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SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 8:48 pm
by sir negsalot
Richard Montgomery High School is unbelievably pleased to announce Self Written Academic Games For Every Studious Team. This tournament will be held on February 25, 2012 at our school in fabulous Rockville, Maryland.

Registration will begin at 8:15, with the opening meeting at about 9:00 AM. The fee structure is as follows:
Base fee: $70
Buzzer discount: -$5
Reader discount: -$10
Each additional team from a school: -$5
Minimum fee per team: $40


For now, no field cap is specified, so register at will!
Checks should be made out to "Richard Montgomery High School" with "It's Academic" in the memo line.

Please send registrations to [email protected]
For questions, suggestions, comments, or concerns, email above or post below.

Field:
Currently Registered (24)
GDS (2)
Centennial (2)
St Anselm's (1)
Gonzaga (2)
Quince Orchard (1)
Blair (1)
Caesar Rodney (1)
BCC (1)
Churchill (2)
Reservoir (1)
Eleanor Roosevelt (1)
Archbishop Spalding (2)
Oakland Mills (1)
WJ (1)
Monticello Concerto (2)
Whitman (2)
Howard (1)

Waitlist:
Maret (1)

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 9:43 pm
by Smuttynose Island
I really hope that this isn't the announcement that you sent out in emails to local clubs, because many coaches, especially ones that are less familiar with pyramidal QB or tournaments such as these, are going to have a very hard time taking you seriously when they read this. I'd suggest changing this and writing it in a much more serious and professional manner if you wish to attract new teams.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 9:47 pm
by Nine-Tenths Ideas
Smuttynose Island wrote:I really hope that this isn't the announcement that you sent out in emails to local clubs, because many coaches, especially ones that are less familiar with pyramidal QB or tournaments such as these, are going to have a very hard time taking you seriously when they read this. I'd suggest changing this and writing it in a much more serious and professional manner if you wish to attract new teams.
This, this, a thousand times this. If people are wondering why quizbowl in Maryland seems to be growing smaller and smaller, announcements like these for tournaments named "SWAGFEST" don't help matters.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 10:00 pm
by sir negsalot
It has been intended all along to approach never before seen teams differently than this. I don't think very many forum posts at all here would be suitable for someone who has never been to a quizbowl tournament before or that many teams have attended their first tournament as a direct consequence solely from reading the forums. For example, in the army, the image of a drill sergeant towering over you, barking harsh commands is the reality once you are there. Recruiting centers do not focus on that aspect, and emphasize the benefits.


EDIT: I appreciate the concern and any further advice in expanding the circuit is welcome

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 10:13 pm
by SunWukong
GDS is interested in attending this tournament.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 10:42 pm
by salmon of wisdom
Whitman will probably swag over for this tournament.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2012 7:20 pm
by sir negsalot
Seeing the Centennial Attack tournament in Georgia, we are considering bracketing teams by national-caliber and regular varsity to promote more games between teams of like ability. Most likely, teams will be able to choose which bracket to participate in. Thoughts on this?

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2012 7:35 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
That works when you have a pretty good sized field. Considering the last tournament we attended at RM had a total of 10 teams playing (including a solo player and a house team), it's probably more important to just get more teams to come to this tournament than worry about giving great teams more competitive games.

And, yes, we're interested in coming. I don't know how my kids would feel about this field splitting thing.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2012 6:34 pm
by NSB
WJ would like to field 1 or 2 teams to this. swag us on the roster.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 11:09 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
We've sent in a registration e-mail for this.

But, because of the comments in this thread please fix this set before we attend this tournament using these questions in 4 weeks. If i do not hear about significant edits, improvements, and alterations - and hear them from objective observers somehow - there's a chance we will decide not to attend.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2012 12:52 am
by nadph
We will fix the set before the mirror and will send it to some uninvolved party to certify it for quality before the tournament. Once again, I would like to apologize for the low current quality.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 9:30 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
Any update on the set progression and editing? I hope it's been checked and verified by a trusted third party by this point, or will be soon.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 9:50 pm
by nadph
Adam Kalinich and various other players at the NIU mirror of this drew up a fairly comprehensive list of errors, Wikiplagiarism, and other problems with this set; these have for the most part been worked through (80% of the document has been resolved, at last glance). We were planning to send the set for verification sometime next week.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 7:50 pm
by sir negsalot
Any neutral "expert" is welcome to look at the set and give us their thoughts. Email me at dgalitsky94 at gmail dot com

