After the departure of Myriam from the team, the captaincy of the quiz bowl team shall be given to Nadine” Warren announces to the players assembled, before turning to Pablo and Audrey. “For the first time in VA quiz bowl history, we have a couple on the same squad, so don’t go around thinking that I put you together because you’re in love with each other!”
I can’t say that I feel bad for this, but perhaps she earned it by being the best VA quiz bowler at this point in time, even though I am the only player left on this squad that made it to the top-10 at the HSNCT, Audrey starts realizing that perhaps basketball has hurt her on the buzzer. Heather appears poised to get the basketball team’s captaincy even though she holds out to see if someone else in Division I could offer an actual full-ride. The worst in all that is that several scouts are coming to our season opener against Lacassine: Berkeley, Dartmouth, Tulane and W&M, to name the Division I ones.
“All right, Holy Beggar and Ballista: we might be dominant in literature and history, but I really hope that you two can jointly make up for the loss of Myriam!” Nadine sighs, before going to their first game room.
Their first game is played against the host institution, Zachary. However, it seems like not even they would even have any fan on hand as both teams get seated in alphabetical order of last names.
Sandwiched between Audrey and Lilina, Pablo grabs his buzzer as the moderator announces the teams playing in this opening round:
“This is round one of the 2030 LQBA Fall Invitational South. From East Bâton-Rouge Parish, we have Zachary, from Jefferson Davis Parish, we have Venomous Agendas A. Best of luck to both teams, and here’s tossup one: The Edict of Telipinu codifies the rules of succession to this ancient kingdom’s throne”
Even without Myriam, we can take them; I played against them at last year’s LQBA Fall Invitational last year, Audrey, Pablo muses while the first tossup is read.
And yet, for some reason, even Lilina seems to roll her eyes at the first clue, let alone the Broncos (i.e. Zachary’s players).
“The city-state of Wilusa was a vassal of this late Bronze Age…” the moderator reads the second clue.
Wilusa… I vaguely remember reading a text claiming the Trojan War lasted ten years not because of Greek incompetence, human or divine, but because of Hittite attempts to relieve or break the siege! Pablo is suddenly reminded of one of the readings he made for the last HSNCT, and then buzzes in.
“Hittites!” Pablo answers.
“Fifteen” the moderator rules. “For ten points each, answer these questions about aerodynamics. At low velocities, the magnitude of this force varies linearly as a function of velocity”
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“Drag” Pablo answers the first bonus part.
“Wingtip devices are installed at the edge of planes’ wings to combat this variety of drag”
The clock starts ticking on the VAs to answer the second question, since they may be wondering exactly what wingtip devices the bonus part speak of. Audrey gives the VAs’ answer:
“Parasitic drag!”
Is that it? How could VA have replaced their science player by some… basketball player? a confused Bronco (i.e. Zachary player) asks himself, after seeing Audrey, wearing the VAs’ away basketball jersey, answer the second bonus part. What kind of basketball player can somehow play science on the quiz bowl team?
“Parasitic drag is caused by both form drag and this type of force”
“Skin friction drag!” Audrey answers.
“Thirty on the bonus” the moderator rules before the next cycle begins.
Unfortunately for the Broncos, this game feels like one of the blowout losses they incurred last season, especially at State. Once the game ends:
“And that’s the game. VA A five hundred, Zachary ninety” the moderator announces the final result.
As the team steps out of the game room, Audrey uses the limited time she has left to confess something to Pablo before their next game. It’s clear to him that Audrey needed to let something off her chest.
“Sometimes I can feel like I make opponents uncomfortable. Like in this game. But it made me uncomfortable, too, in ways not even playoff opponents at the HSNCT could have”
“Audrey, what do you mean?”
“Our last opponents seemed to think that, because I play basketball, and you, football, neither of us can play quiz bowl!” Audrey feels the rage building up in her blood.
“It’s not the first time; at the HSNCT, we were lashing out at an opponent because they feel like neither of us can play quiz bowl, VA is some tiny school, or high-level sports talent can’t be mixed with high-level quiz bowl! Don’t let that affect you, and it should be fine…”
Or VA is somehow Louisiana’s version of a TJHSST or BLS to their eyes, even though the cold, hard truth is that VA isn’t a magnet school. And yet, VA’s academic competitiveness is much closer to either one than to, like, Westlake, Audrey realizes that VA, while seemingly having fewer stressors on hand than their big quiz bowl rivals, is still not for the faint of heart.
They end up going to the next game, and not having Myriam on their proverbial six forced the two to take a more active role in games, especially on science tossups.
