I’ve written some posts over the last couple of years about my kids being involved in Bible Bowl, such as this one from 2007 and this from 2008. My daughter Ruthie, who has been the “franchise player” for the team, just graduated from high school, so this year’s national competition in Indianapolis is her last.
Bible Bowl is a team game, but most teams typically have one key player who wins the toss-up questions. That’s Ruthie. So when I say “Ruthie won” or “Ruthie had a tough time in last year’s round robin” it’s because so much of the team’s performance depends on winning toss-up questions, and also because she is the hardest-working and most dedicated member of her team. Her brother Joe and sister Rebekah are key contributors to the Austin team, and it’s been great to have them all doing this together (Bekah also graduated in June; Joe will be in 9th grade next year.)
During the first couple of days of the competition the teams play a round robin format to determine seeding for the double elimination competition. The teams are grouped into pods or pools of 12 based on how they have done earlier in the year, and then those teams all play each other, and are seeded for the double elimination based on their pool record.
In some ways the round robin doesn’t really matter, as Ruthie showed last year. Her team lost every game in round robin, was seeded 12th, and still came back to finish fifth in the double elimination tournament. She’s kind of streaky that way.
This year she’s off to a much better start, with a 6-2 record and tied for first in the round robin, with three games tomorrow afternoon. Two of those games are against the teams with which Austin is tied, so it’s nice that she can just focus on the games she’s playing instead of depending on someone else losing.
Of course, the most important thing is that through the competition the kids are learning a lot and memorizing lots of scripture. But it’s nice to have Ruthie doing well in the competition since she has worked so hard.
Bible Bowl has been our family vacation for the last couple of years, as we went to Kansas City in 2007 and Atlanta in 2008. We’re glad to have my parents joining us again this year and Lisa’s dad attending for the first time. And a big highlight is that my daughter Rachel and her husband Kyle were able to come for the weekend with our granddaughter, Evelyn.
So for the next few days, until Wednesday, my Twitter stream will be mostly personal. If you want to follow the Bible Bowl tweets, you can use this hashtag: #BibleBowl09. Looks like I’m the only one using it right now, but let’s see if we can get that to change.
But now it’s time to stop blogging about vacation and resume my experience of it.
Here’s hoping everyone is having a great Independence Day!