The Quizbowl Resource Center

High School Academic Pyramid Questions announces that it will be holding the first HSAPQ National All-Star Academic Tournament on June 12-13, 2010, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.

This tournament will be open to all-star teams representing all states, the District of Columbia, all US territories, and all Canadian provinces and equivalents (as well as state or province-equivalent divisions of any other countries, in the unlikely event that they are interested). Each state or equivalent may enter up to one team, with up to six players on its roster, up to four of whom may be playing at any one time. Any player who was enrolled in the 9th through 12th grade in a school physically located in that state during the 2009-2010 academic year is eligible to play on his or her state’s team. Generally speaking, home school students are also eligible; any questions about eligibility will be answered by HSAPQ as needed.

This tournament is intended for states seeking an all-star event. We encourage single-school teams looking for national championships to investigate two such championships run by groups that are unaffiliated with HSAPQ: the National Scholastics Championship run by the Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence (http://pace-nsc.org/) and the High School National Championship Tournament run by National Academic Quiz Tournaments (http://naqt.com/hsnct/2009/details.html). HSAPQ does not see a need to run an additional national championship for normal school-based teams, as the two tournaments listed do an excellent job of serving that demand. However, we believe that all-star teams deserve a better event than what is currently available for the all-star audience.

This tournament will differ from previous all-star events run by other organizations in several key ways. We will attempt to keep cost under control; in line with that, the tournament will not be held at a resort, but rather on a college campus, much like many other high school quizbowl events held throughout the year. Furthermore, we will use a normal format comparable to regular-season events: games will consist of twenty tossups, with a thirty-point bonus being played after each correct tossup answer. Teams will play head-to-head, two at a time. “Performance-based,” multimedia, calculation, and pop culture questions will not be used. Teams will play twelve to sixteen games, in line with other national championship events, over the two days of the tournament.

Because this event will be played by highly skilled all-star teams, the question difficulty will be higher than that used at existing national championships such as the NSC and HSNCT. The style and subject distribution of the questions will be quite similar to existing HSAPQ sets.

The entry fee is $500 per team. HSAPQ will be issuing suggestions on nearby hotels, transportation and dining options, and so on, but will be neither providing nor selling such accommodations ourselves. HSAPQ is currently in the process of seeking sponsorship and prizes for this event.

If more than one contingent from a state seeks to enter this tournament, HSAPQ will take applications from each potential team and determine who may represent their state at the National All-Star Academic Tournament. The only criterion that will be used in this decision is our assessment, based on a review of the players’ achievements in the previous year, of which team is likely to perform the best at the tournament. HSAPQ plans to make contact with a regional network of advisors who will consult with HSAPQ on these decisions. We also welcome any comments or questions regarding the the National All-Star Academic Tournament or other HSAPQ ventures. Please direct your messages to HSAPQ Communications Officer Ted Gioia at [email protected].

This... is awesome.

Agreed. Illinois will likely be interested.

Wow. Wow.

Hey, if you want some help with figuring out the local dining options, let me know, because that is a thing I do.

myamphigory wrote:Hey, if you want some help with figuring out the local dining options, let me know, because that is a thing I do.

and seeing as this is actually a place I know, I'll volunteer to assist.

Why do I have to graduate.

JackGlerum wrote:Why do I have to graduate.

There's still time left to fail, believe me.

everyday847 wrote:

JackGlerum wrote:Why do I have to graduate.

There's still time left to fail, believe me.

Don't do it, Jack (and by it I mean listen to Andy Watkins).

Caesar Rodney HS wrote:This... is awesome.

Indubitably. And since the stacked "DC Region" only has a couple of teams actually located in DC itself, who knows... I might actually have a chance at.... making this.

Prof.Whoopie wrote:

Caesar Rodney HS wrote:This... is awesome.

Indubitably. And since the stacked "DC Region" only has a couple of teams actually located in DC itself, who knows... I might actually have a chance at.... making this.

Ha, that's the best part, it's like CR can pretty much guarantee a player on this since, for Delaware, only us and Charter actually do anything in the state. Yay! Kinda.

Boy, everyone is graduating this year, huh?

That's fantastic news!

