The Quizbowl Resource Center

Belvidere North High School will be hosting a tournament on December 10th, 2011 using the DAFT III Question Set written by Dunbar High School.

Fee Structure:$50.00 for the first team, $40.00 for each additional team.

Discounts: $10 off for each buzzer system; $10 off for each moderator - 2 discounts max per team (2 buzzer discounts and 2 moderator discounts)

Structure: ACF format, rosters of up to 6 players per team. We are hoping for a field of 16 but may be able to accomodate more depending on number of available moderators. Round Robin morning followed by a reordering and round robin in the afternoon. Final structure will be determined based on number of teams entered. We will have Powers and Negs.

Registration:You can register by posting interest here or you can email me at [email protected].

You can pay your registration fees the morning of the tournament or you can mail them to
John Basque, Scholastic Bowl Coach
Belvidere North High School
9393 Beloit Road
Belvidere, IL 61008

We would like to start by 9:00am so please plan on arriving around 8:30 to checkin. If you need help with directions please let me know.

What's the date?

mr_basque wrote:Belvidere North High School will be hosting a tournament on December 10th, 2011...

Edit, nevermind, the post was edited after your question and I guess this was added then. But that's the answer to your question.

Jonah posted at 9:39 AM and the post was edited at 9:41 AM, presumably to include the date.

Indeed. Anyway, I'll staff.

Ceci n'est pas une bump

In non lame joke news, I'd recommend you put in the thread title that this is at Belvidere North.

King of Carrot Flowers wrote:Ceci n'est pas une bump

I see what you did there.

Current Field:

Loyola (3)
Belvidere North (3)
Belvidere High School (1 or 2)
Oswego East High School (2)
Fremd H.S. (1 or 2)
Marengo High School (1)

BUMP

This tournament could use some staffers!

We are considering splitting our tournament into an upper and lower division. We have room for a few more teams but could use additional moderators as well. Let me know if you are interested. Field Update:

Loyola 3
BNHS 3
Oswego East 2
Buffalo Grove - JV 2
Fremd 1
Auburn 1
Boylan 1
St. Viator - 2
Belvidere 2
North Boone - 1
New Trier
UIC prep
Christian Life
Guilford
Harlem

We have interest, but I have to check with my team as to how many can come - as well as my A.D.

I think this is an ACT date, so I may lose some kids to that. I will let you know a.s.a.p.

Thanks!

We are currently at 22 confirmed teams and have 3 interested. My cap right now is 24 teams but may be able to go to 26 if I have enough moderators. Please let me know by the end of this week if you are planning on attending. Confirmations and details are going out today.

Belvidere North A
Belvidere North B
Belvidere North C
Loyola A
Loyola B
Loyola C
New Trier
St. Viator A
St. Viator B
Christian Life
North Boone
Belvidere A
Belvidere B
Buffalo Grove A
Buffalo Grove B
Oswego East A
Oswego East B
FREMD
Boylan
UIC Prep
Keith Country Day
Rockford Guilford
Hoffman Estates

There have been some changes in the field. There is currently an opening for 1 team. Let me know if you are interested.
Edit: Field Update
Thanks,

I wouldn't want to do 26 teams even if I had enough moderators - that field size is horrible to format for. If all 3 of those schools attend (with one team), I would probably drop Belvidere North C from the field (keeping them as a standby team in case December weather keeps a team home, or otherwise as extra help) and stay at 24.

Can I get a field update for this?

You got my message that I sent a few days ago that Loyola cannot field a C team, right?

I remember hearing him say something about it, I just don't think the fieldpost is up to date. We've had lots of last minute changes.

Matt,
I got it. Haven't had time to reply. Sorry. We are all set.

Since we are mirroring DAFT III next Saturday, does anyone who knows care to share how this went today?

"Dragonstone A" won the second game of a final in which they had the advantage against Belvidere North. I'm not sure about placement below that.

I must say I was severely disappointed with the quality of this set. Generally speaking, the set was way, way, way too hard to be called "regular HS difficulty." At a very specific level, I can't say anything because the questions aren't cleared. Splitting the difference...

*Tossup answer selection generally skewed hard, usually treading the line between "it can (or cannot) come up as a HS tossup" and usually erring to be too hard. This was especially notable in categories that are usually poorly converted anyway - world literature, philosophy, and social sciences, and math/CS.
*Tossup clue selection omitted middle clues far too often; you'd often get multiple sentences of lead-in worthy material, followed by an immediate cliff to clues usually seen just before FTP.
*Bonus conversion was essentially <5 PPB for any team other than "Dragonstone," Belvidere North, or New Trier, partly because the knowledge base of these teams is still in the early stages, but primarily because a colossal number of themes rewarded study of college questions over anything else. Bonus themes drew on really hard topics; those topics might lend themselves to easy clues if you look hard enough and/or wreck the theme, but bonuses usually ended up with easy parts that would be medium parts at ACF Fall and/or hard parts that wouldn't look out of place at a hard-ish college tournament (not CO or anything, but...Sack of Antwerp?)

