Brandeis finally hosted their first tournament, with no little success.  Five teams from three schools, plus a Brandeis team, competed.  BU Bird in Space was Erik Nielsen, who won, going undefeated for ten rounds.  Brandeis didn't do too shabbily either, finishing fourth, and Dan P. was the fourth-highest scorer.  Statistics are available here.

10-26-02: Beaver Bonspiel IX- MIT

Brandeis Stilton (Mehrun, Rob, Dan, Ted) went 5-8 in the Open division, a good start to the season.   Brandeis Edam (Amy, Stuart, Mo, Nam) went 2-7-1 in the JV division, but gained some valuable playing experience, and did very well considering it was everybody's first collegiate tournament.  Ted and Mehrun were individually 4th and 12th in the Open division, and Stuart was 6th in the JV division.  Stats can be found here.

11-02-02: ACF Fall Tournament- Harvard U.

Kai, Ted, and Amy went to Cambridge for some ACF action.  There they finished with a very respectable 5-7 record and sixth place (out of ten), winning their last four games in a row, including a close win over MIT in which Jon helped out.  There were at least five questions on Ohio presidents, and Ted must have negged on all of them, thus perpetuating the Ohio Pride malediction.  Ted was the 4th highest scorer.

11-09-02: TRASH Regionals- Boston U.

Brandeis sent two teams to TRASH: Stanley Spadowski's Clubhouse (Chris, Scott, Ted) rocked the competition, finishing third overall, with only three losses to Cornell, Yale A, and some other team.  Their performance was good enough for an automatic bid to TRASHionals.  Sobchak Security (Dan P., Amy, Nam) acquitted themselves very well in the lower bracket (4-9), beating the infamous Gerbils, and showing off their awesome TRASH skillz.  Chris and Ted both finished in the top five individuals overall (4-5).  The teams won a ton of books and CD's, as well as root beer-flavored candy canes.

11-16-02: Crimson Puppy Chow VI- Boston U.

Brandeis Arbitrarily Called Branwell (Erik's name, not ours.  Mehrun, Amy, Kai, Joe)  won the "Anne" bracket (9th of 19 teams), and received some nasty "organic" candy from Trader Joe's.  Mehrun finished second overall, and brought the Borscht back to Brandeis.   The tourney also featured a lunchtime excursion to Ryan Family Amusements at Fenway Park, where everyone candlepin bowled. Scores: Kai-70, Ted-61, Meh-60, Joe-54, Amy-39.  Congratulations to Kai on winning the first ever BrUQB $60,000 Candlepin Challenge.

12-07-02: Bulldogs Over Broadway- Yale U.

Kai, Jon, and Ted went to this tournamnent as a sidenote to a Krispy Kreme trip.  After the obligatory stopover in Newington, the team headed to lovely New Haven for some quizzing action.  Brandeis finished with a 3-7 record, and the traditional win over Rutgers (after which their spawn Rutgers-Newark [Rutgers-Newark used a player from Montclair State. Cheaters!]  came back to bite the team on the ass with a five-point win, and deprived our team of a Konyaanisqatsi question).  Kai and Jon were introduced to the joys of Cracker Barrel, but Pepe's Pizza was way overrated.  A well-run tournament by the Yale crew, and Ted won a slinky for being fourth highest scorer.

