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Team 2 (Christina Hershey, Michael Good, Austin Sachs, Janaya Sachs and Jesse Yoder) had a good season as well.  They also finished third in their league in the regular season. They finished first in their round-robin group in the ACC tournament. They lost in the quarter-finals on the last question to the eventual runner-up after defeating the regular season champion in the previous round. Jesse Yoder finished 11^th and Michael Good finished 20^th in the individual standings.

Team 2 (Christina Hershey, Austin and Janaya Sachs, and Jeremy White) had a good season as well.  In the ACC tournament, they finished the round-robin phase with the same record as Team 1, and finished the tournament in the “sweet sixteen” (the top sixteen teams in the tournament).

2011 Slate Hill Bible Quizzing Season

The 2010 season was among the best in the eight-year history of Slate Hill Bible Quizzing.  Although there were only eight quizzers, just enough to populate two teams at a minimal level, both teams did very well.

Team 2 (Christina Hershey, Jonathan Good, Marc Hershey and Rebekah Henry), coached by Ron Hershey and Caleb Miller had a very successful season.  Marc and Rebekah were first year quizzers and became very strong contributors as the season progressed.  Two members of the team were honored as Top 50 quizzers, among about 250.  Jonathan finished in a tie for 33^rd and Rebekah finished 49^th.  Marc missed the Top 50 by only 15 total points.  Max Beck helped out one week as a substitute when Christina had a conflict.

The team had a regular season record of 14 wins and seven losses, and finished ninth among 24 teams in their league.  The most disappointing part of the season was the ACC tournament, in which the team did not qualify to advance to the 24-team single-elimination bracket.  This was due to being in by-far the toughest round-robin group and the fact that they lost all three of their close matches.  In the Invitational Tournament in Kidron, Ohio, they won six matches and lost three.  Although places are not recognized beyond the top six, they finished in what would have been 18^th place out of 75 teams.  And they almost did much better.  They were leading going into the final two questions, and tied going into the final question, against Petra 2, the team that finished fourth, only to lose on that last question.  Had they won that match, they would have had an excellent chance of finishing at least fifth. They were eliminated from the championship bracket in another match that was decided on the last question, losing to a team that had a more impressive combination of wins than anyone in the tournament, other than the tournament finalists.  Along the way, they defeated teams that finished third, fourth and fifth in their ACC leagues.  One of the most memorable moments was Christina pushing her buzzer and correctly answering the 12^th question (out of 15) to complete a team bonus and clinch a victory over Hinkletown 2, the above-mentioned third-place team.   That recalled an earlier time in the ACC tournament when she buzzed in against the same team on the final question to earn a team bonus and send the match into overtime.

Team 1 (Michael Good, Luisa Miller, AJ Beck and Brady Miller), coached by Kara Miller, had perhaps the most successful season of any Slate Hill team in history.   They had two quizzers (Luisa and Michael) finish in the top 15, among about 250 individual quizzers in the ACC.  Having two quizzers from the same team ranked that high is almost unheard-of.  The other two quizzers both finished in the top 80, which is remarkable on a team with two top-15 quizzers.  They won the regular season championship among the 48 teams of the ACC, which is decided in a playoff among the top four teams in the final regular season standings.  They finished in second place among 75 teams in the Invitational Tournament, losing only to the Sand Ridge from Northwest Ohio, who has been in the finals for six consecutive years and has now won four out the last five championships in that tournament.   Although Slate Hill teams had finished among the top six in four out of the previous five years, none of them had finished higher than fourth.  No Pennsylvania team has won the tournament since 2003.  This was only the second time that a Pennsylvania team has been in the finals in the last seven years.   In all, the team finished with 34 wins and four losses, the most wins and the fewest losses of any Slate Hill team in the program’s eight-year history.  Petra 1 and Petra 2, who finished first in the final regular season standings in the two ACC leagues and finished first and second respectively in the ACC tournament each lost only four matches this year too.  Slate Hill 1 faced those two teams a total of five times in the regular season, playoffs and tournaments and won four of those matches, losing only to Petra 2 in the quarter-finals of the ACC tournament.

Slate Hill 1 had a number of dramatic wins in crucial matches this season.  In the regular season playoffs, they won the semi-final match over Petra 2 in overtime.  In the finals, they found themselves trailing Petra 1 95 to 45 going into the final three questions.  There was only one way to avoid losing the match. Michael and Brady had to be the first to buzz in on two different questions and answer them correctly to earn a team bonus, and the team had to win the other question.  Brady buzzed in on the 13^th question, and Michael on the 14^th and 15^th questions, to tie the score.  Michael buzzed in to quiz out on the first question of the three-question overtime to give Slate Hill a 15-point lead.  Petra 1 tied the match with a quiz-out of their own on the second question.  On the final question of overtime, with the score tied 110-110, AJ buzzed in on the question, “The weapons we . . . ?” and correctly answered, “are not of this world” to win the match and the championship.  In the Ohio tournament, they were trailing Petra 2, who finished fourth, going into the final question, when Brady buzzed in to give them a team bonus and the victory.  In the following match with Orville (from Wayne County, Ohio) to earn a berth in the finals, they were trailing by 30 points going into the final two questions with only one way to win.  Brady and Michael each needed to buzz in and successfully answer one of the two questions, which they did to win the match by ten points.

In the final match, which they lost, they faced a similar situation.  Because of several unfortunate errors, two of which involved misheard questions, they entered the final five questions trailing by 65 points, needing two different quizzers to buzz in successfully for a team bonus and to win all five questions, in order to win by five points.  Slate Hill won questions 11 and 12.  AJ, one of the quizzers who needed to buzz in for the team bonus, buzzed in on the 13^th question and answered it correctly to keep their chances alive, drawing a huge cheer from the large, boisterous and highly partisan crowd.  But it was not to be.  Sand Ridge buzzed in on the 14^th question to end the possibility of another dramatic comeback win.