"Bravo Marcia!" Krista exclaims at the exit of the game room in which game #7 took place.
"I played well, yes, but Imélie represents the future of Venomous Agendas quiz bowl" Marcia then tells Krista.
"Also, I have news about Caltech"
"What is it?"
"I didn't want to talk about to you earlier, and to Geneviève either, but they took me off the waitlist!" Krista announces while she is jumping for joy.
"I'm happy, I'm sure you will perform well once there. As for me, they renamed one of the individual awards at the VMC in my name, and so, retroactively" Gen adds, while she is reeling in from this verbal joust with Zhou.
"Huh? What are you talking about, Gen?" Krista asks her friend.
"The award that now bears my name at the VMC is the prize awarded to the best feminine performance by a non-senior at the final. I won it last year, this year there is more than one winner" Gen explains herself.
"Then there is more than one female non-senior that had a perfect score" Imélie points out. "I am happy for the other co-winners"
"Listen, we won the gold medal at the VMC, nine of the thirteen gold medalists of last year won it again" Gen announces as a follow-up.
And, against all odds, Whitman has also won the gold medal. Thus, Maryland is one of two states to have more than one gold medalist school this year. Only one other school having won gold at the VMC aligned 4 girls in the final: TJHSST, and one of the co-winners of the « Geneviève Prize » attended it as well. And so without Lucy who, even though she was released on bail and having gotten a conditional absolution shortly afterward, couldn't take part in the VMC final. But it was 4 girls out of something between 20 and 30 participants writing the final for this school...
Also the 3 female quiz bowlers of the Venomous Agendas attract a lot of attention, especially Imélie for some reason. All hopes seemed allowed for the Venomous Agendas, and, with them, the hopes of girls in quiz bowl. Especially since most teams at the level of, for example, Boston Latin or higher (approximately in the national top 70), had at most two girls, and sometimes only one, or even zero. Oh my God, look at this! I'm the only one of the three girls that played all seven games, the only Venomous Agenda to have heard all the toss-ups, and I consider that I played well, Imélie thinks, while the Venomous Agendas have been rather balanced. I might be wondering if quiz bowl made me less perfectionistic than before, or if my perfectionism is more circumscribed than I initially believed, but I scored at least ten powers today without incurring a single interrupt all day. (A power represents a correct answer given before the asterisk on a toss-up)
I didn't always have the best relationship in the world with the parish newspaper, but I am forced to acknowledge that never the parish newspaper commented on the looks of people or otherwise disparaged anyone, whether we talk about quiz bowl or mathletics! They always preferred to talk about achievements, what they require and represent, Gen thinks, while the latest issue of the parish newspaper talks about the HSNCT. Yes, the parish newspaper also talks about the Venomous Agendas' gold at the VMC but they only briefly talked about the size of this contest's intellectual demands.
"Now that you won gold at the VMC, what's your shoe size?" Gen asks her teammate.
"Seven. Why?" Imélie asks.
"Since you got a perfect score on the VMC final, the booster club will pay you a pair of Vans shoes of your choice"
"VMC? What's the VMC?" Bruce asks in Imélie's direction, with a pinch of confusion in his voice.
"The Vans Math Contest final is about multi-variable calculus. I guess Boston Latin didn't qualify for the final..." Imélie answers Bruce.
"We didn't even enter it..." Bruce retorts.
"You seem to be implying that I entered the VMC just to win shoes!"
"And your school's booster club buys shoes for its math team?" a surprised Bruce asks her.
"What kind of mathlete would enter a multi-variable calculus contest just for shoes? Not me... Personally I think you're frustrated about how I played in that game against you and you're taking it out on me" Imélie becomes more virulent towards Bruce.
If Bruce thinks I entered the VMC for shoes, he is wrong! Imélie thinks while Bruce seems to irritate her more than anything else. Judging by the quantity of opponents that we are irritating in mathletics and now in quiz bowl, it was due to happen. At no point in the season Boston Latin was in the conversation for the EGMO, nor for the VMC. They're forced to concede our mathletic superiority so they must fall back on quiz bowl...
"So I might be wondering if it's my sudden explosion in the quiz bowling world that makes me draw attention so much, or it's just because I made a faux pas" Imélie, a little caught off-guard, asks herself.
