The College Bowl Tournament was held at Hamilton College in Utica, New York. Queen's paid for van and driver for the team and arranged for an expense account for the students.
The team actually made the playoffs, but was demolished by Cornell in the first round, which put a quick end to the story. Norm Hart actually procured varsity letters for the team members.
Queen's lost only one round-robin game, by ten points to Cornell. They defeated Syracuse in the Semi-Finals, and then lost to Cornell again in the finals.
Queen's entered only the Region 2 College Bowl Tournament, held at Cornell University. The team consisted of six players and a coach, Norm Hart. Legend has it that the best of these players was a frosh named Victor Catano, who would head College Bowl at Queen's for the next 3 years. Despite some promising practice rounds, the team went 3-2 in its division the next day, for a 5th place finish overall. Cornell beat St. Bonaventure in the final.
The next year, the club was in a similar situation, and despite huge turnover, managed to field a team at the CBI Regionals at SUNY - Albany.
Queen's College Bowl was formed as an AMS club as the 1993/1994 school year began. year hiatus. The two founders, Bruce Lin and John Colterman, set up a booth at Clubs Night and discovered many other Queen's students who had played Reach for the Top in high school; an informal network of interested students was beginning to form. College Bowl seemed to have a far more stable pre-existing structure than ACF, and the club wasn't yet organized enough to have students writing questions and driving to various invitationals. Thus College Bowl was the logical first step.
Bruce and John were surprised that night when Michelle Dunstan and Sarah Schroeder confronted them, claiming to be the rightful inheritors of the "Queen's College Bowl" title. The two women had both participated in College Bowl two years ago, and were attempting to reform the club It's not clear how far they had gone with their organizational efforts but a peaceful resolution was as the second group merged with the first. The club's first executive was essentially composed of these four people.
QCB was registered as an official AMS club for the first time this year, moving it out from under the JDUC's wing. The constitution was adapted from the generic AMS template. A buzzer system and scoreboard were recovered from the JDUC's old storage closet and loaned to the club by the JDUC. The buzzer system proved to be quite unreliable.
Weekly games were played at College Bowl meetings. A recreational house league was formed, but players did not show up regularly (often, entire teams failed to appear) and this idea was eventually abandoned.
Intramural tournament: eight teams of four players each were formed. Moderators were Sony Singh and Bruce Lin. KCVI's buzzer system was borrowed to make up the full complement of two systems. A short list of twelve (or was it sixteen?) of the top players was made up. Only five had the funds and time to go to Syracuse so there was no problem with team selection. Team selection would prove to be a contentious issue in the future, with more funds available and more students eager to play in the Regionals.
Coach: finding a coach was a year-long headache. Fifteen staff and faculty members were personally approached, including Professor Lobb from English who had participated on Jeopardy! Perhaps unsurpringly, none were particularly interested in driving to Syrcause in a van with five undergrads for a weekend. Jack Sinnott, the club's contact with the JDUC, and JDUC director finally agreed to go as a last minute savior. Katherine Philips, a former AMS president and employee in the school of business, volunteered for the next year, although she would end up being unable to go to Regionals.
Regionals: Many Queen's students got their first taste of private school America at Syracuse University after a snowy drive in January. The team consisted of Andrew Kusmierczyk, Stephanie Chow, and Jeremy Sandler, each of whom had been on the winning team "President's Choice." (The captain and possibly best player of that team - an English grad student named Dawson - was unable to travel to Syracuse.) Bart Skorupinski was the next player on the depth chart who was able to travel, while Michelle Dunstan, a strong player, pulled out just before the tournament due to an interview with the Monitor company. Bruce travelled as an observer. Queen's finished 7-6 with many complaints about US bias.
Funding: $300 from the Principal's Office; similar funds from AMS clubs grant; other funds from JDUC. Regionals competitors had to pay their own way.
I think this was the year of the infamous Campus Challenge and politics professor Michael Hawes' handpicked selection of four politics students for a trivia competition "over issues in international affairs and contemporary history at George Washington University in Washington D.C."
Regionals: Rochester. More problems with team selection than last time: a short list was created, and a test was administered using the last (unplayed) intramural pack. The relatively high weighting given to intramural tossup performance skewed team selection towards good players with weak teammates. Team: Chris Rescorla, Trevor Ogle, Bruce Lin, Paul McGlinchey, Mark Kleniewski. In the end, Queen's finished just one game short of the top four and thus the playoffs.
Coach: Nicholas Snider, former ASUS president and staff member from Queen's Liaison. The story of how Nicholas became the club's coach is an interesting one: he happened to be on campus one evening and was told by a friend that Clubs Night was taking place at Grant Hall. He ran into the QCB exhibit, joined the club, and eventually took on the coach's role.
Other tournaments: Queen's also played in its first ACF tournament this year, the regionals at Cornell. A severe beating was administered by virtually all of the other teams. QCB also ran an exhibition game in the JDUC, featuring a team of students (selected from the audience) against Dean of Students Bob Crawford, Chaplain Brian Yealland, VP John Cowan, and Jack Sinnott.
The Region 2 College Bowl tournament was also held at Queen's, and the home team came up with its most successful showing ever, finishing a strong second to Cornell University.
The club also branched out beyond College Bowl, sending teams to two invitational tournaments. These teams, though inexperienced, performed quite well at both tournaments.
1998 saw Queen's largest inter-collegiate tour ever, with more than 20 people attending five tournaments. 1998 also saw a lot of firsts: Queen's also won its first tournament ever, beating Cornell in the finals of the inaugural Canadian National Trivia Tournament, also held at Queen's. The first-ever multi-Canadian University appearance took place, with two teams from Waterloo facing two teams from Queen's in the afore-mentioned tournament. Queen's also placed second in Cornell's Big Red Royal Rumble, the first ever Canadianized tournament.
This year also marked the start of the Canadian quiz circuit. In addition to Queen's, Waterloo, Western and Ottawa attended tournaments. Teams are in the making at Toronto, Windsor, McMaster, Carleton, Ottawa and McGill.
Queen's funding was re-ratified by the slimmest of margins, guaranteeing a large bank account through the year 2002.