Masonic tournament

The Masonic tournament is one of the state championships in Illinois, growing from 16 teams in its first few years to about 300 teams each year now. It is sponsored by Masonic lodges throughout Illinois and has the financial resources to offer free entry fees to all teams and cash awards for teams that do well.

It used approximately the IHSA format and distribution through 2009, including what was then all-at-once bonuses, then switched to a unique format for 2010. In the Masonic tournament, the match starts with 6 tossups, then alternates 8 team questions (which work like bonuses, but each team controls half of them no matter who answers the tossups), then 6 more tossups, then 8 more team questions, then 4 more tossups. The bonuses bounce back, and they became one part at a time starting in 2013.

For most of the tournament's history, it used what was called a double-elimination format at Sectionals and State, though it was actually a single-elimination tournament with a consolation bracket. Around 2010, they switched to a tournament format that has two pools of 6 teams each play round robin, followed by the top two teams in each pool moving on to a single-elimination two round playoff.

It used Answers Plus for a very long time, eventually switched to Academic Hallmarks for (at least) 2006 and 2007, used Aegis Questions questions in 2008 and 2009, used Questions Galore in 2010 and 2011, and hired David Reinstein (who has gotten help from Donald Taylor) to write the questions for 2012. For those of you who don't know, the Aegis and Reinstein questions were much better than the others.

Results

Date	Location	Champion	Runner-up	3rd Place	4th Place	Consolation
1983	Winnebago	Stillman Valley	Winnebago	unknown	unknown
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990	Illinois Wesleyan University	Rockridge	Sullivan	unknown	unknown	unknown
1991	Eureka
1992	Eureka
1993	Eureka
1994	Eureka
1995	Eureka College
4 May 1996	Eureka College	MacArthur	Belvidere	Princeton	Dixon	Niantic-Harristown
10 May 1997		Woodruff	Streator	Princeton	MacArthur	Edwards County
4 Apr 1998		MacArthur	Sterling	Streator	Centralia	Auburn
8 May 1999		Moline	New Trier	Carlinville	PORTA	IMSA
18 Mar 2000		Stevenson	Streator	New Trier	Eureka	Auburn
2 Mar 2001		Salem	Fenwick	Moline	Stillman Valley	unknown
2 Mar 2002		Springfield Southeast	Limestone	Guilford	Auburn	Danville
8 Mar 2003	Springfield Southeast	Wheaton North	Sterling	Stillman Valley	Pleasant Plains	Auburn
6 Mar 2004	Springfield Southeast	Wheaton North	Morton	Auburn	Galena	Bradley-Bourbonnais
5 Mar 2005	Springfield Southeast	Fremd	Auburn	Morton	Pittsfield	IMSA
4 Mar 2006	Springfield Southeast	Fremd	Peoria Heights	Bloomington	Elmwood	Auburn
3 Mar 2007	Springfield Southeast	Maine South	New Trier	Springfield	Moline	Auburn
1 Mar 2008	Glenwood	Auburn	Carbondale	Sterling	PORTA	Springfield
28 Feb 2009	Glenwood	Carbondale	Auburn	Peoria Christian	Warrensburg-Latham	New Trier
6 Mar 2010 Class A	Riverton	Litchfield	The Latin School	Macomb	St. Joseph-Ogden
Class AA		St. Ignatius	Stevenson	Auburn	IMSA
5 Mar 2011 Class A	Riverton	Lisle	Macomb	PORTA	Peoria Christian
Class AA		Stevenson	Carbondale	IMSA	Fremd
3 Mar 2012 Class A	Springfield	Peoria Christian	Peoria Heights	Carlinville	Keith Country Day
Class AA		IMSA	Auburn	Carbondale	The Latin School
2 Mar 2013 Class A	Springfield	Litchfield	Peoria Christian	Cumberland	Elmwood
Class AA		Loyola Academy	Macomb	IMSA	Carbondale