After finishing our Novice year with a strong performance at Nationals, we arrived in New Haven feeling ready to win. We held multiple practices every week prior to the tournament to prepare our new and experienced players. For the first time in a few years, BLS had three strong intermediate teams competing. We were very excited to play Brookfield Academy round 1 because we have had great rounds with each other in the past. The round started off with“ What daughter of Schoenius-” and I buzzed, answering“ Atalanta” to get it correct. This momentum only continued to build through the rest of the match. However Brookfield Academy managed to recover and win with amazing buzzes from their grammarian Kyle Jain. Our second and third rounds went smoothly after we tried to keep a good mentality after our loss in round 1. We made semis as 5th seed to face Philips Exeter and Northside College Prep. After the first 10 tossups, the game was very intense, with our score being almost identical to Northside ' s. Throughout the whole match, Ben played the best he has ever played which allowed us to lead by 5 points going into the final tossup. The team and I knew the last question would be a myth tossup, so I tried to calm my nerves down. The moderator starts the question,“ What Isthmian king bought his horses-” and I buzzed to answer“ Rhesus” only realizing after that I had got it incorrect. However, Northside also buzzed in to get the question wrong as well giving us the win. We could not believe that we made finals by 5 points after the most intense round we had ever played. We played Brookfield Academy again in finals along with Thomas Jefferson High School. We managed to bring home the win after Ben answered“ Luca” to tossup 19. We got 1st, and Ben received MVP.
-Danny Nguyen, Class IV
“ Lux et veritas et victoria”- light and truth and victory. It turns out that this motto, emblazoned on the official T-shirts of this year’ s Yale certamen tournament, could not be more applicable to the performance of our 3 novice, 3 intermediate, and 3 advanced teams that day. With over 80 teams registered from all across the country, competition was fierce. For my team( consisting of Dante Minutillo, Carina Layfield, Clair Fu, and yours truly), these contenders included Northside College Prep( round 1), BASIS D. C. from Washington, D. C.( round 2), and even our own teams from BLS( round 2 and semifinals). Things started off a bit slow for us early on, but as the tournament progressed we picked up in both speed and energy. We even managed to answer nine questions in a row during round three! After making our way past semifinals, we found ourselves pitted against formidable teams from Wisconsin’ s Brookfield Academy and Virginia’ s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for finals. Despite this, we“ played our game”, to quote our coach Mr. Howard, and had the incredible honor of bringing home gold medals for BLS!
-Ashley Chou, Class II
4
INTERMEDIATE CERTAMEN
After finishing our Novice year with a strong performance at Nationals, we arrived in New Haven feeling ready to win. We held multiple practices every week prior to the tournament to prepare our new and experienced players. For the first time in a few years, BLS had three strong intermediate teams competing. We were very excited to play Brookfield Academy round 1 because we have had great rounds with each other in the past. The round started off with“ What daughter of Schoenius-” and I buzzed, answering“ Atalanta” to get it correct. This momentum only continued to build through the rest of the match. However Brookfield Academy managed to recover and win with amazing buzzes from their grammarian Kyle Jain. Our second and third rounds went smoothly after we tried to keep a good mentality after our loss in round 1. We made semis as 5th seed to face Philips Exeter and Northside College Prep. After the first 10 tossups, the game was very intense, with our score being almost identical to Northside ' s. Throughout the whole match, Ben played the best he has ever played which allowed us to lead by 5 points going into the final tossup. The team and I knew the last question would be a myth tossup, so I tried to calm my nerves down. The moderator starts the question,“ What Isthmian king bought his horses-” and I buzzed to answer“ Rhesus” only realizing after that I had got it incorrect. However, Northside also buzzed in to get the question wrong as well giving us the win. We could not believe that we made finals by 5 points after the most intense round we had ever played. We played Brookfield Academy again in finals along with Thomas Jefferson High School. We managed to bring home the win after Ben answered“ Luca” to tossup 19. We got 1st, and Ben received MVP.
-Danny Nguyen, Class IV
ADVANCED CERTAMEN
“ Lux et veritas et victoria”- light and truth and victory. It turns out that this motto, emblazoned on the official T-shirts of this year’ s Yale certamen tournament, could not be more applicable to the performance of our 3 novice, 3 intermediate, and 3 advanced teams that day. With over 80 teams registered from all across the country, competition was fierce. For my team( consisting of Dante Minutillo, Carina Layfield, Clair Fu, and yours truly), these contenders included Northside College Prep( round 1), BASIS D. C. from Washington, D. C.( round 2), and even our own teams from BLS( round 2 and semifinals). Things started off a bit slow for us early on, but as the tournament progressed we picked up in both speed and energy. We even managed to answer nine questions in a row during round three! After making our way past semifinals, we found ourselves pitted against formidable teams from Wisconsin’ s Brookfield Academy and Virginia’ s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for finals. Despite this, we“ played our game”, to quote our coach Mr. Howard, and had the incredible honor of bringing home gold medals for BLS!