"I never obsess over this, Imélie, but I know you're a good player. I might be wondering why you didn't start playing quiz bowl earlier in high school..." Marcia asks Imélie.
"My parents found that I was too immature to play quiz bowl last year or the year before that" Imélie answers her captain.
By seeing Imélie play, it's where my bad memories of playing quiz bowl resurface. Yes, we beat the neighboring parish each time, but the neighboring parish has never been very good. But at the LQBA Invitationals of this season, plus the previous two seasons, it's clear that Imélie would have changed the game; she is much more of a generalist than people usually expect from a mathlete! Marcia thinks, while, by miracle, at Dutchtown, the guy that left before the state championship had its only good tournament of his life as a quiz bowler.
For the three Sunday preliminary games, the opponents of the Venomous Agendas become increasingly tougher and play better. Playoffs before time from their viewpoint. And, to Warren's eyes, a game can be made or broken with a good or bad substitution at half-time, respectively, which he simply never had the opportunity to do before Florence and Imélie enter the stage. A final meeting is held at the end of the preliminary round they ended with a 7-3 record before the start of the playoffs.
"I apologize, William, I shouldn't have made this substitution in this game against Adlai Stevenson. This substitution cost us the last game. The next playoff game will be rough, we must stay vigilant. Regardless, we have at least two more games to play" Warren explains them.
"Our opponents will also try to outdo us while playing this substitution game" Florence points out.
"It's risky but don't hesitate to fake a buzzer to push the opponent to take an interrupt!" Warren advises his players.
"But there is more of a chance that our opponents, from here on out, are more like me than players susceptible to fall for a buzzer fake!" Imélie points out.
"Much like Imélie, I am a newcomer to the world of quiz bowl, but the teams that will use substitutions will come from schools with a single team, like us" Florence continues.
"TJHSST will not play this substitution game and they are our next opponents" William adds his viewpoint.
So the Venomous Agendas will be entitled to two windows of substitution, three if they are tied at the end of regulation time. The first is at half-time, the second is during a timeout, if they decide to use it; Warren knows TJHSST won't use their timeout.
But Marcia has seen how a good tournament can change a season. I see Warren is not used to train teams at that level of competition. These are low-end strategies that could work at the LQBA Invitationals, but here... she thinks.
"We mathletes beat TJHSST once this season. We can do it here!" Marcia shouts while alluding to the Math Madness.
"Winning against the big TJHSST team would not be the end of their tournament. But they will need to lose one more game" Warren tells them.
The Venomous Agendas and the Colonials enter the Imperial Ballroom B with the moderator that gets ready to start this first round playoff game of the main bracket, that the Venomous Agendas start with card number 53, and the TJHSST A team starts with the card number 12. There we see that all these people is playing their best quiz bowl of the season, and Marcia has memories of this round of sixteen game at the Math Madness where her bursts of speed forced her opponents' hands. Here, however, she is not the only one to go with sped bursts, and the absence of substitutions really surprised Florence because she expected Warren to substitute William or herself at the end of regulation time.
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"The two teams are tied after the first twenty-four toss-ups. We're entering overtime!"
TJHSST and the Venomous Agendas start overtime with 340 points each. Here we feel our Venomous Agendas seem to play better against schools having the best global institutional reputations and I harbor hopes we can win, Marcia's father thinks while, even with three more toss-ups both teams are still tied, only with 15 more points.
"In a 2017 ruling, a judge in this state declared that an "urban heroin dealer" not having a gun is an anomaly..." the moderator starts reading.
William, unlike what happened at the state championship, tries, for the first time, to force an interrupt by faking to push on the buzzer. Unsuccessfully because the opponent remains powerless...
"Police in this state chanted "Whose streets? Our streets!"
It's now or never! Another of our training debates this season had to do, as surprising as it might be, with police militarization and defunding! Florence thinks while memories of police brutality quickly surfaces in her mind.
"In response to riots that erupted after white police officer..."
And scenes from Missouri seem to come back regularly in her mind. So she hurries in pressing on the buzzer when she feels she has heard enough. At the same time, she feels the opposing team will only give her a fraction of a second to do so because she sees another opposing player trying to hit the buzzer faster than her. She hits the buzzer but two buzzers are ringing then: hers and an opposing player's.
"Florence?"