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 3:53 pm
by sir negsalot
For now, we will cap the field at 18 teams (those which have registered via email). For any teams that would be interested in coming but have not yet registered, we will start a waitlist. If we get 6 teams on the waitlist and extra moderators, we may be able to accomodate 24 teams.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 4:09 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
You listed us bringing two teams and we are definitely not. We have one, one buzzer set, and myself to moderate.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 4:43 pm
by Dogberry
Thanks Mr. C - we'll fix that. Also, BCC has just registered a team, bringing us back up to 18.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 7:17 pm
by Howard
I've just requested entry for one team. And I'll be happy to moderate.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 6:23 pm
by sir negsalot
With 6 teams registering, that brings us to 24, so the field is now closed. (Barring a dropout)

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 10:31 pm
by Dogberry
This tournament will now be using Auburn's RAVE set - more information about the set here. We greatly appreciate Auburn's flexibility and generosity.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 6:33 pm
by Panayot Hitov
Oakland Mills finished 6th with a record of 5-4, losing the fifth place game to Caesar Rodney. This was a great tournament!

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 6:37 pm
by jonathanmarx
Paul from OM wrote:Oakland Mills finished 6th with a record of 5-4, losing the fifth place game to Caesar Rodney. This was a great tournament!
GDS A finished first, beating St. Anselm's on the last tossup of a one-game final.

Blair finished third, beating Whitman A on the last tossup of the third-place game.

BCC and Gonzaga A were playing for 7th to fill out the top bracket - I don't know the results of that game.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 7:01 pm
by The Stately Rhododendron
The tournament was definitely well-run and there was some good competition. However, the set had too many questions that were "One person from this country" or "One person of this name" or "One painting with this object". I dont know if that's just me, but i really dont like that type of question.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 7:38 pm
by Angry Babies in Love
jonathanmarx wrote:
Paul from OM wrote:Oakland Mills finished 6th with a record of 5-4, losing the fifth place game to Caesar Rodney. This was a great tournament!
GDS A finished first, beating St. Anselm's on the last tossup of a one-game final.

Blair finished third, beating Whitman A on the last tossup of the third-place game.

BCC and Gonzaga A were playing for 7th to fill out the top bracket - I don't know the results of that game.
Churchill beat Monticello Concerto A to win 9th, not sure who won the 11th place game but it involved GDS B and Whitman B if my memory serves me; no placement games were played for places below that as teams left early.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 7:48 pm
by No Electricity Required
C.R.E.A.M. wrote:The tournament was definitely well-run and there was some good competition. However, the set had too many questions that were [types of common links]. I dont know if that's just me, but i really dont like that type of question.
When I played the set earlier this month, I thought it had a pretty normal number of common link questions. You may not like the way common links feel, but there is a good reason why we have them. Common link questions are a really nice practice because they give writers the ability to test knowledge that they would otherwise be unable to in a set of a certain difficulty. For example, if a writer wanted to ask about Juan Rulfo (random example) in a high school set, they would be much better off writing a tossup on "Mexico" and using his work for very early clue(s) and transitioning into easier Paz and Fuentes clues. This means that they would produce a tossup that incorporates some harder, interesting material without going way overboard in difficulty. Sometimes, common link questions can be poorly executed and frustrating, but for the most part they can make quizbowl more interesting.

Edited: sometimes I like my pronouns to agree with their antecedents

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 8:38 pm
by abnormal abdomen
Obviously, I'm interested in hearing any and all positive and/or negative feedback about this set. I dunno if there will be anymore mirrors besides Charlie Dees's singles event, but maybe we should get a discussion thread started or something?

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 9:39 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
This set was all sorts of great, if but a tiny bit hard at times. There were a few bonuses that below average teams were not getting 10s on, and there certainly were some... hm, interesting... ideas for tossups. A few were just too hard. Again, i stand by my general sentiment that asking about works by not-incredibly-easy authors is too hard for the average team in a lot of cases.

But, in general, the questions were written excellently and the second best housewritten set we've heard this year, behind GSAC. I definitely did like it quite a bit. Kudos to the Auburn kids and anyone else who helped on this set. I really enjoyed reading it a lot.

As for the tournament itself, it's a shame we only got 9 games with so many teams here, but that's just the way the brackets ended up i guess. Some of the lower bracket games took a very long time though, so perhaps this was the best route. My girls played really well and this was probably their best tournament of the year. The four teams above us are so clearly better, but we believe we really were better than all the ones below us too. Kind of nice to end up exactly in the place that we hoped for. We had a great time, and i really enjoyed moderating.

