L&N Train Bowl—Knoxville TN (10/08/2016)

[Darkpie]

The L&N STEM Academy is happy to announce our first ever L&N Train Bowl. This event will be held at the L&N STEM Academy in Knoxville,TN on October 8th. We will being using a novice high school set. This tournament will be ideal for new-to-quizbowl teams and younger players, though all teams are welcome to compete

Logistics
The tournament will take place at the L&N STEM Academy, 401 Henley Street, Knoxville TN, 37902.

Full stats will be kept for the tournament.

Games will be using NAQT rules with 20 untimed tossups and bonuses with powers and negs. We will have a round robin before lunch, followed by a winner’s and loser’s bracket after lunch. We ask that all teams stay till the finish of the tournament. 

An awards ceremony will be held at the conclusion of the tournament where we will present the winning team and top scorers with prizes. Specifics TBD.

Schedule
8:00 — Arrive at school for registration and buzzer turn in
8:30 — Pre-tournament meeting
9:00 — Start of round 1
9:00 - 12:30 — Rounds 1 through 5 will take place
2:00 — Resume with round 6
4:00 — Top 8 will begin the playoff bracket
6:30 — Award ceremony and tournament conclusion

Lunch
We will be offering pizza (pepperoni and cheese), chips, and drink for $5. Although we are near downtown and its food options, Brewer’s Jam will be taking place the same day making getting to and from any nearby food joints difficult. As such, we highly recommend staying and eating in house to keep the tournament running on time. 

Registration 
The field will be capped at 24 teams. All teams registering after the 24 cap will be placed on a waitlist to be moved up in case of cancelations. 

Please post here or email us as STEMQB@gmail.com to reserve a spot. Mention any discounts you plan to apply for.

Along with that email, please fill out the following link to let us know your roster and number of people who will be in attendance:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc7H1t9znlnYrr-rEsdedv8goC8W4bI-bhG8YmNX07AKVVQfw/viewform?c=0&w=1

Packet
NAQT IS-155A set

Fee Structure
Base Fee: $65
Working Buzzer Discount: $5 per system (must be useable for 4 vs 4 team structure) 
Staffer Discount: $10 per staffer (experienced moderator or scorekeeper)
Distance Discount: $5 for every 200 miles traveled (one way as determined by google maps)
Minimum fee: $40
Pizza $5- 2 slices, drink, chips

Update: We are now Gold certified by PACE! This means the top 20% of our field will qualify for the PACE NSC tournament held June 10th-11th.

[AKKOLADE]

You might want to list your field in a reply to your original post; since you're under 7 posts made, every post you make requires approval, which includes edits. If you're planning on updating your field listing a lot, your current set-up will make the entire thread disappear until it's re-approved. If you add a reply with your field, at least only that reply will disappear, leaving your tournament information unaffected.

[Darkpie]

Current Field (updated 10/6)
Farragut (2 Teams, 2 Buzzer, 0 Staffers)
Oak Ridge (2 Teams, 2 Buzzers, 0 Staffers)
Lebanon (2 Teams, 1 Buzzer, 0 Staffers)
Glasgow (1 Team, 1 Buzzer, 1 Staffer)
Morristown West (2 Team, 1 Buzzer, 0 Staffer)
Clarkrange (1 Team, 3 Buzzers, 0 Staffers)
Jefferson County (1 Team, 2 Buzzers, 0 Staffers)
Oneida (1 Team, 0 Buzzer, 0 Staffers)
Cedar Springs (1 Team, 0 Buzzer, 0 Staffers)

Total 13 out of 24

[Darkpie]

We will being using a novice high school set (NAQT A set pending approval).

Packet
NAQT A-set in the works, updated as soon as we have confirmation 

We shall be using the Introductory Invitational Series #155A set from NAQT.

[osunut2]

Figured I'd give this thread a bump. Field update was posted on 9/21. Still some spots remaining!

[mysticallama]

I might as well give this a bump too, East Tennessee Quizbowl needs more tournaments.

[osunut2]

Do the Knox County schools even play quiz bowl anymore?? L&N is in downtown Knoxville, and yet Farragut and Cedar Springs (home school team) are the only schools representing Knox County.

[yeah viv talk nah]

Do the Knox County schools even play quiz bowl anymore?? L&N is in downtown Knoxville, and yet Farragut and Cedar Springs (home school team) are the only schools representing Knox County.

Unfortunately, quizbowl at Farragut is pretty much dead. The few guys who are interested only go to a few history bowl tournaments, and from what I've heard they've made it a "private" club.

From what I remember, Farragut's and STEM's clubs were the only decently active ones in Knox County for the past few years, so I guess STEM is the only one left now.

[osunut2]

Unfortunately, quizbowl at Farragut is pretty much dead. The few guys who are interested only go to a few history bowl tournaments, and from what I've heard they've made it a "private" club.

From what I remember, Farragut's and STEM's clubs were the only decently active ones in Knox County for the past few years, so I guess STEM is the only one left now.

Wow, no wonder I'm having so much trouble reaching out to local teams. I didn't realize that things had gotten that bad. Hard to believe that 10-15 years ago, West, Halls, Powell, Bearden, Farragut, and Webb all had pretty competitive teams.

[Darkpie]

Do the Knox County schools even play quiz bowl anymore?? L&N is in downtown Knoxville, and yet Farragut and Cedar Springs (home school team) are the only schools representing Knox County.