"Missouri"
"Fifteen"
And the Venomous Agendas beat TJHSST once again; it seems that, this season, if we ignore the VMC, for Washington-area teams, in quiz bowl and in mathletics, the Venomous Agendas are their kryptonite. Poor Jesuit... they won against Saratoga, but they will now face TJHSST A! Marcia thinks, while the bracket is updated.
Their next game, however, against Providence, turns into a nightmare, and it's the worst Venomous Agendas loss at this tournament. A margin of 140 points relegates them to the secondary bracket for round 23.
"We have no room for error! Whether it's you as players, or me about substitutions! How can you explain such an atrocious defeat against Providence which was supposed to be beatable?" Warren screams at his players before the next game against Stuyvesant.
"TJHSST needed a lot, a lot of focus for us to play against them as we did. We will need to approach Stuyvesant as we did against them" Marcia explains herself.
Regardless, the Venomous Agendas can hold their heads high. A top-40 at their first HSNCT participation? Good, very good. Stuyvesant, however, is taking part for the first time in eight years and barely made it to the playoffs.
"We can still believe... but we will need to be perfect until the end" Gen points out.
"Gen, don't forget that two of the most important contributors have no experience of quiz bowl at that level and played in competition for the first time at the state championship" Marcia's father tells both girls.
Twenty minutes later, they find once again in a tie with one toss-up before the end, and Stuyvesant's coach makes a substitution because one of his player has violent migraines.
"Tossup number twenty: This process was first studied in 1877 by Wilhelm Pfeffer, making him a pioneer of plant physiology" the moderator starts his reading of the question.
Time is running, and there's only 20 seconds left after the end of the game, Stuyvesant's new player thinks, after the substitution, and he has his finger on the buzzer, ready to « fire », believing he can force a Venomous Agenda to pull the trigger. Everything will happen here: these Venomous Agendas are tough in science; we must stop them before it's too late!
Imélie and Marcia are the main ones aimed by the Pegleg's attempt to force their hands, but they hang on. The replacement player has been a little clumsy, and in an attempt to pretend « firing » accidently does it for real...
"Hydrotropism" the Pegleg answers.
"Neg five. Contractile vacuoles are used to counter this process, whose namesake "pressure"...
The opponent just gave us the game on a silver platter! There was a multiple-choice question on this in chemistry last year and it was part of what I helped people cheat on! Marcia thinks, after hearing the word « pressure », and presses on the buzzer as soon as she's in position to answer. The moderator points at her...
"Osmosis"
"Fifteen"
As much as we paid the price for a bad substitution in the preliminary rounds, Stuyvesant pays for it in the playoffs, Warren thinks, while their next opponent, Wayzata A, starts fearing what they call the « Magnet Reapers » because the Venomous Agendas beat four renowned magnet schools to get to a top-24 at the championship.
They must win that game because they already lost a game against Providence earlier. Going into the final tossup, the Venomous Agendas hold a five-point lead against Wayzata A. Yet everyone actively playing is very tense, knowing this question can make or break the game.
"Tossup number twenty..."
Everyone is shaking in their seats, be it Imélie, Marcia or Florence; the male veteran that had no buzzing consistency was benched for that game. The first clue starts with an obscure fact about the history of what the answer is, and the Alpha Test in WW1 came up, then the Chinese keju, and the opponent then ratchets up the pressure on everyone. The keju was not an IQ test, but these feel like psychometric tests, Florence thinks while she feels ready to buzz in.
"Psychometric testing" Florence answers.
"Neg five"
Our only hope is that the opponent doesn't answer this correctly, but if they do we're eliminated, she keeps thinking while the FTP clue is finally heard.
"For ten points, name this category of tests to which the SAT and ACT belong"
"Standardized tests" the Wayzata player then answers.
"Ten. For ten points each..."
The opponent then converts two of the three bonus parts, leading to Florence having single-handedly caused the Venomous Agendas to lose a shot at the top-15, or even better. This is better than I could have hoped for, even if we actually went to the debate-Nationals! Never would I have expected a top-24 finish at the HSNCT or debate-Nationals, much less since it was my second quiz bowl tournament! Florence reflects on what she expected of the Venomous Agendas at debate-Nationals if she ever qualified for that tournament on that roster.
