Agreed as well -- congratulations to Jeff and Larissa, both with their marriage and their studies at Berkeley. Both have been exceptionally nice and classy people when I played their Princeton teams, and excellent players to boot. Warning: quizbowl babbling below... Now what else does this mean? Even more talent getting sucked away from the Mid-Atlantic! Sitting in my rocking chair, I remember when the Mid-Atlantic was the #1 region in the nation, say circa 1997 and 1998, when Andrew Yaphe was at Virginia and College Park had its best teams; Penn State and Virginia Tech were rising to become Top 25 forces, and Penn, Princeton, Swarthmore, Johns Hopkins, and GW all fielded very solid teams. Now, unless you perhaps count the Pacific Northwest, the Mid-Atlantic may be the weakest region in quizbowl. Most of the power seems to be concentrated in the Midwest, and also the West Coast. What happened? Probably it's just cyclical. And I exaggerate; there are still a couple teams left: Pitt still has Matt Weiner, Princeton still brings Lenny and Ben to the table, and Virginia fields Steve Perry and Chris Manteuffel (though the graduation of John Kenney knocks them out of the Top 5, most likely). And finally... with the current state of my beloved home region, cue the "Star Wars" music, because conditions may be ripe for the rise of the Evil Empire once again! ;-) A lot of good young players emerged at the end of last season, plus speculators have detected some prominent Mesozoic activity just east of Washington D.C. :-P Thanks for reading; any thoughts welcome... -Adam
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:46 AM EST EST