Ben Taylor Memorial Quiz Bowl Invitational Held
The fifth annual Ben Taylor Memorial Invitational Quiz Bowl Tournament was held recently at Marlette High School with eight schools participating, including Bad Axe High, the eventual winner as Sandusky High as the runner-up.
The tournament is held every year in honor of a former Marlette High student, Ben Taylor, who succumbed to an aggressive and undetermined form of cancer in July of 2011. Ben was active in band, soccer and quiz bowl at Marlette High. The tournament was established to recognize this fine young man who was beloved by those who knew him. His parents, Carolyn and Dave Taylor of Clifford, and younger sister who is a freshman at EMU, were in attendance and assisted with the tournament.
A preliminary match round was played in which all eight teams played each other once. In the end, it was Bad Axe that would end the preliminaries with a perfect 7 and 0 record. Sandusky A would advance as the second seed with a 6 and 1 record, losing only to Bad Axe. Taking part in the tournament for their first time, Imlay City advanced as the third seed with a 4 and 3 record, followed by Brown City A (4-3), Saginaw Nouvel (3-4), Yale, Marlette, and Brown City B.
A lunch was provided for all with team trophies and medals presented to all participants by Ben’s sister, Becky, and TAQBL Director, Bruce Irland. Most valubale players were selected in the morning by the readers, all of which were former friends of Ben Taylor.
Amongst the MVPS were Logan Childers and Raymond Shavers (Brown C ity), Eddie Takas (Yale), Andrew Gillig (Marlette), Collin Murphy (Imlay City) Grant Sheridan (Sandusky, and Bad Axe High’s Jake Aymen.
A final, seeded, one-game-elimination tournament was held in the afternoon. Bad Axe took a round one victory over Brown City B (560-95) as Sandusky defeated Marlette (465-90). In the semi-final round, Bad Axe eliminated Imlay City (520-385) and Sandusky took out Brown City A (360-240. The championship match was a back-and-forth affair, with Sandusky and Bad Axe exchanging the lead several times. In the end, it was Bad Axe prevailing for the win with a final score of 545-370.
The Ben Taylor Tournament is sponsored by the Thumb Area Quiz Bowl League each year. This year, the date of the tournament (January 23rd) happened to fall on what would have been Benjamin’s 25th birthday. The Taylor family provided a cake for his “birthday,” and Ken McCoy, Ben’s former employer at Treve’s Pizza of Marlette and Brown City, provided the pizza for the event.