Looking at this field (after the first 4-6 teams, weak, compared to recent Illinois tournaments), I expect an argument to be made that these teams should be getting these low PPB numbers (stats aren't up yet, but having moderated I know what we're gonna see). This tournament had many, many teams that are still new to pyramidal quizbowl (and/or quizbowl, period) and have a lot to learn. But, aside from a smattering of science bonuses, very, VERY little in this set rewarded knowledge potentially gained in the classroom. Would (New Team X) have gotten <10 PPB on the day at Kickoff on an NAQT IS set?? Probably - many of these teams did just that. But IS sets, generally speaking, point you where to go to learn more. When the easy part is as off-the-wall hard as many of these bonuses were, you don't know where to go to learn more things. Nobody left Kickoff @ Sterling or Wheaton North early; today, multiple teams said "I don't want anything to do with another round of this, we're leaving," and it wasn't a factor of running late.

When the set is cleared, I'll have more specifics. As for now, Coach Powers - if you have teams making their first or second appearances at a pyramidal quizbowl event at your tournament next week, I strongly encourage you to warn them that this set is not a good example of what regular HS quizbowl difficulty is.

"Too long, didn't read" version: DAFT 3 was harder than HFT.

Yeah this tournament was waaaaaaaaaay too hard, pretty much. The set was inappropriate for the field, but the ridiculous difficulty was out of our control. Overall though, I thought the tournament was well run. Needless to say if Belvidere North hosts a tournament next year it will almost certainly not be using another incarnation of DAFT.

Thank you Brad and Dylan for your insights. Looking at the field I have registered at SJHS next week, I know virtually all of the A teams and several of the B Teams are quite experienced, so for them the challenges you describe might be more welcome than it was for many of the inexperienced teams present in the Belvidere North Tournament today. Naturally I hope this is the case, but of course I cannot be sure of this. Still, the other half of the field will be B-D teams, many of which might be young or inexperienced, so I will keep my fingers crossed for them. Anyway, thanks for your comments. They might help me in preparing for next week, and I appreciate that.

King of Carrot Flowers wrote:Yeah this tournament was waaaaaaaaaay too hard, pretty much. The set was inappropriate for the field, but the ridiculous difficulty was out of our control. Overall though, I thought the tournament was well run. Needless to say if Belvidere North hosts a tournament next year it will almost certainly not be using another incarnation of DAFT.

I'm sorry that the question set was too difficult for the field– although DAFT was advertised as being above regular high school difficulty in the original thread. If there any specific criticisms and complaints about the questions, I'd really appreciate anyone sending those to me privately.

I was under the impression that this set was intended to be regular difficulty, which swayed my thinking a bit. It's a fine set, but it's just as hard as advertised and was inappropriate for our field. I'd personally be plenty fine with using this set at a tournament that attracts a large group of top teams like New Trier's, but we probably would've been better off using something like an A-Set.

Are there stats from this mirror available which might help verify these impressions and/or help future potential users of this set make decisions as to whether they should use it?

RyuAqua wrote:Are there stats from this mirror available which might help verify these impressions and/or help future potential users of this set make decisions as to whether they should use it?

Stats got borked early in the day; there is a full set of scoresheets and they're getting input, but I don't know if they'll be ready in time for that.

That said, games with combined totals under 150 were very, very common.

One tournament that did use them that has full stats is here: http://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/74

I am finished with rounds 1-5, hoping to get 6-10 in today, sometime...I had first time scorekeepers and have had to recalculate a lot of the sheets. Sorry for the delay.

How is the uploading of stats going?

Slow. Hoping to finish today, Being a special ed teacher, finals are ..... challenging.

mr_basque wrote:Slow. Hoping to finish today, Being a special ed teacher, finals are ..... challenging.

Any idea when you hope to get stats for this tournament finished?

I was told today he has two rounds left

As I won't be playing any version of this tournament, is there any way you could send me the set? I totally understand if you can't because it's not cleared (as far as I know). Thanks. My email address is [email protected]

Any word on when stats will be posted for this? It's been a while.

staaaaaaaaaaaaaats? It has been well over a month since this tournament happened, and with the number of claims about the set being tossed around in this thread, it would be really nice if we had actual numbers to investigate said claims.

Since we need stats for our IHSA record and Coaches Assoc. All-Sectional Team, these stats are vital to completing our records. John, please let us know asap!

Kevin Palmer
Scholastic Bowl
William Fremd Head Coach

Buehler.... Buehler?

Even if you're not done with all the stats, you could at least post the prelims stats right now seeing as you claimed to have completed rounds 1-5 (i.e. the prelims).

is there any possibility for the posting of any sort of stats for this? Even just final scores or something?

I have scores and personal statlines from our matches, but that's it.

My friends at Dragonstone Academy gave me stats for their matches, too, so we could try to recreate something between our notes (assuming Andrew has his own stats)