View source for Dale and Lorna Thayer Illinois Masonic Academic Bowl Tournament

The '''Dale and Lorna Thayer Illinois Masonic Academic Bowl Tournament''' is an annual tournament sponsored by the Illinois Freemasons. It is a statewide tournament, and is generally regarded as one of the three state championship high school tournaments in Illinois (with [[IHSA State Championship|IHSA State]] and [[Illinois NAQT State]] being the other two). While the tournament began as a regional tournament in 1983, it did not develop a statewide draw until 1990, so while older than the IHSA Tournament, it did not become a state tournament until after the IHSA Tournament had been established.

In recent years, the Masonic Tournament attracts about 200-300 Illinois high schools each year. The schools are divided into three classes based on school size, and each class has 10-12 Sectionals. The winner of each Sectional advances to the State Tournament. The State Tournament and most Sectionals have 8-12 teams, which are split into two pools and play round robin. The top two teams in each pool advance to a single-elimination semifinal, starting with the 1st place team in one pool playing the 2nd place team in the other pool. If there are 8 teams, then a full round robin is played without playoff matches.

The Masonic Tournament uses a unique match format. Instead of bonus questions, the tournament uses team questions that are just like bonuses, but control over the team questions alternates so that each team is guaranteed to control half of the team questions. Each match consists of six tossups, eight team questions, six tossups, eight team questions, and then four tossups. This format tends to make scores closer.

The Masons give money to schools that place highly at Sectionals and State. The total amount of money given each year is over $100,000. The tournament has no entry fee.

==History==
The roots of the tournament can be traced to 1982 when the principals of [[Byron]], [[Stillman Valley]], and [[Winnebago]] High Schools met with a representative of the Winnebago Masonic Lodge to create the ''Northern Illinois Academic Bowl'' (the first invitational tournament in northern Illinois). The first tournament, with 16 teams taken from Boone, Carroll, Ogle, Stephenson, and Winnebago counties, was held in the Spring of 1983. Stillman Valley defeated Winnebago in the finals to win the first tournament. Hosting duties rotated between Byron, Stillman Valley, and Winnebago for the first five years, though the field of invited teams began to expand beyond the initial counties.  By 1987, the tournament was expanded to all teams in northern Illinois, and in 1988, it was renamed the ''Illinois Masonic Academic Bowl''. 1988 was also the first time that the tournament was not held at a single site, with the winners of the western and eastern sites meeting for a championship. In 1989, two southern Illinois sectionals were added, though downstate teams were not permitted to play for the championship until 1990.

1990 saw the tournament become a state tournament for the first time, with the state finals held at Illinois Wesleyan University. The top four teams from each of four Sectional Tournaments (two in the southern part of the state and two in the north) came to Bloomington to compete for the state title. [[Rockridge]] defeated [[Sullivan]] for the first Masonic State Title (and doing so by 5 points).

The State Tournament then moved to [[Eureka]] High School for four years, before moving to Eureka College for the 1995 and 1996 iterations.

For many years, the winner of the tournament, in addition to significant money, earned the right to keep the Charles W. Spatz Memorial Trophy. The trophy was a ''large'' traveling trophy. Charles Spatz was an officer and newsletter editor with the Grand Lodge in Winnebago, who was largely responsible for expanding the original tournament to a state tournament.

The [[Robert Grierson Friend of Scholastic Bowl Award]] has four times been awarded to individuals involved in the Masonic Tournament:
* Garrie Burr, Senior Grand Warden of the Masonic Grand Lodge of the state of Illinois (1996 - the first FoSB award).
* Wendell Walch, for his running the Masonic Tournament (1998-2004), and increasing the number of regional sites all of which helped promote Scholastic Bowl (2006).
* Frank Conry, Neil Pavlus, and Nelson Pyle;  the former principals at Byron, Stillman Valley, and Winnebago who first encouraged a Masonic Lodge to sponsor a Scholastic Bowl Tournament, greatly promoting and spreading Scholastic Bowl (2012).
* Dale Thayer, for running the tournament after Wendell Walch left the job in 2004. The tournament was renamed after Dale and his wife Lorna in 2026 shortly after Dale died. Lorna, who had coached Scholastic Bowl before Dale directed the tournament, passed away several years before Dale did.

==Questions==
The questions for the tournament were written locally by volunteers. Later they were provided by [[Answers Plus]]. After Answers Plus lost the contract around the year 2000, the tournament went through a number of vendors including [[Academic Hallmarks]] through at least 2006-07, but perhaps longer), [[Aegis Questions]] (2008-09), and [[Questions Galore]] (2010-11) until David Reinstein took over as editor starting in 2012. David got some help at first, but since about 2019 every question has been written by David and edited by Jonah Greenthal.

