by Yishai Eisenberg ('15) Last Thursday, the Junior Varsity College Bowl team, led by Mr. Toporovsky, the faculty adviser, participated in the Yeshiva League finals held at the Jewish Education Project headquarters, and emerge with an impressive second place finish! This was the culmination of a very strong, hard, yet rewarding season, which took the entire year. The season started with an almost entirely revamped JV team; there was only one veteran player and the other five were completely new to College Bowl. However, the new blood did not disappoint. The team achieved a record of 8-2, with both losses coming against Heschel. This record placed them in second place in the division, behind Heschel; in order to advance to the finals, a team must win its division or be the best of the runner ups in all of the divisions. This meant that MTA, having finished in second place, had to have a better record than all of the other second place teams in order to make the finals as the fourth (and lowest) seed. Due to a tie in another division, the question of whether MTA would be in or out of thechampionship round remained unanswered for a few days. However, things did eventually clear up, and the team found out that they had indeed advanced as the lowest seed, fourth out of 24 schools. After arriving at the JEP offices, the team had to play the top seed, HAFTR, in the semifinals. Despite the talent discrepancy which the team expected at first, they arrived at the halftime break leading by an impressive margin of 41-8. However, it seemed that they had become somewhat complacent; in the second half they let HAFTR answer question after question, possibly overconfident with their early lead. MTA did manage to win somewhat handily, though, by a final final score of 54-29, allowing the team to advance to the finals against TABC. The final round did not go as well for MTA as the semifinals. The lead seesawed between the two teams during the first half, but MTA could not overcome their early mistakes and, after a narrow defeat, had to settle for second place. Despite the tough loss, however, the team was very satisfied with their finish, as they were the first MTA team to make the finals in three years, and the first to get into the finals in a longer time. This marks the conclusion of an excellent season, and the team looks forward to beginning anew next year.