East Brunswick May Invitational 2016 @EBHS (05/14/16)

[jxu]

Hello again everyone! Although EB’s first tournament has yet to occur, I am pleased to announce East Brunswick’s second tournament that will take place on May 14, 2016. For our invitational, there will be two separate tournaments occurring concurrently, one solo tournament on NTSS 2015 and a standard quizbowl tournaments with teams on IS-151A. While schools can sign up both teams for the team tournament and players for the solo tourney, no player may participate in both.

Logistics

Because so much of this tournament’s structure will depend on turnout, this is all very speculative. However, registration will be as usual - opening at 7:45 and closing at 8:45 along with a moderator meeting. The tournament will officially commence at 9 am. The tournament will take place at East Brunswick High School in East Brunswick, NJ.

Tentatively the solo tourney will be played as such:
The field cap is initially set at 24. Two prelim brackets of 12 will play 11 games. The top four from each bracket will then be split into two playoff brackets of 4, playing three more games in a round robin. The top two seeds in each of those brackets will then play in a super playoff (A1 v B2, B1 v A2, winners advance to the finals, the losers to the 3rd place game).
The bottom two in each of those playoff brackets will play straight crossover. The middle four from each bracket will be broken into two 4 person round robins and play crossovers, as will the bottom 4. This will let us to determine exact placing for fun, as well as allowing everyone to play a minimum of 15 games.
Once again, this is tentative, and we are open to changes and would love to hear suggestions. We wanted to get this tournament announced as soon as possible, so the format may not be completely polished. Suggestions are always encouraged.

The team tournament will be played as such:
The field cap is initially set at 18 teams. Three brackets of 6 will play a round robin with the top 2 seeds advancing to a 6 team playoff round robin. The top 4 will then play in a super playoff (1 v 4, 2 v 3, winners move on, etc). The bottom 4 from each division will be placed into 2 consolation brackets of 6.

Lunch

If your team is interested in ordering pizza, that will be handled through us on the day of. Please mark your interest in pizza on the form.

If you do not feel like ordering pizza, there are a few great options within a 5-10 minute walk from the High School: Chipotle, Smashburger, Sarku Japan, Musclemaker Grill, and Halal Guys. There is also a Five Below for snacks.

Registration and Fees

The solo tourney costs are:
$15 per player

The solo tourney discounts are:
- $2 / buzzer set
- $5 / moderator

While I realize the solo tourney discounts are very low, the initial cost has also been kept very low because we want people to have access to the tourney so we hope you still bring moderators and buzzer sets.

The A-set tourney costs are:
$70 / first team
$60 / every additional team
$50 minimum fee/ team

The following are our team discounts:
- $15 / experienced moderator with laptop for the purpose of electronic scorekeeping
- $10/ experienced moderator without laptop
- $5 / buzzer set

Please bring a check written out to East Brunswick High School on the day of the competition.

The registration forms are as follows:

If you are registering multiple players from the same school for the solo tournament, please fill the form out once for each player.
Solo:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1U1i2Uc ... E/viewform

A-set Tourney:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/16f0YUG ... U/viewform

The field caps are 24 for the solo tourney and 18 for the team tourney. Field updates will be located just below.

If you have any questions, email me at [email protected] or message me on facebook (Jason Xu) and I hope to see you in May!

EDIT: Just another note very quickly:

After East Brunswick's first ever tournament just yesterday (Funfest), I have decided to make a few notes regarding logistics.
1. If you plan on leaving halfway through the tournament, or may possibly have a bus issue that restricts you from staying the entire duration (most likely until 5 PM), please DO NOT sign up. We have had trouble with teams leaving after the morning rounds or leaving in the middle of the afternoon bracket, leaving us scrambling to find an adequate way to replace the lost matches. This does not only hurt East Brunswick's experience in running the tournament, but it also hurts all the other quizbowlers' experiences as well.

2. If your team decides to drop from the field within 5 days before the competition and there is no waitlist, the fee that was charged still holds. This leaves us very little time to have another team fill in the spot.

Apart from those two statements, we hope that your time at this tournament will be enjoyable!

