Pennsylvania State Academic Competition
The Pennsylvania State Academic Competition is a quizbowl tournament held each year in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The winning team received a scholarship to the Panasonic Academic Challenge.
History
The Pennsylvania State Academic Competition was started in 1992 by Pennsylvania Representative Joseph Pitts. The first year contained 12 qualifying schools but has since been expanded to one school for each of Pennsylvania's 29 "intermediate units".
The tournament is held every year around April in the state House of Representatives. It is run by the Chester County Intermediate Unit.
It may have been televised at some point, judging from this AOL TV page.
Format
Three teams compete head-to-head in each game in the tournament. The game is broken into two tossup rounds (where the answers are exactly in the format World History - Literature - American History - Science - Potpourri) and two "fanfare" bonus rounds (where the answers are exactly in the format Contemporary Events - World History - Literature - American History - Science - Potpourri). Tossup rounds allow conferring before a team buzzes in and give the team up to 15 seconds after the entire question is read to come up with an answer. Fanfare rounds are 60 second timed affairs. One buzzer is supplied to each team, rather than to each player as is usually the case elsewhere.
There are some small number of preliminary matches followed by a semi-finals and final match for the top 9 and 3 teams respectively. The semi-final round was introduced at some point between 1999 and 2007. Prior to that time each team played two preliminary matches. Of the teams which won both preliminary matches, the three teams with the highest points per game were selected to play in the final match.
Qualifying
Qualifying teams, usually the winners of local championships, are chosen by the various intermediate units. In addition, the previous year's champion receives an automatic bid to attend the tournament.
Questions
This is the tournament which not only included the infamous question "What kind of colleges are best for women? Answer: Women's colleges" to begin with, but recycled it from one year to the next. Another question from this tournament was "Cetology is the study of whales. For 10 points, who wrote Moby Dick?" Looking only at tournaments with state championship implications, this one may take the crown for actually having the worst questions out of many, many bad local question writer options.
2003 was notable for having at least 4 different questions on characters from Catch 22 as tossups in different rounds, as well as at least 4 different questions on ranks in the US military in different rounds.
Winners
- 2008: State College
- 2007: Scranton
- 2006: State College
- 2005: Emmaus
- 2004: Emmaus
- 2003: Emmaus
- 2002: Downingtown
- 2001: Moravian
- 2000: Lancaster Catholic
- 1999: Manheim Township
- 1998: Manheim Township
- 1997: State College
- 1996: West Chester East
- 1995: General McLane
- 1994: Downingtown
- 1993: Radnor
- 1992: Conestoga