==Match Format==
The Masonic Tournament used approximately the [[IHSA]] format and distribution through 2009, including what was then all-at-once, 3-5 part 20 point bonuses, then switched to its unique format for 2010.

==Tournament Format==
For the first 25 years or so, it used what was called a double-elimination format at Sectionals and State, though it was actually a single-elimination tournament with a consolation bracket. Around 2010, they switched to a tournament format that has two pools of 6 teams each play round robin, followed by the top two teams in each pool moving on to a single-elimination playoff.

Until 2007, the Illinois Masonic Academic Bowl used "wild-card" bids to fill the 16-team field with the best 2nd-place team statewide in the Sectional round advancing to State. Today, Sectional runners-up can still advance to the State Tournament in the event the Championship team cannot attend.

==Results==
{| class="wikitable"
! Year
! Host
! Class
! Champion 
! Runner-up
! Third Place
! Fourth Place
! Consolation 
|-
|1983
|colspan=2|[[Winnebago]]
|[[Stillman Valley]]
|[[Winnebago]]
|colspan=3 style="text-align:center;background: #eee;"|
|-
|1984
|colspan=7 style="text-align:center;background: #eee;"|
|-
|1985
|colspan=7 style="text-align:center;background: #eee;"|
|-
|1986
|colspan=7 style="text-align:center;background: #eee;"|
|-
|1987
|colspan=7 style="text-align:center;background: #eee;"|
|-
|1988
|colspan=7 style="text-align:center;background: #eee;"|
|-
|1989
|colspan=7 style="text-align:center;background: #eee;"|
|-
|1990
|colspan=2|[[Illinois Wesleyan University]]
|[[Rockridge]]
|[[Sullivan]]
|colspan=3 style="text-align:center;background: #eee;"|
|-
|1991
|colspan=2|[[Eureka]]
|colspan=5 style="text-align:center;background: #eee;"|
|-
|1992
|colspan=2|[[Eureka]]
||[[MacArthur]]
|[[Winnebago]]
|[[Rockridge]]
|[[Joliet West]]
|[[Gridley]]
|-
|1993
|colspan=2|[[Eureka]]
|[[Maine East]]
|colspan=4 style="text-align:center;background: #eee;"|
|-
|1994
|colspan=2|[[Eureka]]
|[[Winnebago]]
|
|
|[[Streator]]
|[[Centralia]]
|colspan=4 style="text-align:center;background: #eee;"|
|-
|1995
|colspan=2|[[Eureka College]]
|colspan=5 style="text-align:center;background: #eee;"|
|-
|1996
|colspan=2|[[Eureka College]]
|[[MacArthur]]
|[[Belvidere]]
|[[Princeton (IL)|Princeton]]
|[[Dixon]]
|[[Niantic-Harristown]]
|-
|1997
|colspan=2 style="background: #eee;"|
|[[Woodruff]]
|[[Streator]]
|[[Princeton (IL)|Princeton]]
|[[MacArthur]]
|[[Edwards County]]
|-
|1998
|colspan=2 style="background: #eee;"|
|[[MacArthur]]
|[[Sterling]]
|[[Streator]]
|[[Centralia (Illinois High School)|Centralia]]
|[[Auburn]]
|-
|1999
|colspan=2 style="background: #eee;"|
|[[Moline]]
|[[New Trier]]
|[[Carlinville]]
|[[PORTA]]
|[[IMSA]]
|-
|2000
|colspan=2 style="background: #eee;"|
|[[Stevenson]]
|[[Streator]]
|[[New Trier]]
|[[Eureka]]
|[[Auburn]]
|-
|2001
|colspan=2 style="background: #eee;"|
|[[Salem]]
|[[Fenwick]]
|[[Moline]]
|[[Stillman Valley]]
|style="background: #eee;"|
|-
|2002
|colspan=2 style="background: #eee;"|