Ha, that's the best part, it's like CR can pretty much guarantee a player on this since, for Delaware, only us and Charter actually do anything in the state. Yay! Kinda.

Paging Mr. Tressler...

While this is in the early planning stages, was any thought given to making this function similar to ARML* minus single-school teams? By that I mean Northern California and Southern California could, for example, each have their own team, and other geographically/populationally large states could also split.
In any event, this idea sounds, for lack of a better term, neat-o.

*-As I recall, ARML's rule is that a team must come from a relatively compact region that does not overlap any other regional team's territory.

ImaPC wrote:Paging Mr. Tressler...

I have to take a "wait and see" approach because

(a) I'm usually ready to wrap up the year after 2 nationals and
(b) Money is going to be tight next year. See the cuts Markell is making.

However, a plus to this is that at least I'll get to go somewhere I haven't been before. I'm kinda frustrated that NAQT has been in the same place five years in a row.

The problem with a "non-overlap rule" is that it would involve reducing the number of teams/players from the most competitive regions. Also, would you consider making this more of a "HSNCT/PACE with all-star teams" or would you consider making this a high-school analouge of Chicago Open (since there will be all-star teams and harder questions)?

Anti-Climacus wrote:The problem with a "non-overlap rule" is that it would involve reducing the number of teams/players from the most competitive regions. Also, would you consider making this more of a "HSNCT/PACE with all-star teams" or would you consider making this a high-school analouge of Chicago Open (since there will be all-star teams and harder questions)?

Yeah, that rule does not apply to quizbowl very well. You'd end up needing a Bethesda, MD, team and a Central VA team instead of powerhouse VA (TJ + Gov) and MD teams (adding in the 20 other quizbowl schools in Maryland).
Anyway, what are the options in this question? Per the announcement, the teams will be stronger that NSC or HSNCT and the questions will be harder. It is still a National tournament and hardly an Open event (there are strict guidelines on forming your team, e.g.) if that's what you mean (all the more reason to form a high school team for CaTO/TaCO, which is in fact a sort of high school CO, with college teams making it even more competitive).

Tower Monarch wrote: Anyway, what are the options in this question? Per the announcement, the teams will be stronger that NSC or HSNCT and the questions will be harder. It is still a National tournament and hardly an Open event (there are strict guidelines on forming your team, e.g.) if that's what you mean (all the more reason to form a high school team for CaTO/TaCO, which is in fact a sort of high school CO, with college teams making it even more competitive).

I think he is refering to tournament format as in, will it be a CO style full RR, or will it be like the other HS nationals that do prelims and playoffs.

I was not actually talking about tournament format, although that would be interesting. The question was mostly prompted by random thoughts about the fact that there aren't "post-national" high school events in the same way that there are on the college level. I guess what I was trying to say was "will you stress the tournament as the 'third national'(a la the period when NAC,ASCN and PAC were all popular) or as 'a step up in the level of play'(given the all-star teams and harder questions)?" In retrospect, it seems to be more of an issue of emphasis.
As for CaTO/TaCO, I'm still trying to decide between this and VCU Open.

Anti-Climacus wrote:I was not actually talking about tournament format, although that would be interesting. The question was mostly prompted by random thoughts about the fact that there aren't "post-national" high school events in the same way that there are on the college level. I guess what I was trying to say was "will you stress the tournament as the 'third national'(a la the period when NAC,ASCN and PAC were all popular) or as 'a step up in the level of play'(given the all-star teams and harder questions)?" In retrospect, it seems to be more of an issue of emphasis.
As for CaTO/TaCO, I'm still trying to decide between this and VCU Open.

I do not see this tournament as being a third national tournament along the lines of NAC and ASCN. With NAC and ASCN, teams were/are individual schools. This tournament is more akin to PAC/NTAE in that one team per state is competing. While references to this tournament as a national are apt as it is a tournament intended to attract teams from across the country to crown a champion and it lies in the nationals period of late May/early June, this tournament should be compared directly only with PAC/NTAE. In that spirit, from what I have seen so far, this tournament compares VERY favorably with the current monopoly. For tournament format, I do not think it would be a wild guess to say every team attending this tournament would be guaranteed more than the two games and four hours of play available for all non-semifinal teams at NTAE.

