Georgia 2008-2009

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

First, 14-15 year olds are children.

I don't think enough attention has been paid to how insulting this quote is to the many intelligent high school underclassmen out there playing this game. Are teenagers immature? Yes, they always will be. Does this mean they are no different than 5 or 10 year olds? Of course not, and to write off things really meant for 10 year olds as appropriate for teenagers seems misguided. This is a game for smart people - I like to think I'm a smart person, and I abandoned reading childrens books when I was about 12 in favor of things like Of Human Bondage, Oedipus Rex , and Shakespeare at about that time. I would be hard pressed to believe that there are not any students like this in Georgia's freshman classes who are showing up to JV state, and to dismiss them out of hand because they aren't as mature as adults seems to be doing a disservice to them.

[at your pleasure]

I'd like to take a break from the difficulty argument and note that lowering difficulty does not justify lowering quality. This

A bonus that asked who was the only president nominated from a Southern plantation in 1848 and then asked who was the first president born west of the Mississippi

or this

That last tossup on Bohr was pretty much just his biography, and didn't do a great job distinguishing him from the other well-known Manhattan project scientists

Is trival, and therfore just unacceptable whether it's for a middle school novice tournament or Chicago Open. If these are indicative of the tournament as a whole, then the issue with the questions was not that they were "too easy" or "too difficult", but that they were just plain bad.

[centralhs]

No one has yet mentioned what seemed to me to be one of the most trivial questions asked at J.V. State. There was a bonus on presidential dogs. I hear the lead-in and think surely the questions will be about Checkers or Fala or some really famous presidential dog... I don't remember the 1st part of the bonus but the 2nd part was asking about a dog who was stabbed to death following the president's own assassination. My team guessed Kennedy, I think, and then the other team (correctly) guessed Lincoln. There have only been 4 assassinated presidents, so the pool of possible answers wasn't that great. And is this knowledge of "Fido the stabbed dog" especially important to know? In 12 years of working with quiz bowl, I have never seen or heard this question.

Cathy Hirsch
Coach
Central Gwinnett H.S.

[Mechanical Beasts]

The debate over questions will never be resolved. I could use cliche after cliche: You can't please everybody. A good team is a good team no matter what the situation. It is what it is.

See, like, a good team is in fact a good team no matter what the situation, but not all sets of questions appropriately eliminate variables that might prevent the better team from winning. (if they did, then no one would ever complain about questions, and you note correctly that people do.) They'll still be the better team, but a tournament should do its best to bear that fact out. Especially a state championship. Saying "some people will be unhappy whatever I do" is a stupid truism. Using it to excuse not trying to find a better source of questions (since these questions apparently have objective problems--separate from people not liking them, which isn't in itself a problem) is awful.

Fine. Provide a source of questions 100 % of players and coaches like. Otherwise, waste time and energy whining or shut up and move on.

This is inordinately cranky: people actually have a right to ask for good questions even if they themselves can't hand you packets full of them.

[jburnsOHS]

Ok. mea culpa. I'm still old school. In this age of overly sensitive people and emails, texts and blogging amongst people who don't know my blunt, taciturn, sardonic nature, I find myself backtracking often.

What I meant was: Yes, of course the concerns about the questions and anything else are always considered and addressed by the board in its annual 12 hours or so of meeting time. Having only received the questions 10 minutes before the event began, it was a little difficult to make changes for the tournament. As I stated, these questions were plan B or C. We are already evaluating options for next year.

To repeat the same tired criticisms over and over again is not constructive. It's just beating a dead horse. Many people, including a GATA board member, have made their opinions known. We'll work on it. Someone else attacked other elements of the tournament without any supporting evidence. If there are valid concerns, they will be addressed as well.

Instead of tearing down, why not use this forum to offer advice on real problems like how to increase quiz bowl participation and how to build better teams.

Yes, I now know somebody is going to call me hypocritical because wanted to find offense in my last post. Whatever.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

Having only received the questions 10 minutes before the event began, it was a little difficult to make changes for the tournament.

Well i think that this problem is probably one of the first things that needs to be addressed. WHY is this such a recurring issue in tournament after tournament on a nationwide scale?

[centralhs]

Jeff -- I am going to "use this forum to offer advice on real problems" by making some suggestions that I hope will be seriously considered by the GATA board at the next meeting. A few easy fixes immediately come to mind that might increase participation in the Georgia Varsity and J.V. State tournaments but they are going to have to involve the GATA board's willingness to veer away from "the way that things have always been done" in Georgia. I'm sure that I can think of other suggestions later, but here are a few to start with:

(1) Let coaches know by e-mail (maybe even by an old-fashioned phone call?) that the Varsity and J.V. State tournaments in Georgia are open to ALL teams -- no matter how experienced or strong they are. Convey to coaches that all teams are welcome and that GATA desires the state tournaments to expand beyond the "usual suspects" who have vied for the state title for years. All of the Georgia teams who participate in the Brookwood tournament should be participating in the State tournaments, in my opinion. I'm not exactly sure why they don't, but maybe it is because they fear that they won't be good enough. I know that when I first started 12 years ago, I did not take my team to the State tournaments because I did not feel we were "state level." Eventually I realized that the tournaments were open to and appropriate for teams at all levels. After a few years of going to the state tournaments and other tournaments that consistently attract strong teams, we actually began to rise to the level of the top teams.

(2) Move the Varsity tournament to just one day instead of two. This year, teams only played 7 preliminary rounds and there were 3 playoff rounds. With a total of only 10 rounds, the tournament could easily be played in just one day and still be finished at a reasonable hour. I know that supposedly the two-day format makes the tournament seem more special, or something, but the truth is that it doesn't -- it just makes it inconvenient. Not all parent drivers, coaches, or even students are available to come two days in a row so that limits the number of teams in attendance. I would support the two-day format if we played a large amount of rounds (as we used to prior to 2005 or so) but the smaller number of rounds we use now doesn't warrant it. In talking to coaches over the past few years, I have heard this "complaint" repeatedly. I think that if you polled all the team coaches, and not just the GATA board, you might find that most people want to scrap the two-day format.

(3) Several coaches at the J.V. State tournament this Saturday expressed the belief that the extremely small turnout at this year's tournament (such as AAA only having 3 teams) might have something to do with how late in the year the J.V. tournament is held. