The Illinois Earlybird Tournament - October 2nd, 2004

[Captain Sinico]

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Academic Buzzer Team is proud to announce that it will host the latest member of its quasi-annual series of late fall high school academic quiz bowl tournaments, the UIUC Earlybird 2004, on Saturday, October 2nd, at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Tournament details are described below. Please feel free to contact me, Mike Sorice, by e-mail at [email protected] with any questions or to register your team. Come help us herald the return of an excellent high school tournament tradition to the University of Illinois.

Time:

The UIUC Earlybird 2004 will take place Saturday, October 2nd, 2004 from approximately 8 am to approximately 5 pm. Exact times will be determined by the number of teams registering and will be announced to all participants in advance of the event.

Place:

The UIUC Earlybird 2004 will be held in historic Lincoln Hall on the Urbana side of the campus of the University of Illinois, assuming that its construction schedule allows. http://www.uiuc.edu/navigation/building ... n.top.html contains a great deal of information on Lincoln Hall. The final location and very explicit directions to that location will be provided to all participants well in advance of the event.

Format:

The match format will be one fairly unique to the UIUC Earlybird and is something of an amalgam of the IHSA and ACF formats. Rounds will consist of 20 tossup questions and up to 20 bonus questions, a halftime of up to five minutes after question 10 but before question 11, and as many tiebreaker questions as are necessary to change the score should it be tied after question 20. Quiz bowl competition will occur between two teams of up to four players with four substitutions allowed at half-time. Rounds will be un-timed. A correct response to a toss-up question earns the respondent's team 10 points and a bonus question; an incorrect response offered before the end of a tossup question costs the respondent's team 5 points, which is referred to as an "interrupt" or "neg." Bonuses are all worth a total of 30 points and will "bounce-back;" i.e. if the team that correctly answered the previous toss-up cannot correctly answer a part of a bonus, the opposing team will have a chance to answer it and, if they do so correctly, will receive the points associated with that part. This is similar to IHSA-style events, except for the inclusion of negs and that teams will consist of four players.
The tournament format will be determined by the number of teams registering, but will be structured to provide a clear, unambiguous order of finish for each team and to maximize the number of rounds that each team is able to play and the number of different teams that each team is able to play.

Questions:

The questions for the UIUC Earlybird 2004 are being produced in-house. Questions will be written by the members of the UIUC Academic Buzzer Team and edited by experienced question editors (ABT Vice-President Sudheer Potru, myself, et al.) The difficulty of the questions will be similar to that of NAQT's series of high school ("IS") sets. Computational math questions will be included at a rate of least one question per packet.

Registration:

The registration fee is $55 per team. A discount of $10 is available for providing a fully-functional buzzer system (one discount per team.) The full set of tournament questions will be available for purchase for $20. Fees are due on the morning of the tournament at check-in. The deadline for registration is September 14th, 2002. To register, simply e-mail me at [email protected] stating your interest and including the following information:

The name of your school or institution;
The location of your school or institution in "city, state" format;
The name of coach or other contact person;
The contact information for your coach or other contact person (e-mail address and telephone number);
The number of teams that you will bring;
The number of working buzzer systems that you will bring.

Michael Angelo Sorice
Chief Editor, UIUC Earlybird 2004
[email protected]

[Captain Sinico]

Greetings,
I am now receiving registrations for the UIUC Earlybird 2004, and it has come to my attention that some have had issues finding hotel rooms. Some coaches have been told by hotel staff that there is a home football game on the tournament date, but this claim is false and hotel rooms ought to be available. As an aid to your search, please refer to http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~west/hotels.html, which is a list of Champaign-Urbana hotels listed by proximity to Altgeld Hall (which is itself about a block from the tournament site, Lincoln Hall) assembled by Professor West of the UIUC Math Department. Please do not hesitate to e-mail me at [email protected] with any questions or issues that you may have (or, what is better, to register your team.)

Michael Angelo Sorice
Chief Editor, UIUC Earlybird 2004
[email protected]

[Captain Sinico]

Hey,
We currently have five (5) teams signed-up for the UIUC Earlybird 2004 on October 2nd:

• Apollo
  Decatur MacArthur
  Dwight Township
  Loyola
  Streator

In addition, I've gotten tenative interest from a few other teams. We're looking for three more teams to bring the field to eight, so I am extending registration through next week. If you are interested in this event, please e-mail me at [email protected].

Thanks,
Michael Angelo Sorice
Chief Editor, UIUC Earlybird 2004

[Captain Sinico]

Loyola Academy A topped a field of 8 teams to win the UIUC Earlybird Tournament, defeating Apollo High School on the last question of an exciting final round. Decatur MacArthur High School rounded out the top 3. The top scorers were Donald of Decatur MacArthur, Elizabeth of Apollo, and Buddy of Loyola B. Full statistics for the round robin phase are available in SQBS format at https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/msorice/www/E ... dings.html, and playoff stats may be posted later.

I would like the thank all of the teams that showed up to make this tournament a success. UIUC ABT plans to hold this event again next year on the same weekend, so ready your schedules!

Michael Sorice
Tournament Director, UIUC Earlybird 2004