Oklahoma Situation

[ThePrudentGuava]

Hello All,

I'm new here so please forgive me if I break any rules. I intend to join our newly formed Academic/Quiz Bowl team next year, I'm an 8th grader so, I will join as a freshmen. What information is there about Quiz Bowl in Oklahoma? Thanks.

[Great Bustard]

Hi Jaxson,
The National History Bee and Bowl, which are quizbowl competitions (Bee is for individual students; Bowl is for teams) that use history questions (though a broad mix, including history of the arts, history of science, recent history, historical geography, etc.) have an upcoming Oklahoma tournament on Feb. 16 at Edmond Memorial High School in Edmond, OK which you're welcome to attend on your own, even if you don't have a school team to go with. See http://www.historybowl.com/regionalsite/oklahoma/ for details and http://www.historybowl.com/registration to sign up. Note that while it's primarily a high school tournament, you are encouraged to come and play in the Junior Varsity division for both the Bee and Bowl.
Also, ACE Quizbowl Camp will be running an Oklahoma camp this year, which I strongly recommend you attend if you're looking to improve as you move into high school. See http://acequizbowlcamp.com/camps/redlands/ for the details there. Other OK people can speak more about other tournaments/goings on in the Sooner State, but I hope you can make it to our tournament and to ACE Camp; you'd have a great time at both.

[ThePrudentGuava]

Thanks!

[Fat Lip]

Greetings Jaxson,
Oklahoma high schools quiz bowl has several different formats throughout the year. There is:
OSSAA (Oklahoma Secondary Schools Activities Association), which has 40 short tossups for ten points a piece, and two lightning rounds consisting of ten questions asked over a range of subjects with a time limit of one minute per lightning round. This format is arranged by size of schools from the smallest , Class A, to the largest, Class 6A, and you play schools in your size. Some house writes of this format are held throughout the year. I know the Edmond Memorial and Stigler have both hosted a housewrite fairly annually. More info at http://ossaa.com/NonAthletic/AcademicBowl.aspx
NAQT, a decent number of NAQT invitationals are held throughout the year, most of them being hosted in Oklahoma City or Tulsa. The State tournament for NAQT is usually held at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater in March. Make sure to check out the schedule regularly at http://www.naqt.com/schedule.jsp?hs=yes.
OAAC (Oklahoma Association for Academic Competition), this format is played by upper elementary through freshman/sophomore. The froshmore style has your team play in four different tournaments that are heavily based on the areas of math, social studies, sciences, and the humanities. If you win at least one of those four tournaments, then you qualify for the champions tournament. The format i similar to NAQT's with pyramidal tossups (the questions get easier as more of the question is read, start with harder clues and progress to easy ones), powers (answering early enough in the question gets you 5 extra points), and negs (interrupting a question while it is being read subtracts 5 points from your team's score). The difference being that they only have one bonus related to the topic; whereas, NAQT has three unrelated bonus questions.
Science Bowl, usually held in January, a tossup is read and you are given the option of four multiple choice answers if the question is multiple choice, or you have to just provide the answer if the question type is short response, both types show up. Sign-up through the OAAC website. http://oaac.org/
Mind Games: a televised quiz bowl tournament. There is a high school and a college edition. Teams receive scholarship money for participating. High school matches are posted here: http://www.ksbitv.com/mind-games/high-school-edition

That is most of everything that comes to mind. If you need anything else, feel free to ask. I am excited to hear of another team joining the OK quiz bowl scene, and I wish you the best of luck and will help out in the ways that I can.