Ottawa Hybrid Tournament

The Ottawa Hybrid Tournament (known in later years as Canadian Hybrid and Ontario Hybrid) is an annual half-pop culture, half-academic tournament created by members of the Eastern Canada quizbowl circuit. The tournament began in 2005 as a way to fund Ottawa's travel to an ICT, with subsequent editions usually packet-submission subject to heavy editing from organizer Ben Smith. Though initially critiqued alongside VETO as an example of bad Canadian quizbowl practices, the tournament has consistently grown in quality and remains popular within the circuit. The University of Ottawa has largely not been involved in the tournament's production since 2017.

2005 OHT

"11-2" from Toronto won Division I. They beat Rochester, McGill, and professional player Paul Paquet. "Vexillologists Anonymous" from Rochester won Division II over teams from Ottawa, Carleton University, and Waterloo. Fourteen teams attended.[1]d

2006 OHT: The Broadbent Invitational

"McGill B" won. They beat teams from Carleton University, Ottawa, Rochester, and Paul Paquet. Nine teams attended.[2]

2007 OHT

Paul Paquet's team, "TriviaHallofFame.com", tied a Toronto team for first. Other teams came from Carleton University, McGill, Queen's, Rochester, and Lisgar.[3] Sixteen teams attended, which was then the record for an independent event in Ontario.

2008 OHT

"The Leafs Will Make the Playoffs" won the tournament. They were a mixed team of Jordan Palmer, Brock Stephenson, and Matt Trudgen. They beat teams from McGill, Lisgar, Carleton University, and Ottawa. Eleven teams attended.[4] The tournament was mirrored at Western.

2009 OHT

"Jordan" won the tournament. They were "The Leafs Will Make the Playoffs" plus Neil Walford. The other teams were from McGill, Ottawa, and Lisgar[5]. The tournament was mirrored at Guelph, where it was won by "Playgirl Models of the 1990s," a team from McMaster. The tournament had notable toss-ups about April Wine, Wii Golf, and Wizards of the Coast.

2010 OHT

Partly in response to the 2009 VETO, the 2010 tournament was overhauled with an editing team of Smith, Aaron Dos Remedios, and Brendan McKendy. Jordan's unnamed team won again at the Ottawa site [6]. The tournament was mirrored at Waterloo, where it was won by a team from Toronto.

2011 BLASTOISE

Ottawa did not write the Hybrid this year. The annual March hybrid tournament was intended to be be run jointly by two high schools named The Bell Lisgar Academic & Sexy Trash Open Inside the South-East (BLASTOISE). The same writing, editing, and fee structure was used, and Patrick Liao suffered some academic consequences by spending time to be the head editor. Ultimately, Bell gave up their editorial position and the tournament was run solely by Lisgar. Jordan Palmer and his team won the tournament again. Ottawa was second. BLASTOISE was mirrored in several sites in the United States.

2012

No hybrid was held this year.

2013

The hybrid was edited by a team of Dennis Beeby, Melinda Mah, Brendan McKendy, Jordan Palmer, Radu Popescu, and Shelby Robert,. The packet-submission tournament was announced only a month before the event, resulting in some very tight deadline for early submission discounts. A freelance team of Rein Otsason from Toronto, Huma Zafar from Waterloo and adults Eric Smith and Aaron Dos Remedios defeated a freelance team of Charles Korwin from Carleton University, Derek So and Hunter Book fom McGill, and Andrej Vukovic from Lisgar. Eric Smith was the highest scorer.

2014

The editing team consisted of Jordan Palmer, Dennis Beeby, Shelby Robert, Brendan McKendy, and Joe Su. Waterloo A, aka The Bald Soprano in Britney Spears, (Aayush Rajasekaran, Christine Irwin, Akosua Asanta, Cam MacInnis) won the tournament, and Derek So from McGill was the top scorer. Michigan State finished second, after Colonel By forfeited a tiebreaker because the tournament was running late due to every game room being on a different floor with the elevator being the only accessible mode of transportation.

2015 onwards

The tournament went through multiple name changes from 2015 onwards, being known variously as Toronto Hybrid, Ottawa Hybrid, Canadian Hybrid, and Ontario Hybrid. Ottawa hosted its last iteration of hybrid in 2017, with Brendan McKendy as the head editor. Aayush Rajasekaran head-edited the 2018 and 2019 editions. Erik Christenson head-edited 2020's arguably misnomered Ontario Hybrid, which for the first time found a sizeable American audience through a 22 team Discord mirror.