Conestoga Valley Tournament

The Conestoga Valley Tournament is a high school tournament run annually by Conestoga Valley High School of Lancaster, Pennsylvania since 1993. It is known for asking questions about Lancaster area high school sports teams and mascots and other local trivia, "math" problems of a format similar to "take the number of players on a hockey team, multiply that by the number of innings in baseball, ...", spelling questions, and, in general, terrible questions.

The matches are timed and it usually features around 5 preliminary rounds and complimentary lunch at the school cafeteria. The prelims are randomly assigned, meaning that some teams get harder schedules that others. This results in a marked difference between the lowest 5-0 and the highest 4-1 team in the playoff, somewhat skewing the bracket.

Moderators at the tournament are not allowed to give correct answers. Full names are required by some moderators, while others will take just last names. Recognition rules are in effect, but the moderators inconsistently apply this rule. In fact, at least once a moderator recognized a player, and then preceded to give the player a neg for not waiting for recognition.

Regrettably, even though at its peak the tournament attracted around fifty teams a year, most teams did not know of other quizbowl formats. This has changed, however, in recent years and attendance has steeply declined.

Results

Year	Champion	Second	Field Size	Final Score
1993	Manheim Township
1994	Manheim Township
1995	Manheim Township	Annville-Cleona	32	365-155
1996	Manheim Township	Cedar Crest	40	345-140
1997	Manheim Township	Lancaster Mennonite	36	530-30
1998	Manheim Township	Cedar Crest	45	190-160
1999	Warwick	Camp Hill		130-120
2000	Lancaster Mennonite	Manheim Township		265-240
2001	Hempfield	Lancaster Mennonite	54	335-295
2002	Elizabethtown	Lancaster Catholic	52	305-140
2003	Manheim Township	Cedar Crest	54	200-160
2004	Elizabethtown	West Chester East	60	145-130
2005	Elizabethtown	Harrisburg Academy	57	200-90
2006	West Chester East	Penn Manor	56	140-125
2007	Manheim Township	Penn Manor	48	160-60
2008	Cumberland Valley	Manheim Township	54	205-105
2009	Cumberland Valley	Manheim Township	52
2010	Manheim Township	Conestoga Valley	48	175-40
2011	Manheim Township	Cumberland Valley	50	190-35
2012	York Suburban	Manheim Township	48	175-90
2013	Cumberland Valley	Lower Dauphin	45	150-65
2014	West Chester East	Conestoga Valley	46
2015	West Chester East	West Chester East B

Questions

Since 2002 the tournament has been house-written by Conestoga Valley coaches and teachers.

The 2004 tournament featured gems such as:

• "Sing the Oscar Meyer Weiner theme song" as the first bonus in the finals.
• "Identify the Lancaster County high schools that made it to states in a particular sport this year."

Some questions from the 2007 tournament:

• "What is the sum of the first 80 positive integers?"
• "If a female has more than one husband, that's called what?"
• "If a coin is tossed in the air three times, what is the probability that heads will appear two or more times?"
• "What was Martin Luther King's given name?"
• "What is the capital of Afghanistan?"
• "What is the empirical formula for benzene?"
• "In particle physics, what basic constituent of matter is classified under the names 'up,' 'down,' 'strange,' 'charmed,' 'bottom' and 'top'?"
• "What number equals obesity when figuring body mass index?"
• "What was the first state to allow women to vote?"
• "Is it possible for a team to strike out four times in the same inning?"

The 2008 tournament featured gems such as:

• Russians are known for a variety of artistic forms including writing, composing, and sculpting. Who wrote War and Peace?
• Barry Bonds, Floyd Landis, and Marion Jones are all athletes who were caught cheating recently. In which sport was a referee recently caught gambling on games he officiated?
• In this work Aunt Sally and the Widow Douglas look after the title character, while he goes on a trip with the slave Jim. Name this work and its author. (See hose)
• There are a variety of tv shows based on lawyers. One of these shows has six different spinoffs including SVU and Criminal Intent. Who writes Law & Order?

From the 2011 tournament:

• The entropy of a hypothetically pure, crystalline substance at absolute zero temperature is zero. What is the the law that was just defined?

• Calculate the value of 5 factorial.

• John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson had the same man serve as vice president. This man desperately wanted to become president in his own right, but regrettably this South Carolina politician turned toward sectionalism as he matured. Name this notable South Carolinian who never made it to the Oval Office.

• Bonus questions that required listing the entirety of large categories such as the seven wonders of the world.

• A tossup beginning with "This Polish astronomer..." (See Nationality lead-in)

The 2015 tournament's final match included a bonus asking teams to identify four tools from a toolbox. [1]