Chapter 113: Familiar Challengers

Sunday, April 24, 1983

Different day, same breakfast. This time we were, if anything, more relaxed, notwithstanding the higher stakes. We’d gotten a day under our belts. Today would likely be worse, but (if we were still competing at all) we’d only have two rounds tomorrow.

The worst part of the day was likely going to be the mid-afternoon stretch when we were waiting for postings. I was not looking forward to that.

Postings came out around nine forty-five. Cammie and I headed over together, finding that we were up against a team from Washington State. We’d never heard of them, and Lizzie and Janet said they hadn’t either. They had a team from North Carolina, also a mystery to all of us.

Conventional wisdom said that round five should be tough no matter what. It should be the best versus the best, and the least-good against the least-good. Sixth round was where you might get a clue about breaking.

Conventional wisdom was wrong, in my not-entirely-humble opinion. The team we competed against just plain wasn’t as good as we were. Most likely that either meant we’d lost a round we should’ve won or they’d won a round they should’ve lost.

It’s not that they were bad. No one here was bad. It’s just that we could counter them every time and they couldn’t always counter us. Our cross-examinations were crisper, our speeches more polished.

Once we were out, Cammie looked at me.

“Huh?” she said.

“Either we’re near the bottom of the 4-0 bracket, or we guessed wrong and we’re somewhere in the 3-1’s. Or ... we’re really screwed and down in the 2-2’s or worse.”

“If we’re in the 2-2’s we’re not breaking, not unless something goes nuts.”

I nodded. “I’m not quite sure of the math, and it’s a really messy probability problem. Probability was never my strong suit.”

She giggled. “You’re better at math than I am.”

“And you’re better than about ninety-five percent of high school juniors.”

She blushed a bit. “Um ... I ... don’t think of myself that way?”

“That’s because we’re in such an unusual environment. Your PSAT score should tell you something.”

“Well, yeah, but ... that’s different.”

“Is it?”

“That’s about being fast and knowing how to eliminate multiple choice answers.”

“Which you’re still much better at than the average. But you’ll also be in calculus next year, and you’ll likely get straight A’s. That’s unusual, no matter how normal it looks for Memorial kids.”

“I ... will have to think about that. So ... best guess?”

“We’re 4-0, mid-bracket, and they won at least one round they should’ve lost.”

She nodded. “Always the optimist.”

“I still have trouble believing we lost more than one of the first four. 3-1 is possible, but if so, we’re 4-1 now. The key will be next round. Do we get an easy round, one like this one, or are we up against the top teams?”

“Makes sense to me!”

When we got back to the cafeteria, Lizzie and Janet were already there.

“How your round go?” Janet said. “Ours was weird.”

“Ours, too!” Cammie said. “The other team wasn’t as tough as we expected.”

“Us, too,” Lizzie said. “We’re guessing we’re in the middle of the 4-0’s. It’s the most likely answer.”

“That was Steve’s. I’m a bit more pessimistic. I think we’re 3-1, losing one we think we won. Well, 4-1 now.”

Janet said, “I’m with you! No way that other team was 4-0 at comparable strength. Can’t be!”

“Maybe they swapped high-high and high-low?” I said.

“That ... would... totally explain it,” Janet said. “But how would that happen?”

“Either a mistake, or they’re messing with us.”

“Huh,” Cammie said. “I didn’t even think of that.”

“I just thought of it now,” I said. “If we’re both up the upper half of the 4-0’s...”

“It could be,” Lizzie said. “I mean, we should be. Let’s see how sixth goes. If it’s tough and they’re good...”

“Swapped pairings,” we all said.

They served burgers for lunch while we waited. Simply by time of day, this was the best time for lunch, but it still felt awkwardly close to breakfast. We all under-ate a bit. Wouldn’t do to be in a food coma for sixth round.

Amit still ate more than any of the rest of us. I have no idea where he put it. I likely weighed twice what he did and routinely ate less. Even in my first go-round, when I weighed half again what I did now (or more) and was in lousy shape, I still ate less than Amit. His metabolism was probably a research paper waiting to happen.

