Torch: WI | Page 9

On November 11th, six Wisconsin teams traveled to New Haven, Connecticut to compete in the 7th annual Yale Certamen Tournament. In a field packed with schools from Florida to Virginia, the Brookfield Academy teams delivered strong performances in an optimistic beginning to the year.

The night after a riveting (read: very uncompetitive) Agon (Certamen, but Greek) competition in which BA bested BA for Yale’s first Agon championship, our Certaminators breakfasted early and set out for preliminary rounds. After an interesting address about the role of propaganda in the classical world by Yale professor Andrew Johnston, BA’s two intermediate teams began their rounds. The Intermediate A team had a good start with 130 points to Boston Latin School’s 100 in Round 1, but they skyrocketed to 310 points (out of a possible 400!) in round 2. After another strong performance in round 3, they entered their semifinal seeded first. The Intermediate B team, which opted to play in the newly created B division, finished first in that division and thus earned the ninth seed in semifinals.

After lunch at a very congested Panera, the novice and advanced teams played their preliminary rounds. The eighth-grade novice teams, competing in their first-ever Certamen invitational, performed well throughout, and the A team qualified for semifinals as the fourth seed. The advanced B team, saddled with an extremely difficult draw including many of the nation’s strongest teams, unfortunately didn’t qualify for semifinals. The A team put up over two hundred points in each of its first two preliminary rounds against less experienced teams but fell seriously short in round 3 against a very strong BLS team. Despite this, they qualified for semifinals as a fourth seed.

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yale certamen

by margot armbruster

At left: Advanced B team members (left to right) Anand Saluja, Victoria Toledo, Amanda Roessler, and Katie Hieb pose by their buzzer numbers before a round. Photo by Alisha Khosla.

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