1999 Detroit Catholic Central
Season
The 1999 varsity academic team put together the complete season for which Coach Weinberg had been looking for a decade and a half. The squad set team records by winning a total of 203 games and capturing 24 trophies and awards in a single season. Noteable among its ten tournament titles, the team became the first representing a northern school to win the High School Invitational held each February at Lee University near Chattanooga. In April, the team won CC’s sixth Michigan Class A State Championship in the twelve year history of the annual tournament in Port Huron. However, it was post season play that the team achieved its crowning success.
On June 5-6, the team competed in the NAQT National High School Championship Tournament at the University of Oklahoma. On the first day of competition, CC posted an 8-2 record which was good enough to qualify for the next day’s playoffs among the tournament’s top six teams. On the second day of the tournament, the team shifted into an even higher gear. CC reached the finals as the first seeded team by winning all five games in a round robin competition among the six surviving contenders. Finally, the CC team won the tournament championship by sweeping the two out of three final series against the second seeded team from Walton High School. Indeed, CC’s victories over the perennial power from Marietta, Georgia were each by the decisive margin of 200 points. After finishing fourth in 1990, third in 1991 and 1997, and second in 1994 and again in 1995, the victory was the first for CC in a national tournament.
Not to be outdone by the varsity, the 1999 frosh team of Coaches Leninger and Flowerday also had a record breaking season which included national titles. The team won all eight local competitions while remaining undefeated with a record of 71-0. Even more notable, the team finished first in the nation in both the December and April Knowledge Master Open competitions conducted by computer among the top frosh teams from coast to coast. The CC team thus became the first in the country to win both KMO frosh competitions in a single academic year.
Although capturing no national title, the 1999 junior varsity team of Coach Sroka was, nonetheless, extremely successful. Winning a league title and finishing first in four of seven tournaments, the team compiled an overall record of 62-7. With two seconds and a third in the remaining competitions on the schedule, the junior varsity squad played its part in enabling the academic team to complete the entire season in which no division had a tournament finish lower than third.
Nationals
In 1999, a team of Corey Mason, Mark Walkuski, Vince Crafton, Jesse Norman, and Paul Schultz won the first NAQT HSNCT over Walton. The same lineup also reached the semifinals of the PACE NSC that year.
| |||||||||||||||||