1-24-03 & 1-25-03: Penn Bowl XII- U. of Pennsylvania

Summary by D. Passner:
On the morning of January 24th 2003, a 'Deis team of Ted "He Hate Me" Stratton, Dan "Rockapella" Jacobs and Dan "Running with Scissors and out of creative nicknames" Passner embarked on a trip to UPenn for Pennbowl. Seven hours, a trip to Krispy Kreme and a Cross-Bronx expressway later, we arrived.
The tournament was run by the legendary Samer T. Ismail, who I will most definitely never leave in care of my children. After several hours of delays, the tourney got underway, whereupon Berkeley gave us a 495-35 thrashing. We dedicated the rest of the night to David Druce, who was unable to attend due to financial limitations, and our luck soon changed. In the second match, we beat Swathmore B, with Ted getting 9 tossups and DP, ironically enough, powering on "Mishna." We then thrashed Case-Western, with Ted dishing out his own form of Ohio pride, and Johns Hopkins, whom DP would now be playing for in an alternate universe. We then retired for the evening, Dan to his luxurious frat accomodations and the others to the 4* Sheraton Center City at $70 (G-d bless priceline.)
On Saturday, we got beat by UNC, Chicago, and Princeton in laughers, however we gave Wash U. B a right good stuffing 200-150. We were then rebracketed in the E bracket. We proceeded to beat Yale B (Todd from "3-South"), with Ted answering Token correctly, thanks to Rob. We secured the win with a last TU answer of "Unsafe at Any speed." The wins kept coming, sans a loss to MIT. Dan impressed all with his knowledge of Ken Kesey, and we went 4-1 in our bracket. Ted came in 12th and got a Frank Lloyd Wright book. DP got the ultimate prize though, a tax-free XBox from a DelawareWalmart.
We made the trek back on Sunday morning, with invigorated spirits and lighter wallets. All were happy and Dan was sleepy. We all learned a little about life, love and Samer.

2-01-03: Terrier Tussle XII- Boston U.

Kai, Ted, Mehrun, and Anna attended this tourney put on by the always genial BU folks.  Once again, Mehrun had to be roused from his slumber by a team of crack commandos.  Once at BU, Deis avoided the first-game slump, and went on to take second in the tournament, with an 8-2 record. They defeated MIT twice proving that the best defense against science is a good offense, but could not repeat the Harvard win from last Tussle.  Anna, Mehrun, Kai, and Ted received some books for being runners-up, and Ted was number-one scorer, a first for BrUQB.  He got a Kazaam video for his efforts.  Perhaps more importantly, however, Meh broke the club candlepin bowling record, rolling a whopping 75.

2-08-03:  NAQT Regional Championship- Babson College

The Division II team won.  Wooooo!  More detailed explanation to follow.

2-15-03: ACF Regionals- MIT

Dan Passner, Ted Stratton, and Joseph Garlick made the fatal error of going to ACF Regionals, where they promptly got schooled.  The few highlights included a Daria and an Office Space question.  Probably the best thing to come out of the day was Joseph breaking the two-week candlepin record with a score of 77.  Also, kudos to MIT for hosting a tournament that ran on time for a change.

3-22-02: Cancel Bowl 3.75: Minding the Gap- Babson College

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4-04-03 & 4-05-03: NAQT National Championships- UCLA

In the citaaay of L.A. / In the citaaay of good ol' Watts / In the citaaay, the city of Compton / We kept it rockin'
Summary by D. Passner:
 Nationals was a life altering experience, and, for the people in the Venice Beach drum circle, a mind altering experience. To use the famous Caesarean tricolon, "We Came, We Saw, We had Del Taco spicy jack quesadillas." We came, albeit 'twas a close call. Our flight was to leave at 8:00 and we got there at like 7:10. It taught us that we all need wake up calls (Kai) and valid photo ID (Dan.) The flight was long and unventful, except for the thrillride movie of 2002, Drumline. I think we can all agree that the white guy in it is the Messiah (take that Shabbtai Tzvi.)
 We got to LA and we were invigorated. The place is, in a word, beautiful. We got the rental car, ate some killer middle eastern food and went to Watts Towers. For those of you who don't know, Watts Towers is a beautiful piece of folk art made by Simon Rodia, a diminutive, abusive, lonely alcoholic (just like Robert Reich.) That one man so messed up could make something that incredible was true inspiration to us. We took off for UCLA energized.
 Our first match was against USC, who asked us to contribute to a running story that they were doing, of course we took it so far off course that they stopped it after our match. We beat them handily, and once the onus was off us, the wins came rolling in. After 3 rounds Meh was 3rd highest scorer and we were still undefeated. Our toughest match that night was against Bainbrige, a Community College in Georgia. We were down by nearly 100 points at one point, and we came back by scoring 95 points on 8 tossups (which is why we need bonus conversion.) Kai sealed the win for us with a last minute buzz of "The Nose."
 The best team we faced was Chicago, a team that many had pegged for a top 5 finish. We beat them 95-80 on an insanely tough packet. We finished the evening 6-0 with a guarantee of a first bracket bid. Meh was fifth highest scorer with close to 60 a game with Dan, Kai and Rob each contributing 17, 14 and 10 respectively.
 The next day we offed UNC and thereby finished the prelims as one of only 2 undefeated teams. People were talking about the underdogs known as 'Deis who were winning every match.
 Then came the second round. The questions got harder and the teams got tougher. We had the lead after a quarter of the game in all three matches, against UCLA, Berkeley and Stanford, but our train got derailed in each of the matches, which still leaves us with a better safety record than Amtrak. We almost beat Caltech, but lost when they powered a question and then got a bonus on indian food (mmm, Nan.) We shall not speak of the last two rounds.
 All in all though, we did incredibly well. We were 8th place baby!!! That is a terrific finish for a national tourney. Meh took home 9th place solidifying his place as one of the best players in the nation and the rest of the team performed quite well also, (everyone had at least 2 powers and an average above 10 points.)
 This summary would be remiss if it were not to thank those who supported us, (less than should have supported us but that is mere sour grapes.) Of course, Ted did more than anyone, coming all the way down to help out at the tourney, so as Ali G would say, "Big it Up."  Thanks also to Dean Wong, Dean Eddy, and Dr. John Hose for supporting us financially, and everyone who bought Krispy Kremes.
 Now, to list the places we visited: 99 cents only, Loyola Marymount, Del Taco, In-N-Out Burger, $1.50 Sub Shack, Natural Foods place, Weird Afro-American guitarist who shall remain nameless (Rob), Watts Towers, Venice Beach, Canter's Deli ft. a meeting w/ Jeopardy! writer Mr. Billy Wisse, and Zankou Chicken on Sunset.
 Message to the freshman:  If you want free travel come to Quiz Bowl!