It definitely seems that way. I haven't had much success contacting nearby schools through emails or second hand sources. The only real event that has teams participating (even then its not many), is a televised tournament hosted by PBS. I plan on talking to teams and coaches there when I compete to see what kind of interest there is in "real" Quizbowl (happening during Oct and Nov). Hopefully that will provide a start to build something more.

As for now, I'm thankful teams are coming out this Saturday. And we will take registrations until the end of tomorrow! So email ASAP if you wish to come out, we'd love to have you.

[mysticallama]

Farragut is still active, however its mostly just me and a few others who go to tournaments 2-3 times a month and they're almost always out of state (barring Ezell). I think its the learning curve that throws people off from going to tournaments, but there's probably whole threads about this topic. We managed to find a more active sponsor so we can stop using pseudonyms and hopefully the Train Bowl will revitalize the sad state of East TN quizbowl. Who knows, maybe there are some more East TN tournaments that may be coming up after this...

[mysticallama]

Do the Knox County schools even play quiz bowl anymore?? L&N is in downtown Knoxville, and yet Farragut and Cedar Springs (home school team) are the only schools representing Knox County.

Its unfortunately only Farragut (that I know of in Knox County) that actively travels to tournaments on a regular basis. I am hopeful that the addition of further more "JV friendly" tournaments will help spark interest. Train Bowl has a healthy amount of teams considering the inactivity of East TN in the recent years, and I hope this can really change. I really enjoy competing and learning new topics, but JV interest has tapered in Farragut with the exception of a few people due to perceived difficulty, distances in between tournaments, weak mental game, etc. My worst fear is that Knox County quizbowl will be completely dead after my year graduates, but I am hopeful that this can change.

[ORHS coach]

ORHS is excited to attend...although your difficulties getting enough schools to sign up disappoints. My team had/has hopes of hosting a tournament sometime in the spring, but maybe there aren't enough active teams?

L&N STEM and Oak Ridge were the only area teams to attend NAQT nationals in Dallas last year.
In 2015, the only people from the 865 to attend were Kai Smith, Ronik Sheth, and Jimmy Terrell, calling themselves the "Knoxville Scholars"

Just casually looking at other schools...neither Bearden nor Central has attended an event in the NAQT database since 2010...Webb or Grace Christian hasn't since 2011...West hasn't since 2012

Data is similar for other area schools...Powell, Dobbyns Bennet, Lenoir City, Gibbs, Halls, Maryville, etc.

I blame snapchat and pokemon go

[bigbluemist]

How will we be playing pool play with 14 teams?

[Darkpie]

How will we be playing pool play with 14 teams?

The format has changed a bit to reflect the lower count of teams(which is actually at 13 now, I'll update the field). We now plan on having 8 round robin games, followed by a seeded playoff, single elimination bracket. This works out to a minimum of 9 games and a maximum of 12. I hope this change doesn't upset anyone, but it seems like the best way to work with what we have.

[cchiego]

Just casually looking at other schools...neither Bearden nor Central has attended an event in the NAQT database since 2010...Webb or Grace Christian hasn't since 2011...West hasn't since 2012

Data is similar for other area schools...Powell, Dobbyns Bennet, Lenoir City, Gibbs, Halls, Maryville, etc.

Most of these schools still have "Scholars Bowl" teams though. In addition to the PBS channel teams in the Knoxville area, there's also another http://www.wcte.org/academicbowl/ in the Upper Cumberland region and I think some others in various pockets around the area. Interestingly, I was going to say the Dobbyns-Bennett didn't have a team anymore, but apparently they do.

What's happened to these teams? I get the impression some of these other teams are just kind of in hibernation to the point where they haven't played pyramidal/weekend quizbowl tournaments in awhile so they just don't do them. Lenoir City's team has apparently decided to play bar trivia for instance. The lack of consistent tournaments year-to-year probably contributes to the problem.

It's going to take a more concerted effort on the part of sponsors primarily (students always graduate; sponsors tend to stay!) to get something more permanent set up so we don't have the annual "all the players are graduating and East TN is dying" discussion. Of course, this is better than West TN immediately reverting back to AUKfulness after a brief experimentation with pyramidal questions a few years ago, but setting up a more stable circuit would require at the very least drawing up a yearly hosting rotation in advance (and making sure that the hosts run tournaments well) and collaborating on outreach.

I'm really pleased with what L&N STEM's been able to do just to get this tournament together and 14 teams is a good number. Kudos to Jacob et. al. for making this happen!

[bigbluemist]

Sorry to hear you all have such a hard time getting teams to participate. As a parent I not only enjoy our team but I am amazed at teams I've seen at small school nationals as well as the Detroit Catholics of the world. Our kids have gotten together Sunday and today to read questions and just hang out for 2-3 hours.

We are also very lucky to have a coach who the kids love and is devoted to them outside the team

Jim
Glasgow parent

[ShorterPearson]

Hi y'all!

Train Bowl is underway and I'm manning the stats room. We've got the stats page up and it's being updated round-by-round.

Good luck to all the teams and we hope you have a great day!

[mysticallama]

Where will the final results be posted?

*Will this also be updated on NAQT stats?

[osunut2]

Where will the final results be posted?

*Will this also be updated on NAQT stats?

Final stats were posted today.

I enjoyed helping out on Saturday. L&N, you guys did a great job hosting!