|[[Springfield Southeast]]
|[[Limestone]]
|[[Guilford]]
|[[Auburn]]
|[[Danville]]
|-
|2003
|colspan=2|[[Springfield Southeast]]
|[[Wheaton North]]
|[[Sterling]]
|[[Stillman Valley]]
|[[Pleasant Plains]]
|[[Auburn]]
|-
|2004
|colspan=2|[[Springfield Southeast]]
|Wheaton North
|[[Morton]]
|[[Auburn]]
|[[Galena]]
|[[Bradley-Bourbonnais]]
|-
|2005
|colspan=2|[[Springfield Southeast]]
|[[Fremd]]
|[[Auburn]]
|[[Morton]]
|[[Pittsfield]]
|[[IMSA]]
|-
|2006
|colspan=2|[[Springfield Southeast]]
|[[Fremd]]
|[[Peoria Heights]]
|[[Bloomington]]
|[[Elmwood]]
|[[Auburn]]
|-
|2007
|colspan=2|[[Springfield Southeast]]
|[[Maine South]]
|[[New Trier]]
|[[Springfield]]
|[[Moline]]
|Auburn
|-
|2008
|colspan=2|[[Glenwood]]
|[[Auburn]]
|[[Carbondale]]
|[[Sterling]]
|[[PORTA]]
|[[Springfield (IL)|Springfield]]
|-
|2009
|colspan=2|[[Glenwood]]
|[[Carbondale]]
|[[Auburn]]
|[[Peoria Christian]]
|[[Warrensburg-Latham]]
|[[New Trier]]
|-
|rowspan=2|2010
|rowspan=2|[[Riverton]]
|Class A
|[[Litchfield]]
|[[Latin School]]
|[[Macomb]]
|[[St. Joseph-Ogden]]
|rowspan=200 style="background: #eee;"|
|-
|Class AA
|[[St. Ignatius]]
|[[Stevenson]]
|[[Auburn]]
|[[IMSA]]
|-
|rowspan=2|2011
|rowspan=2|Riverton
|Class A
|[[Lisle]]
|[[Macomb]]
|[[PORTA]]
|[[Peoria Christian]]
|-
|Class AA
|[[Stevenson]]
|[[Carbondale]]
|[[IMSA]]
|[[Fremd]]
|-
|rowspan=2|2012
|rowspan=2|[[Springfield]]
|Class A
|[[Peoria Christian]]
|[[Peoria Heights]]
|[[Carlinville]]
|[[Keith Country Day]]
|-
|Class AA
|[[IMSA]]
|[[Auburn]]
|[[Carbondale]]
|[[Latin School]]
|-
|rowspan=2|2013
|rowspan=2|[[Springfield]]
|Class A
|[[Litchfield]]
|[[Peoria Christian]]
|[[Cumberland]]
|[[Elmwood]]
|-
|Class AA
|[[Loyola Academy]]
|[[Macomb]]
|[[IMSA]]
|[[Carbondale]]
|-
|rowspan=2|2014
|rowspan=2|[[Springfield]]
|Class A
|[[Newman Central Catholic]]
|[[Carterfield]]
|[[Litchfield]]
|[[Cumberland]]
|-
|Class AA
|[[IMSA]]
|[[Fremd]]
|[[Stevenson]]
|[[Auburn]]
|-
|rowspan=3|2015
|rowspan=3|[[Bloomington]]
|Class A
| [[Casey-Westfield]]
| [[Riverdale (IL)]]
| [[Keith Country Day]]
| [[Blue Ridge]]
|-
|Class AA
| [[Newman Central Catholic]]
| [[Macomb]]
| Latin School
| [[University of Illinois Lab|University Lab (Urbana)]]
|-
|Class AAA
| [[IMSA]]
| [[Bloomington]]
| [[Fremd]]
| [[Stevenson]]
|-
|rowspan=3|2016
|rowspan=3|[[Bloomington]]
|Class A
| [[Keith Country Day]]
| [[Warrensburg-Latham]]
| [[Carrollton]]
| [[Cumberland]]
|-
|Class AA
| [[Latin School]]
| [[University of Illinois Lab|University Lab (Urbana)]]
| [[Macomb]]
| [[St. Teresa]]
|-
|Class AAA
| [[Hinsdale Central]]
| [[Stevenson]]
| [[IMSA]]
| [[Fremd]]
|-
|rowspan=3|2017
|rowspan=3|[[Bloomington]]
|Class A
| [[Riverdale (IL)]]
| [[Keith Country Day]]
| [[Blue Ridge]]
| [[Athens]]
|-
|Class AA
| [[Latin School]]
| [[University of Illinois Lab|University Lab (Urbana)]]
| [[Southwestern]]
| [[Byron]]
|-
|Class AAA
| [[Stevenson]]
| [[Barrington]]
| [[IMSA]]
| [[Hinsdale Central]]
|-
|rowspan=3|2018
|rowspan=3|[[Bloomington]]
|Class A
| [[Athens]]
| [[Elgin Academy]]
| [[Cumberland]]
| [[Warrensburg-Latham]]
|-
|Class AA