4-10-03 & 4-11-03: TRASHionals Syxx: Revenge of the Lightning Kid- Boston U.

We layed the smack down, X-Pac style.
Summary by D. Passner:
 In a sentence, TRASHIONALS was the shiznit.
 On Day 1, Ted, Anna and Paz drove down to scenic BU where we met up with alumni Chris, Adam and Scott. Ted and the Alumni formed our A team, the team that actually qualified for TRASHionals, while Anna and Dan were the B team. The A team got off to a slow start, losing many close matches, which hampered their record and ended their chance at claiming the ECW championship belt, which is awarded to the champion. Brandeis B faired worse still. Its only close match was a 120-81 loss versus Dartmouth. However, every Brandeis player played quite well. By the end of the first day, Dan was 13th and Ted was 18th. The best buzzes of the day were corteousy of Dan, who knew Shawn Michaels' (the wrestler not the porn star) entrance music from the first scream and the "1927 Yankees" which Dan knew from "reliever Wilcy Moore." The latter answer elicited an ovation from Don't Be Like Them, the 4th place finisher in the tourney.  Chris got some amazing audio tossups like "Celebration" and "What I Got" after one drum stroke, and Ted 30'd a bonus on old-school rap.
 At the end of the day, we were rebracketed. Our A team was placed in the 3rd bracket, quite impressive a feat, while the B team was placed in the last bracket to duke it out in the veritable Kitchen Stadium of Sucktitude. After rebracketing, we played theme packets, which are packets based on a single subject. Dan wrote a packet on baseball, saving Brandeis QB 20 bucks. Ted and Dan were quite scared by the knowledge level of all who played. Everyone seemed to know about George Brett's hemorrhoids and the legendary Charlie Steinhice gave a doctoral dissertaion on Neil Simon's "The Slugger's wife."
 Day 2 was great as well. Joe joined the B team, bringing on an unmatched performance on boni. The A team lost just one match, to the Talia Shire Fan Club, which featured the leading scorer, Kenny. At that point, we knew that the B team had finished dead last and that the A team had finished an outstanding 15th, which went to show the wealth of knowledge BQB, past and present, possesses. We stayed to watch the finals, which was entertaining, and to see the awards. We later found out that Dan had finished 14th in the nation in scoring, and Ted had finished just out of the top 20; adjusting for team quality he was by far the best Brandeis had to offer. The questions were great, the times were great (Chris we all loved your "real world" workplace stories) and the people were great.