How to improve our team

[biofantic]

Our team this year has few people who can compete on a varsity level at all, but a ton of people who show up sometimes but can barely play competitively on a JV or novice level. The problem is that the varsity-capable people are mostly seniors and a few juniors.

A few questions:
How do we get people to show up consistently to practice?
How do we improve the skill of the team as a whole?
How do we get people to go to Quiz Bowl tournaments over Speech and Debate tournaments?
Do you have any advice for convincing people to sign up for tournaments?
How do we improve the level at which the team can practice, while still having practice be challenging to varsity players?

Thank you

[Banana Stand]

It's important to remember that the only person you can control is yourself. Of course, if people claim to be members of the varsity team then they should show up to practice and should be reliable enough to attend some tournaments, but the most you can do to improve your team right now is to get better at quizbowl and hope that it rubs off on some of your teammates. There's already a lot of material written about that subject, so I won't say anything further.

[High Dependency Unit]

I would say that people who don't show up to practice generally aren't really going to be committed to quiz bowl, so most people who do that probably won't be very useful. You could try getting some people more interested in quiz bowl (not sure how), and that would make them sign up for tournaments instead of going to debate. About half our team does debate, and when we went to our first tournament they just skipped debate, but from now on we're trying to schedule tournaments on non-debate days. That's something you could try. Where is your school? In some areas it should be fairly easy to schedule around Speech and Debate, as there can be quiz bowl tournaments nearly every weekend. To get the team to improve, actually having players show up to practice is huge, and if anyone of them are particularly interested in quiz bowl or a specific subject, you could encourage them to study on their own. To have challenging practices for varsity players, you probably want to hold a separate practice on hard questions, considering it sounds like most of the players on your team are terrible.

[Banana Stand]

To have challenging practices for varsity players, you probably want to hold a separate practice on hard questions, considering it sounds like most of the players on your team are terrible.

I'd probably avoid using this language, considering most novices are "terrible" at quizbowl.

[samus149]

OK in order:

People show up for practice if they can have fun and be with people they know. Make sure to use difficulty appropriate packets: CMST and novice sets for new recruits (or A sets if you've got em), old normal difficulty housewrites for those a step up, etc. Try to carve out a 1.5-2 hour time slot after school where you're sure no other important club meetings are happening, and make sure to have enough readers to accommodate everyone. Give cupcakes to the best newcomers as a form of incentive (it may sound weird but it works).

There's at least 5 threads about this, but the gist is practice a lot and learn things.

This year we lost quite a few good players to Columbia Science Honors Program, and we couldn't do anything about it. There's no real way to make people choose one or the other, especially if they've already made a commitment to one. I guess try to advertise tournaments that happen on breaks in whatever schedule you're working around.

If you want people to sign up, try to advertise what about that tournament appeals to them (like the difficulty) or appeal to their laziness (we already have a driver, you've just gotta show up).

Like I said before, split up your practice. It's impractical to have the varsity team practicing with newcomers. Take the people on your team who are least in need of practice and have them read for the other groups. This does of course affect how much the best players can practice, but they'll usually be the ones who study at home instead of at practice.

Also, don't worry if a lot of people show up that can't play competitively. That's how practice works: you give people who can't lose a Saturday a chance to play quizbowl.