| [[University of Illinois Lab|University Lab (Urbana)]]
| [[Latin]]
| [[Williamsville]]
| [[Southwestern]]
|-
|Class AAA
| [[Auburn]]
| [[Stevenson]]
| [[IMSA]]
| [[Fremd]]
|-
|rowspan=3|2019
|rowspan=3|[[Bloomington]]
|Class A
| [[New Berlin]]
| [[Elgin Academy]]
| [[Edwards County]]
| [[Galena]]
|-
|Class AA
| [[University of Illinois Lab|University Lab (Urbana)]]
| [[Chicago Christian]]
| [[Latin]]
| [[Williamsville]]
|-
|Class AAA
| [[IMSA]]
| [[Oak Park-River Forest]]
| [[Auburn]]
| [[Barrington]]
|-
|rowspan=3|2020
|rowspan=3|[[Bloomington]]
|Class A
| [[Villa Grove]]
| [[Edwards County]]
| [[Keith Country Day]]
| [[Galena]]
|-
|Class AA
| [[University of Illinois Lab|University Lab (Urbana)]]
| [[Chicago Christian]]
| [[Latin]]
| [[Williamsville]]
|-
|Class AAA
| [[Stevenson]]
| [[IMSA]]
| [[Hinsdale Central]]
| [[Barrington]]
|-
|2021
|colspan=7|Canceled due to the [[COVID-19 pandemic]].
|-
|rowspan=3|2022
|rowspan=3|[[Bloomington]]
|Class A
| [[Elgin Academy]]
| [[Roanoke-Benson]]
| [[Cumberland]]
| [[New Berlin]]
|-
|Class AA
| [[Herscher]]
| [[Southwestern]]
| [[Timothy Christian]]
| [[Williamsville]]
|-
|Class AAA
| [[University of Illinois Lab|University Lab (Urbana)]]
| [[IMSA]]
| [[Fremd]]
| [[Auburn]]
|-
|rowspan=3|2023
|rowspan=3|[[Bloomington]]
|Class A
| [[Metro-East Lutheran]]
| [[Keith Country Day]]
| [[Cumberland]]
| [[Roanoke-Benson]]
|-
|Class AA
| [[Southwestern]]
| [[Latin School of Chicago]]
| [[Johnston City]]
| [[Rochester (IL)]]
|-
|Class AAA
| [[Barrington]]
| [[IMSA]]
| [[Auburn]]
| [[Bloomington]]
|-
|rowspan=3|2024
|rowspan=3|[[Bloomington]]
|Class A
| [[Metro-East Lutheran]]
| [[Goreville]]
| [[Cumberland]]
| [[Blue Ridge]]
|-
|Class AA
| [[Johnston City]]
| [[Lisle]]
| [[University of Illinois Lab]]
| [[Riverdale (IL)]]
|-
|Class AAA
| [[Barrington]]
| [[Fremd]]
| [[Sandburg]]
| [[IMSA]]
|-
|rowspan=3|2025
|rowspan=3|[[Bloomington]]
|Class A
| [[Keith Country Day]]
| [[New Berlin]]
| [[Cumberland (IL)]]
| [[Brown County]]
|-
|Class AA
| [[University of Illinois Lab]]
| [[Macomb]]
| [[Metro-East Lutheran]]
| ''Not Awarded''
|-
|Class AAA
| [[Waubonsie Valley]]
| [[Hinsdale Central]]
| [[Walter Payton]]
| [[Carbondale]]
|-
|rowspan=3|2026
|rowspan=3|[[Bloomington]]
|Class A
| [[New Berlin]]
| [[Keith Country Day]]
| [[Elmwood]]
| [[Brown County]]
|-
|Class AA
| [[Metro-East Lutheran]]
| [[Pleasant Plains]]
| [[Latin]]
| [[Dixon]]
|-
|Class AAA
| [[Walter Payton]]
| [[IMSA]]
| [[Stevenson]]
| [[Fremd]]
|}
Grayed out boxes indicate that the information is missing or not applicable.

==See Also==
*[[Illinois Masonic State Tournament Records]]
*[[IHSA|IHSA State Championship]] - Illinois High School Association State Tournament
*[[NAQT Illinois State Championship]]

==Links==
*[http://www.masonicbowl.org/ official site]
*[http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/questionsets/search/?name=Masonic&season=&archived=y questions]

{{Navbox HS Quizbowl in Illinois}}

[[Category:High school tournaments]]
[[Category:High school quizbowl in Illinois]]
[[Category:State championships]]