After an even more atrocious loss than against Providence, albeit much closer, the magical run of the Venomous Agendas at this competition is over. The players are mad at Florence, who ate an interrupt at the very end and made them lose the five-point lead they held then.
"Florence? How could you do this to us and fall into the trap? Everyone tried the reflex buzzer tactic, and we gave them thirty-five free points because of you!" Warren screams at Florence, for whom it's her last toss-up unless she plays quiz bowl for the Rouge et Or.
"It was my swan song in quiz bowl! Even being here was a great victory for us, let alone a twenty-fourth place!" Florence exclaims.
"Now I know what to expect if we qualify again next year!" William adds, and Imélie is also concerned. "As for you, Florence, you played the tournament of your lifetime here"
"Thank you, William... and I know Imélie will be even better next year" Florence tells back to William.
Imélie proved to be one of the great feminine revelations of the season in quiz bowl. She played as well as, or even better than, Marcia who was much more experienced as a quiz bowler... initially she was supposed to be there in reinforcement for the state championship. But she will be the quiz bowl captain for next year, Warren thinks, while they are ready to leave Atlanta and same thing for the parents and the two girls Marcia insisted so much that they be on the trip.
Back in their country town, the commencement ceremony is prepared, and for some, the receipt of their diplomas will be one of the highlights of their lives. For others, it's the end of 4 years of hell, either social or academic. Finally, for people like Randy or Zack, and even more so the highest-achieving students, the diploma receipt is a mere formality.
"I wish to underscore an absolutely magical season of our school about academic extracurricular activities. Really a season of all records for us. We excelled on the national and international stages of mathletics, and, to a lesser extent, in quiz bowl. And even more remarkable to us is that our extracurricular successes this year are primarily brought by girls! Today, more than ever, the Venomous Agendas culture is a place where we can live academic excellence, in class as well as in the extracurricular sphere, and fully assume it socially!" The school's principal makes his end-of-year speech. "And it's with joy that I announce that it's the strongest class in school history!"
The principal reviews the various highlights of the school year in video on the stadium's scoreboard, in chronological order of them happening. The video contains a montage of clips that are dominated by mathletics and quiz bowl, and musical concerts and theater plays. No trace of football games or other sporting events.
For a lot of townsfolk, the most important highlight of this school year is, without a doubt, Geneviève's participation at the EGMO and the resulting gold medal, and that left no one indifferent in the parish. As if last year's mathletic performances were insufficient to prove that girls were capable to perform mathematically like boys!
And, even though the school does not rank students, the consensus was clear that Geneviève was the best placed person to deliver the speech that would traditionally be the domain of the top of the class in a school where students are ranked.
"Dear graduate colleagues, this moment represents the end of a key step in your lives. As I said the day I solved for partial differential equations in open air... Even though your highlights from high school will be more emotional in nature, such as a first kiss, a first date, an extracurricular success, or even an extremal grade, or a course we liked or hated, you must not see the material strictly as a body of knowledge. What will stay with you once this is over is not so much the material itself, but the by-products of their learning such as logic and critical thinking. Then I have been, at least for the last year and a half, a source of academic inspiration not only for us Venomous Agendas, but also for girls statewide in mathematics. Thus, the legacy I leave, as a Venomous Agenda, to future classes is a culture where academic excellence knows neither social taboos, nor gender stereotypes. That said, I have a warning to issue, or should I say, warnings to issue. First, you shouldn't hold on to the glories of high school, especially for those who accomplished a lot on the extracurricular scene, and these glories are ephemeral. And unfortunately, I am not immune, and none of my mathlete teammates either. The danger is all too real that we could get to a point where we could consider the best years of our lives may have happened either in high school or in college. The other big warning is that we must not neglect the intellectual sphere. What I would say to future classes of Venomous Agendas is that, more than intellectual curiosity, being able to determine what to know and what not to know can prove very important. The quest of knowledge, yes, but not at any cost! I acknowledge that I committed some excesses this season, especially when the parish started believing the EGMO was within range, I might not be the best example. To end this, inspiration starts in our own turf, and it is such that I hand over the torch, as well as the C of the mathletics team, to Imélie, who, let's hope, will continue to inspire the Venomous Agendas to do well in quantitative subjects! Congratulations to the class of 2024!"