64 Contestants Enter…
When we kicked off the 2019 NCCA Tournament at the beginning of March, we weren’t completely sure what to expect. We knew we had to find a way to get through the 32 total matchups of the first round in a timely enough fashion that we could allow the rest of the contest to take place without incident, but beyond that, we weren’t sure. We had no way of knowing just how successful the contest would be, just how interested and invested the contestants would be, or if we’d just end up spinning our wheels for a month.
Luckily, you all banded together in an amazing and unprecedented way to make the entire event even more successful than we ever could have imagined. After 31 days, over 50,000 votes, and more close calls than we can count, we finally have a winner. Before diving in head first to the Championship Round, we wanted to look back over everything that happened to bring us to this point.
Some of the Top Matchups
Watching this contest play out week after week has been far more entertaining than we ever could have predicted. Whether it’s the crazy day one match between Bob Cetta and Jaime Patino that resulted in each contestant earning 459 and 482 votes respectively, or the astoundingly close finish of John Mosqueda at 923 and Bruno Varani at 924 in the semifinals, the contest was packed with action from start to finish.
One of the things that really exemplified the feverish nature of the contest is just how many matchups came down to a difference of 10 votes or fewer. In the second round, Nick Harrison managed to edge out Richard De La Cruz by a single vote. Scott Super was another contestant who went far in the tournament, making it all the way to the semifinals, after bringing in 220 votes in his first matchup and beating his opponent, Ralph Lee Butler, by only five votes.
In addition to the close votes, there’s something to be said for the contestants who remained steady throughout their rounds. Bruno Varani earned his spot in the final by being one such contestant. His coin gained a very similar number of votes in his first three matchups (93, 132, 128) before amassing the needed number of votes to push to the championship. Steve Schatten is another contestant who remained steady throughout, earning 213, 229, 323 votes in each of his rounds; which probably explains why he made it all the way to the Elite Eight.
As with any tournament, the competition got stiffer with each successive round until we finally hit the championship matchup.
And the Winner Is...
From their first round matchup, it should have been clear that Jaime Patino’s Colombian Air Force coin would make it through to the final round. But as the pilots went through round after round, it started looking like either their first round was a fluke, or they were just really good at performing up or down to their competition. When they started going up against contestants who, in the previous round, had earned more votes than they had, their chances of making it to the Championship match looked a bit dire. But then, like clockwork, they would band together and get the votes needed to move on, securing their spot in the final.
Bruno Varani and the members of the Argentine Army’s 601 Assault Helicopter Battalion flew under the radar all the way to their spot in the final. Amassing a steady number of votes, and generally winning their matchups by a respectable margin, they weren’t a contestant that made headlines in any of our previous recaps, and yet they made it all the way to the final.
Varani took the early lead in the first hours of the final round, as many of Patino’s opponents did. But within the first 24 hours of voting, the Colombian pilots did what they’d done throughout the competition and crept back into the lead. From there, they never let go of that top spot.
We extended the voting on the final round to 48 hours because we wanted to give that round as much time as possible to play out. And also because we wanted to see just how big the vote could get with the extra time. Neither contestant disappointed on that front. With a final tally of 3,226 to 3,032 (the biggest vote yet!), Jaime Patino and the Colombian Air Force pilots snatched their victory and earned their prize of 100 free coins!
We’d like to take the time to thank everyone who participated in the 2019 NCCA Tournament contest, and to congratulate Patino on their well earned victory. It was truly an amazing experience, and it was only as great as it was because of the interest and dedication of our contestants and social media audience. If you’re interested in seeing more contests from us in the future, please head here and fill out a quick survey. Your responses will help guide us in the creation of future contests. And if there’s anything you’d like to see us do in the future, feel free to let us know in the comments.