Again, we were right to the postings as soon as they came out. Our opponents were Bailey and Drake from Glenbrook North. Never heard of them, but Glenbrook North had a strong reputation.

Lizzie and Janet had no idea, but their opponents were from Bronx Sci. We’d run into a mediocre Bronx Sci team before, so who knows? Still, another school with a strong reputation.

I found Angie and mentioned it. She hadn’t heard of them either, but thought it was cool that we were debating someone from there.

Cammie and I headed over. Bailey turned out to be Kennedy Bailey, a cute blonde who reminded me of Lexi a bit. Drake turned out to be Jason Drake, who had the handsome quarterback look down pat.

They lost both of us about a minute into talking to them. I mean, they were good, I’ll give them credit, but Kennedy made a pass at me. Subtle, but a pass. Jason made nearly as a subtle a pass at Cammie. Nothing overt, just doing a good job of sending attraction signals. A flip of her hair, a slightly lingering handshake on his part, a touch on Cammie’s shoulder, or a little caress of my elbow. I hated to think how many teams would be thrown off.

Sadly for them, my girlfriend was both prettier and also at this tournament. That, and I’d dated Jessica Lively. I wasn’t necessarily immune, but it’d take more than a hair-flip and some touching to sway me. It swayed Cammie even less, of course. She wouldn’t have budged even for Kennedy. Jason didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell, though Cammie certainly made him look as if she did. Points to her.

When we got to our table, Cammie looked over at me, smiling, and whispered, “Oh, my God.”

I nodded, whispering back, “I vote hilarious.”

She grinned a bit more. “Talk about barking up the wrong tree!”

“The only thing that’d make it more perfect is if I was Charles.”

She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at that.

The round itself was ... well ... better than the previous round. I was going with the swapped results theory. They could easily have been 5-0 simply on people skills, and they were in no way bad. It’s just that, again, we practiced with better teams every day.

When we got back to the cafeteria, Cammie and I told the story, getting laughter from everyone on the team. That included Meg and Steffie.

Janet said, “Even I am totally more subtle than that!”

That got another round of laughter.

It took about half an hour from when the last teams straggled in to when the tournament director came out. This time he got behind a raised lectern and tapped the microphone to get everyone’s attention. That, and the wail of feedback, accomplished the job.

“Thank you to everyone who joined us this weekend. We know this is a major trip for most of you and one that it’s hard to plan and budget for. We always hope to make this tournament worth your while, and we’re gratified so many of you agree.”

That got a round of applause, which he paused to accept. Then he continued, saying, “With that said, I have to apologize. We inadvertently swapped fifth and sixth round pairings.”

I saw some heads nodding, but also some puzzled looks. More of the second than the first. That didn’t surprise me. The top teams would know something was off, most likely. The middle tier wouldn’t. The bottom tier might, but then my experience of bottom-tier teams is that they often think they’re much better than they are, because they focus on win total and not how the wins came about.

Of course, I was also hoping I’d never wind up in that category...

“I’m sure some of you noticed that.”

A few more nods.

“We do apologize. You had the same rounds you would have had, simply in the wrong order. We hope it didn’t affect anyone’s tournament experience too negatively.”

He got another, slightly more muted, round of applause.

“We’re posting breaks now. Best of luck to all of you, and — win or lose — thank you for joining us!”

One more round of applause, this one sounding a little off because most people were moving towards the posting area. We all checked our own, then converged and discussed them as a team.

Cammie and I immediately found our names, then quickly spotted Janet and Lizzie. We were well apart on the list, which might mean the list had underlying brackets, or it could be random luck.

In the ‘random luck’ category, somehow it didn’t surprise me that our opponents were none other than Hamilton/Lewis from Lexington High. Cammie gave me a little grin when she saw it. In fairness, I liked Christopher ... but I had no qualms at all about beating him in a tournament.

As a team, we’d completely exceeded expectations. The only person who hadn’t broken was Lexi, which sucked for her, but she had the third in State to fall back on. Hard to feel like a loser when you know you’re third-best in Texas.