Kentucky NASAT Tryouts - 3/23/14

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On March 23rd, the University of Kentucky will be conducting tryouts for the team that will represent Kentucky at HSAPQ's National All-Star Academic Tournament (NASAT). Tryouts will last from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in White Hall Classroom Building.

The HSAPQ NASAT will be held at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio on June 14-15, 2014.

The team is being organized by the coach of Dunbar's team, Susan Magedanz. The University of Kentucky's team's involvement is limited to organizing tryouts for the team and helping decide the members of the team. If anyone is interested in helping with the coaching, please let us know.

This tryout will be absolutely free to any interested eligible students.

We will be using this year's SUBMIT co-written by the University of Maryland and the University of California Berkeley’s teams. This set will be of approximately the same difficulty as the set for NASAT. SUBMIT and NASAT are sets that are considered "regular difficulty" for college teams, so they will be a challenge to most high school students.

A maximum of six players may be selected for this team after this tryout. Alternates may be selected as well. Anyone who tries out is expected to be available to attend the NASAT and pay any associated costs with the tournament.

The selection committee will consist of members of the University of Kentucky team, including Fred Morlan, who was the Tournament Director for the 2012 NASAT. Help from other members of the Kentucky quiz bowl community is being pursued as well.

It is expected at this time that the SUBMIT set will not be publicly posted or discussed at the time of the try outs. All the same, it is expected that players trying out for this team will conduct themselves in an ethical way; specifically, this means that these students will not gain information about the set before its usage on this day. Gaining information about the contents of this set before the tryout may result in dismissal from the team if he or she is chosen.

Team Kentucky had its best finish ever at last year’s NASAT, garnering 7th place via wins over teams representing Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Ohio. Given this success, the same evaluation system will be used this year.

Requests for further information, or to register, for this tryout can be done by emailing the University of Kentucky Quiz Bowl team at our address, [email protected].

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Players signed up (18):

Ballard: Jack Zhang
Campbell County: Clayton Truman
Corbin: Kieren Weisert
Daviess County: Evan Clark
Dixie Heights: Brandon Ackley
Dunbar: Neelav Dutta, Athena Kern
duPont Manual: Alice Liu, Andrew Valentine
Gatton: Austin Smith, Will Walters
Glasgow: Olivia Kiser
Johnson Central: Trevor Blevins, Katie McMahan
Paul G. Blazer: Stephen Corbitt, Aryssa Damron
Piarist: Subhash Gutti
Pikeville: Ammad Mansoor

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We're now up to 13 players signed up!

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Less than a week before the tournament, we're up to 23 people!

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We've had a couple drops, which puts us at 20. Since this is fairly low key, we're accepting registrations as late as Saturday night.

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Congratulations to this year's Team Kentucky!

Alex Malone, Gatton Academy*
Alice Liu, duPont Manual
Athena Kern, Dunbar
Kieren Weisert, Corbin
Olivia Kiser, Glasgow
Will Walters, Gatton Academy

*Despite it previously being announced that players would only make the team if they were able to attend the tryouts, the players trying out spoke up and voted unanimously that Alex should be granted a spot if he was deemed deserving. The selection committee determined he belonged on the team after today's tryouts.