Hopefully we can see the stats soon.

EDIT: Oh, look, they are online already: http://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/90 ... _swagfest/

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 9:49 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
Looking at the stats, i'm pretty sure that Banlale didn't get 9 tossups in the last time i moderated on BCC. I think he actually got zero.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 10:43 pm
by NSB
ETA of full results/individual results? Or am I just looking in the wrong place

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2012 12:44 am
by Manas
I thought some of the bonuses were a little difficult to score on. Overall though, it seemed to be a well run tournament. Personally speaking, I liked it

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2012 4:42 pm
by sir negsalot
Stats posted again:

Use the headings to get team and individual stats, etc.
http://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/90 ... dividuals/

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2012 6:56 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
List of villages in West Virginia wrote:Looking at the stats, i'm pretty sure that Banlale didn't get 9 tossups in the last time i moderated on BCC. I think he actually got zero.
Really, you might want to fix this. It's totally screwing with BCC's points per bonus and such. The team definitely did not go 2-17-0 in that game... i think they went like 2-8-0 instead.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2012 8:33 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
I keep posting in this thread, but this is probably the last time.

My girls were quick to point out something before we left on Saturday: there were a total of 4 females on any teams in all of the playoffs, and all 4 of them were all from CR.

Kind of cool and kind of depressing at the same time. Perhaps someday we should have a conversation about why quizbowl is not nearly as appealing to the fairer sex?

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2012 8:49 pm
by Marble-faced Bristle Tyrant
List of villages in West Virginia wrote: Perhaps someday we should have a conversation about why quizbowl is not nearly as appealing to the fairer sex?
Ah! I'd been wondering when the annual females-in-quizbowl discussion would pop up.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2012 8:51 pm
by Blackboard Monitor Vimes
List of villages in West Virginia wrote:I keep posting in this thread, but this is probably the last time.

My girls were quick to point out something before we left on Saturday: there were a total of 4 females on any teams in all of the playoffs, and all 4 of them were all from CR.

Kind of cool and kind of depressing at the same time. Perhaps someday we should have a conversation about why quizbowl is not nearly as appealing to the fairer sex?
There have been several of these since I started reading these forums in 2008. They tend to lead to annoying and false generalizations about women and generally end poorly. Note: I'm not saying from a moderator's prospective that you shouldn't have such a conversation, but I figure it's worth noting that such threads tend to be fiascos and you may wish to tread carefully.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2012 8:36 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
Was this tournament a PACE-NSC qualifier?

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2012 9:14 pm
by Blackboard Monitor Vimes
List of villages in West Virginia wrote:Was this tournament a PACE-NSC qualifier?
We'd delayed ruling on this one because of concerns about the question set. Sorry; I'd forgotten about that until you asked. I just emailed Mike Bentley and should be able to get back to you all on this later tonight.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 12:38 am
by naan/steak-holding toll
Was very happy we could make this tournament and furthermore that we didn't do horribly at it. For our first QB tournament of the whole school year, I don't think 7th is too bad. Hopefully I'll be able to get all of our regulars on the A-team next time and maybe have a B-team as well.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 6:46 am
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
The Laughing Cavalier wrote:
List of villages in West Virginia wrote:Was this tournament a PACE-NSC qualifier?
We'd delayed ruling on this one because of concerns about the question set. Sorry; I'd forgotten about that until you asked. I just emailed Mike Bentley and should be able to get back to you all on this later tonight.
So... any news?

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 10:28 am
by Blackboard Monitor Vimes
List of villages in West Virginia wrote:
The Laughing Cavalier wrote:
List of villages in West Virginia wrote:Was this tournament a PACE-NSC qualifier?
We'd delayed ruling on this one because of concerns about the question set. Sorry; I'd forgotten about that until you asked. I just emailed Mike Bentley and should be able to get back to you all on this later tonight.
So... any news?
This tournament is platinum-certified. Sorry, Chrz, time zones are mean.

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 11:33 pm
by AKKOLADE
What set was used here?

Re: SWAGFEST at Richard Montgomery 2/25/12

Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 11:53 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
Dogberry wrote:This tournament will now be using Auburn's RAVE set - more information about the set here. We greatly appreciate Auburn's flexibility and generosity.
See above. This was what was done.