I never really understood this, but why are the National Tournament so much more expensive than all the other regular season events. Is it because the set is only playable once as opposed to multiple mirrors?

I never really understood this, but why are the National Tournament so much more expensive than all the other regular season events. Is it because the set is only playable once as opposed to multiple mirrors?

Actually, there's an open mirror of HSNCT(MASQUE), but that's neither here nor there. The actual reason is probably that national championships are usually larger and longer than most regular season-tournaments, and are therfore more logistically complicated. Also, the organization will probably need to transport, house(unlike virtually all regular-season tournaments) and feed staffers.

Flying good moderators in to make sure your tournament runs well costs money.

I'm curious as to how this tournament is being publicized. PAC used state Boards of Education, which seemed annoying to me but worked--they got over 40 states at their peak. IHSSBCA will try to make an official decision in August on how we want to handle this tournament, and one factor we will consider is trying to guess whether this will attract enough states to be a legitimate national championship. No publicity or outreach is needed to attract us, since some of our leadership pays attention to this board, but that is not the case for most states.

It would be great if this tournament could attract several true all-star teams or at least teams that earned the right to go. One of the problems with PAC is that it didn't prove much when an all-star team from one state defeated a questionably chosen single school from another state. I realize that tournament directors have very little control over these processes, but you'll get better results if the word gets out early to all the right people.

Good idea....and if not to Boards of Education, then to some key people (e.g. Lee Henry=Alabama, Julie Gittings=Pennsylvania).

To further that point, we were discussing this tournament in the Missouri message board, and Charlie told me that if an all star team formed, the students involved would just have to figure out how to split the application costs and organize the logistics. I'm not sure how easy that would be in other places, but in Missouri (and I imagine many other states), it would be fairly difficult to inform the top players in the state, bring them together, and have them figure out the logistics all without any sort of supervising authority.

Thus, I think it would definitely help HSAPQ's attempts to find genuine all star teams if it could find some sort of organization in each state (especially the ones with less contact with the national circuit) that could help take care of logistics in terms of finding genuine All-Stars, organization transportation, etc.

In regards to that in Missouri at the very least, have you considered contacting MACA (the Missouri Academic Coaches Association) about this? While MACA is fairly hidebound in not actively opposing bad Quiz Bowl and supporting aspects of what's defined as bad Quiz Bowl here, I know that they're considering sending a team to NTAE next year, and you could always try and present this tournament as much more competitive (not to mention much closer--and thus cheaper to reach).

Edited for more nuanced description of MACA's faults.

This sounds like a job for MOQBA.

One advantage HSAPQ should have over The Tournament Formerly Known as PAC is that they already know who the leaders are in many states, and many of its members already host tournaments that attract good teams and/or have useful contacts.

Shcool wrote:This sounds like a job for MOQBA.

I actually suggested that too on the Missouri forum, but Charlie's response to that was that all-star teams would just have to spontaneously form, which I found a trifle...implausible.

I would be interested in more information concerning this tournament. This is something we could discuss once we get our finances in order.

Charles, I hope you are doing well today (just saw that you had a loss). Please stop saying that MACA promotes bad quiz bowl. You know my feelings on this. It is tough to call what we do bad quizbowl considering the results (just look at what we produced from St. Charles County). We might have work to do to improve our NAQT results, but I believe the purposes of quiz bowl are being met.

Jeremy Gibbs wrote:Please stop saying that MACA promotes bad quiz bowl.

But it's true.

You know my feelings on this.

I wish I didn't.

It is tough to call what we do quizbowl

Fixed that for you.

This looks like a great tournament! I'll get together with Ben Dillon to get the ball rolling on the Indiana All-State selection process (something we maybe should be doing anyway!). This tournament surely can't move forward without representation from the quizbowl powerhouse state of Indiana!

Jeremy Gibbs wrote:Charles, I hope you are doing well today (just saw that you had a loss). Please stop saying that MACA promotes bad quiz bowl. You know my feelings on this. It is tough to call what we do bad quizbowl considering the results (just look at what we produced from St. Charles County).