[jxu]

Solo field: (School/Number of moderators/Number of buzzers)
Emmett Laurie (EBHS/na/na)
Anand Nanduri (EBHS/na/na)
Mason Murray-Cooper (EBHS/na/na)
Luke Tierney (Hunter/0/0)
Eric Wolfsburg (Bethlehem/0/1)
Samuel Kao (High Tech/0/4)
Alex Schmidt (Lehigh Valley/0/1)
Jake Deerin (Manheim/0/0)
Ahan Patel (Manheim/0/0)
Shayar Bhattacharjee (Manheim/0/0)
Michael Buffa (Manheim/0/0)
Sam Scarfone (Great Valley/0/0)
Daniel Chen (Great Valley/0/0)
Alex Sankaran (Henderson/0/0)
Total: (13/0/6)


Team field: (Teams/Moderators/Buzzers)
NSH (WWP North) (2/0/0)
Columbia (2/0/0)
Middletown (1/0/0)
Ridgewood (1/0/3)
MCA (1/0/2)
MAST (1/1/0)
Total: (8/1/5)

Waitlist:

[Northern Central Railway]

2. If your team decides to drop from the field within 5 days before the competition and there is no waitlist, the fee that was charged still holds. This leaves us very little time to have another team fill in the spot.

High school (and college!) tournament hosts have tried this policy before and it never goes well.

Without mentioning names, a tournament host in the NYC Metro tried to charge a "cancelling within a week of the tournament" fee a few years ago and it ended up with no cancellation fee being collected and a letter of apology being sent to the coach of a team who had to cancel a few days before the tournament because the host school's administration was not very pleased to hear that the quiz bowl team was trying to engage in this practice.

Teams dropping within a few days before a tournament is a problem to be sure, but charging a cancellation fee isn't the way to fix it.

[jxu]

So what do you recommend?

[jxu]

Right now, we are a little bit past half full on the Solo tournament and a little less than half full on the Team tournament a month before the tournament. Sizes can be adjusted, but we hope to see as many people attend this as possible!

[Antrobus63]

Hey Folks,

I see a number of my favorite players on the solo list and wonder if you all would like to go out somewhere for lunch or dinner? I am NOT volunteering to pick up the tab!, but I just thought it would be nice to hang out once at the end of the year.

Let me know what you think on this thread or by writing me directly at [email protected]

Thanks,

[Ithaca Cricket Ump]

So what do you recommend?

Having teams prepay going forward. It's not the standard way things are done on the circuit (although no one seems to have a problem doing so for NAQT nationals and PACE NSC for some reason), but there's nothing saying that you HAVE to do things the standard way, and in fact, we did it that way at BrainBusters Fall this year. If the school administration is putting up the fee, their accounting offices usually PREFER to prepay for these sorts of events, in fact (they're used to doing it for practically any analogous activity requiring an entry fee) and send the check ahead of time. It makes it a lot easier on them from an accounting and logistics standpoint. In 2014 (before prepayment), 3 schools out of 26 cancelled on BB Fall at the last minute and caused us to have to scramble to get a workable schedule on the day of the tournament. In 2015, we required prepayment, and lo and behold, all 36 schools showed up ready to play, on time. It's amazing how much more willing players and, especially, coaches are to honor their commitments and show up when you already have their money in hand, especially when you do your due diligence and give them fair warning far ahead of time, in writing (like, in the original tournament announcement) that cancellations after a certain time will cause a forfeiture of all or part of the registration fee. Trying to charge a cancellation fee to someone who hasn't paid you yet is a fool's errand. You'll never see that check. Do it the way we did it at BB Fall this year, and you already have the money, and if they don't show and don't have a really good reason? Tough for them.

If this prepayment policy causes some teams that might have registered to not register? Fine with me. Those are usually the teams that would've flaked on you and detracted from the experience of all of the other teams, anyway, and what would you rather have...a 16 to 20 team field of enthusiastic teams that you know are going to show up, or a 40 team field where you're sweating whether or not a quarter of the field is going to decide they have something better to do that day on 48 hours or less notice? Anyone sane would take the former, in a heartbeat.

--Scott

[jxu]

Yeah i definitely agree with that^. We had quite a bit of dropping this time, so this is definitely something we may try next year.

[jxu]

The stats from the Team tournament are found here:
http://neg5.org/t/NklrFBvJGb/stats/team?phase=EJHtSwJMb

The stats from the Solo tournament are found here:
http://neg5.org/t/EyxCdvDyMW/stats/team ... #EJzZ9D1MZ

We apologize for any mistakes in advance. But overall, we would like to thank everyone who came!

[Antrobus63]

Thanks. When are you going to post them, officially?