At the end of the prelims, VA A finishes first in its preliminary pool, with a three-player VA B somehow finishing third in the other pool. And hence out of HSNCT contention because the playoff pools are made of 2 teams per pool. Before they can think of getting something to eat for lunch:
“Without question, the hardest history tossup of this tournament was the Hittite question” Pablo comments on the prelim questions.
“We shouldn’t question our love, at least for now. We’ll win this tournament today, come hell or high water; we shall show the VA community that we can win in quiz bowl without Myriam!”
“A year ago, I was struggling to find my place in quiz bowl, now I am a HSNCT-bound starter!” Pablo comes to this realization.
Audrey then looks at her stat line for the prelims of LQBA Fall. Man is that better than what I got out of playing on the A-Team last year, with Myriam! Nadine and Lilina are comparable to the Leonard and Scott I played with last season, she starts looking for food before the playoffs begin.
When the playoffs begin, it’s there they realize the difference not having Myriam on hand is more apparent against stronger teams. Games become tighter and, going into round eight, the last round of the day, VA and their opponents are up 2-0.
“This is round eight, the third playoff round of the LQBA Fall Invitational. From East Bâton-Rouge Parish, we have Catholic, from Jefferson Davis parish, we have Venomous Agendas A. Best of luck to both teams, and here’s tossup one… This type of policy was known in Belgium as waffle-iron politics during the Cold War” the moderator reads the first tossup.
What exactly is waffle-iron politics? Pablo is questioning himself, while he starts hearing about waffle-iron politics. And even then, Lilina appears unable to answer. And, of course, the Bears (i.e. Catholic’s players) couldn’t either.
“Senator Daniel Inouye was a noted practitioner of this policy…” the moderator keeps reading before the Bears’ history player buzzes in.
“Pork barreling!”
“Fifteen”
Damn it… Tanith raised some concerns about pork barreling when Cora pushed for the Calcasieu River Bridge preservation, as a cycling bridge, to be in our AP US Government group project! Pablo gets a flashback of the football preseason, triggered by the answer line.
For the rest of the game, it appears that VA and Catholic play a very tight game. And, once again, Catholic appears to be a strong contender at State a few months from now. So much that VA is trailing by 25 points going into the final tossup.
“Final tossup: This branch of biology’s consistency index compares the minimum and observed number of changes in species” the moderator reads the final tossup.
Pablo and I took AP Bio together, Lilina is taking it this year, and never has the consistency index come up! Audrey is a little lost upon hearing the first clue.
“Techniques used in this field are also used to study cancer tumors” the moderator reads, interrupted by Catholic’s science player.
“Mutagenesis”
“Neg five” The moderator resumes the reading of the tossup where he left off before the Bears buzzed in. “Molecular chronology. Cladograms are used in this field to draw it namesake trees…”
Now you’re talking. It has become clearer to me now, even though the power mark is now well past, Audrey buzzes in.
“Phylogeny!”
“Ten. For ten points each, answer these questions about trains in literature. This Agatha Christie novel is named after this famous train from Istanbul to London”
“Murder on the Orient Express!” Nadine shouts, sure of her answer.
Relax, Audrey. All we need to do to win the game and the tournament is answer one more bonus part correctly, Pablo muses while the second bonus part is read and missed.
“Night Train to Lisbon. This Patricia Highsmith book tells the story of two train passengers entering a pact to murder the parasites in each other’s lives”
Everyone seems focused on finding an answer to this question, and even Nadine seemed to struggle a little in finding an adequate answer in just 5 seconds. Yet Lilina sees fit to step in.
“Strangers on a Train!”
“Twenty on the bonus, and that’s the game. Catholic three hundred sixty, VA A three hundred seventy!”
The following day, Pablo invites Audrey to attend a special gathering in VA’s auditorium on Sunday after mass, where everyone who played football for VA this season was invited, along with most of their love interests. And, of course, a lot of their families, too.
Valter in particular is seen with Myriam of all people, attending an event where all ten playoff brackets are released, livecast from the LHSAA offices.
“Valter, did you just… ask Myriam out?” Orson asks him. “Either Myriam dramatically fell in romantic value lately or she’s suddenly interested in VA football!”
“Yes!” Valter answers his teammate,
I didn’t think I would find a girlfriend so quickly after this debacle against Westlake, and I feel that I would be off the town’s hook if VA gets one of the wildcards, Valter starts thinking about how this game changed his life as he watches the brackets being released, starting with the Division I Non-Select bracket.
Then comes the Division I Select and, after that, what everyone came there for: the Division II Non-Select playoff bracket.
“And… we didn’t make it. No more football for us this season…” the head coach sighs, clearly disappointed that VA didn’t land a wildcard.
And the coaches’ disappointment spread like wildfire across the auditorium, sending VA football fans into disarray.