I think you're taking the term "bad" Quiz Bowl a bit too perjoratively. Let's rephrase what I said:

"MACA supports short tossups and nonpyramidal math computation and has failed to actively protest MSHSAA's choice of Questions Galore as a vendor."

Is this a true statement? If so, it reflects what's defined as "Bad Quiz Bowl" on this forum--which is a catchall which I don't think reflects what you think of as "bad Quiz Bowl."

Also, notably, MACA didn't exactly have to do anything drastic in the last regard--an official statement like "We find it unfortunate that Questions Galore was chosen for this year's State provider given the quality issues associated with that vendor which we saw and we hope that next year's questions will be of significantly greater quality" would have been greatly appreciated, especially if it had come after State when it was obvious QG hadn't improved significantly.

As for what our County has produced...it's noteworthy that our accomplishment of tying for 43rd at Nationals came after actively avoiding MSHSAA QB and that the fact that we hadn't heard the Quiz Bowl played at Nationals before in Missouri with any particular frequency hurt us. As for what you guys accomplished; it was impressive for our county...but not really so in the greater context of the nation, in my mind.

Edit: "will" for "were"

I Charles Hang.

I still don't get this tournament.

How do we know that there won't be favoritism when determining an all star team? Like for example, how do we know that the team represented won't be all from the same school itself, and how do we know that we are choosing the best players to represent each state? If there is favoritism, then this tournament will pretty much not be able to show the true value of players from the states.

master15625 wrote:I still don't get this tournament.

How do we know that there won't be favoritism when determining an all star team? Like for example, how do we know that the team represented won't be all from the same school itself, and how do we know that we are choosing the best players to represent each state? If there is favoritism, then this tournament will pretty much not be able to show the true value of players from the states.

It depends who's deciding on the team. Hopefully, whoever's drawing up your state's team is impartial enough to put together a strong, well-balanced team. If not...well, then this tournament won't work. However, I will say that for the most competitive states, it's fairly clear who the best players in each category are.

Neil, since there isn't any governing organization for QB in Michigan, a team from here would probably have to form mostly on its own. Chances are that the top teams will be you guys and DCC, so if the coach of one or both teams wanted to lead something (other than taking their own team), I doubt people would object. As long as anyone could nominate players, that seems reasonable to me.
I would guess similar team selections would occur in many other states that happily lack a central quiz bowl government.

If we send a team from Illinois, we will probably do something similar to what we did for Panasonic--hold an open tryout for any interested students. Even though IHSSBCA (our coaches' association) directed the tryout, we are not a governing body in the sense that IHSA is.

One thing I was very emphatic about when I coached Team Illinois was that we choose the 5-6 best students and for that format, NOT a "representative" team (one from each defined "region") the way Flordia did/does. If you end up doing something similar in Michigan, insist on that!

Good luck!

Is there a way to guarantee that any such open tryout in any state would get posted here?

As I understand things, the tournament says that it will decide who represents a state if there are multiple applicants - so in that sense, the tournament encourages the formation of the best possible team, and thus the best possible tryout setup to determine said team.

I suppose it's possible that some team with, say, two of the ideal best four players in the state on it decides they just want to bring their normal squad, and boycotts tryouts and submits a bid. Under this system, if they were the better team than whatever other hypothetical group could be formed (and they very much might be), then by the basic premise they'd be accepted. However, I think that this tournament has quite wisely not set itself up as an official body that works with administrations or departments of education or anything like that, and is thus not bound by the countless silly bureaucratic limits associated with PAC. If HSAPQ has concerns that there was a lack of fair tryout or active exclusion, they can investigate them and act on them. But really, I don't see this happening - I would hope that most states will be responsible enough, one way or another, to do this in the correct way. For states without any semblance of coaching association, you'd only need someone to volunteer to help organize a team, run tryouts, act as a chaperon, etc. (in theory, you might not even need this, but it would probably be a big help). I would certainly be willing to do this for Maryland, and I imagine there are plenty of other coaches and college players who would be willing to contribute their time as well. With a little community-wide effort, we can not only push out the remnants of the PAC, but also some of the anti-quizbowl community thinking it embodies.

