Team Illinois 2001

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With flights from three different cities there was more room for delays this year, but in the end we had the fewest delays ever.

Coach Grierson, his wife, and Jim Davis took off on time from Midway and arrived about 10 minutes early, around 11:15. Coach Martin and her family arrived from Nashville about 45 minutes later, only a little late, and they headed off to Disney on their own. The St. Louis flight, which had taken off on time, got to Orlando just as a storm with lightning hit. Scheduled to land at 1:15, they were put in a holding pattern for about 45 minutes before being allowed to land. Even then, it was another 45 minutes before they were allowed off the plane.

Upon arrival at Disney's Contemporary Hotel we met up with David Werner who had come down on Wednesday with his parents.

We held a team practice, had dinner together, then went to Coach Keegan's room (Coach of Team Maryland) for a scrimmage match against Maryland and Washington DC. Both are All-Star teams, meaning, like Illinois, they come from more than one school. This meant we had three very good teams in one room. Each state had four of their six players "in" at a time, but the six players "out" (two from each state) played on an "Other" team, so nobody was left out.

Team Illinois won the first game with 271 points; Team Maryland was second with 258 points; Team DC was third with 253 points; and the Others had 175 points. I might add that David Werner from Team Illinois answered 2 of the 6 questions that the Other team got correct. Team Illinois followed their strategy perfectly, answering 11 questions correctly (positive points) and only 1 question wrong (negative points).

Maryland won the second game with 326 points. The Other team was second with 256 points; Team Illinois was third with 245 points (9 questions correct, and none wrong!), and Team DC had 196 points.

Passing on the opportunity to practice again at 7:30 Saturday morning, Team Illinois held a brief meeting and called it a night.

*****

Saturday morning we officially registered for the Tournament, picking up three Free T-Shirts -- one each from the Tournament, Pepsi, and Panasonic. The team posed for pictures with each sponsor but kept drifting back to watch The Matrix which was playing on a futuristic DVD Entertainment System. Finally, we sent the team into the Theme Parks for the day. We'll all meet at 5:00 for the Official Practice Sessions that are run by the Tournament.

Coach Grierson