CCA Wins Triton Fall in Disadvantaged Final Against Arcadia

With Triton Fall 2018 in the books, the players of SoCal got their first taste of mACF style questions, with exciting results. Of course, none of this would be possible without the wonderful people at UCSD, who I would like to thank for running the tournament this Saturday.

CCA B (which was made up of quite a few players expected to start on A team at nationals this year) won the day with an astounding 9.5 powers per game. The team was led by humanities specialist Raymond Song (11), with significant support from history and geo man Wesley Zhang (11), and a formidable science player in Jonothan Hsieh (11). If this is

Arcadia A came in at second despite beating CCA 440-230 earlier in the playoffs, which they managed to do with only two A team players from PPT. History main Andrew Hoagland (12) managed to lead the team to a solid finish even with half the normal A team being MIA. With a complete team, Arcadia has the ability to get revenge on CCA, but that will have to wait for another day.

Del Norte continues to show off just how much they’ve improved over the summer, with fine arts-centered generalist Kyle Ke (11) and science player Josh You (10) leading the charge. Even without core lit player Sofia Luengo (11), Del Norte A was able to make playoffs by pulling upsets (?) against Arcadia A and Westview. Del Norte’s main problem going forward is that while they hardly neg, which they did less than once per game, they also power somewhat rarely. If they can fix this, I can see Del Norte becoming a top-tier team by the time next year rolls around.

Scripps Ranch was led by generalist Jack Izzo (12), who carried the team to a third-place finish by upsetting Del Norte in the playoffs. While Scripps did play very well in the wake of the graduation of longtime captain Joon Lee, they still have some problems to deal with, as they were the only team in playoffs with more negs than powers. If Jack and company can figure out a way to transform those negs into consistent early powers, Scripps Ranch could emerge as a dark horse in this year’s tournaments.

It was also great to see teams from Mission Bay, Cathedral Catholic, and University City come to compete, and we look forward to competing with you more in the future!

In terms of individual awards, Scripps’ Jack barely missed the podium, with CCA’s Raymond taking third place, Arcadia’s Andrew taking second, and some random guy from Westview (11) getting first. The SoCal field is looking stronger than ever, with several young teams putting numbers similar to those of the top teams in the nation. With CCA, Arcadia, and Westview still yet to have a complete tournament with a full A team roster, I predict that the level of play from here on out is only going to go up.