This sounds like if it is well organized it will be awesome. So, to nominate players to a state's team would there be some sort of committee of coaches? Or maybe the best players across the state would just contact eachother?

ryandillon wrote:This sounds like if it is well organized it will be awesome. So, to nominate players to a state's team would there be some sort of committee of coaches? Or maybe the best players across the state would just contact eachother?

This is pretty much left for each state to figure out for itself.

Arcadia's probably out, if we can get a person on the team.
Thats graduation weekend

Illinois will send an all-star team to this tournament, and, according to this pdf, so will Oklahoma.

HSAPQ announces that I, Dwight Wynne, will serve as Tournament Director for the 2010 National All-Star Academic Tournament, in which capacity I will be ably assisted by Ted Gioia.

We would like to remind all potential participants and selection committees that any group of up to six students who are each enrolled during the 2009-2010 school year in the 9th through 12th grades in schools physically located in the same state may apply to be selected by HSAPQ as their state's representatives. It is encouraged, but not necessary, that the group of students be drawn from at least two schools.

All bids must be received by 5 PM Pacific time on Thursday, March 18. Selected teams will receive notification of their bid acceptance no later than Thursday, April 1, on which date a sample packet representative of the distribution, length, and difficulty of the tournament will be posted on our website. Official bids should be e-mailed to me at [email protected] with the subject line "NASAT Bid - [your state]" and contain the name, year in school, and school affiliation of each team member, as well as the name and school affiliation, if any, of the head coach or chaperone. Additional details about each player's quizbowl-related accomplishments and areas of specialization are encouraged, but not necessary. GPA, test scores, and other non-quizbowl-related resume details should not be submitted, as they will not be considered in our analysis of team strength.

We remind prospective teams that this tournament will be more difficult than any current regular season or national tournament; as such, we are truly looking for each state to be represented by the strongest possible team. We reiterate that it is up to each state to determine how that strongest possible team is selected, and welcome multiple bids from any state. We will give slight preference to bids submitted by official state organizations, but may select a competing bid if we believe the team to be stronger than that selected by the governing organization. To that end, we encourage governing organizations to select students who display exceptional ability and knowledge, as demonstrated through year-round performance on pyramidal questions, in complementary academic areas; we believe that a team selected using this criterion will almost always be stronger than a team consisting of players who score highly at a single qualifying tournament. Of course, teams in states without governing organizations and teams whose state governing organizations do not submit official bids are encouraged to submit bids as well, and encouraged to use the same major criterion when selecting their team members.

If you have any questions or comments about the National All-Star Academic Tournament, please contact either me at [email protected] or Ted Gioia at [email protected].

Observers can follow Ohio's all-star selection process in this thread: http://www.createphpbb.com/oac/viewtopi ... =6886#6886

cvdwightw wrote: All bids must be received by 5 PM Pacific time on Thursday, March 18. Selected teams will receive notification of their bid acceptance no later than Thursday, April 1

How hard is that deadline? I think it's quite a long shot Vermont would send a team to your tournament, but if we did, we almost certainly would not make the decision until after our Scholars' Bowl state finals on the first weekend in April. Does that preclude the option entirely?

kcommo wrote:

cvdwightw wrote: All bids must be received by 5 PM Pacific time on Thursday, March 18. Selected teams will receive notification of their bid acceptance no later than Thursday, April 1

How hard is that deadline? I think it's quite a long shot Vermont would send a team to your tournament, but if we did, we almost certainly would not make the decision until after our Scholars' Bowl state finals on the first weekend in April. Does that preclude the option entirely?

We would obviously like states to attend even if they cannot put a team together until after the deadline. To that end, states from which no bids are submitted by March 18 must notify us by the official deadline of their intent to attend the tournament, and give us a definitive date by which at least one bid will be submitted. We will review all bids from that state and notify the accepted team within one week of that date.

Due to the vagaries of graduation dates, GDS seniors are now able to go to PACE, but cannot go to this. Ah well. Best of luck to the team that does represent DC!

RyuAqua wrote:Due to the vagaries of graduation dates, GDS seniors are now able to go to PACE, but cannot go to this. Ah well. Best of luck to the team that does represent DC!

Oh joy.

People, just man up and blow off your graduation to play quizbowl. I totally did it, and it was worth it.