Division II championship (2012)
JCTC Quick Recall Team finishes 5th in national tourney, heads to Division II championship
Cool heads and sharp answers led Jefferson Community & Technical College's Quick Recall Team to a top 5 finish in the Community College Championship Tournament last weekend in Panama City, Fla., and earned the team an invitation to the prestigious Intercollegiate Champion Tournament, a first for any community and technical college in Kentucky.
We were competing against the best 24 community colleges in the country, said coach Pete Rodski, math professor on JCTC's Southwest Campus. Four of the six teams we played against in the top bracket were former national champions within the last 10 years.
Even so, the JCTC team swept the first five matches of two-day tournament, February 24th and 25th, and ended the tournament with a 7-4 record, leaping 14 spots over last year s 19th place finished. This was Jefferson's second straight appearance at Tournament, after receiving a wild card bid last year.
JCTC s Quick Recall Team comprises team captain David Slaughter Claudia Botts, Scott Stallings, Jherin Tinker, Meghann Wright, and Scott Zweydorff, who placed 6th in overall scoring, with 58.8 points per game.
It was an honor to play against the very best teams in the top bracket, said Zweydorff, an associate in science major. We were good enough to finish in third if we hadn't stumbled a bit against a couple teams. But we had an exciting finale and that was really best part of the tournament.
The tournament was won by Chipola College of Florida, which took the top spot in 2011 as well. Securing a berth in the top six earned JCTC a trip to the Division II collegiate championship in Chicago at the end of March. JCTC will be joined in the Intercollegiate Champion Tournament by 31 other teams, including Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michigan State and Notre Dame.
JCTC participates in the Kentucky Collegiate Quick Recall League, where they compete against other two-year schools in the region. Most recently, they posted perfect 9-0 scores at the Kentucky Regional tournament on the JCTC Downtown Campus. National tournaments, however, are a much different pace of play.
The format of the national tournament is a lot quicker than the regional tournament said Dr. Tony Newberry, JCTC president, who traveled to Panama City to cheer on the team. Coach Rodski's coaching strategies and his uses of timeouts to slow a run by the opposing team were effective in securing our place in the top six. His tactics were the talk of the tournament. But, of course, we also have brilliant students!
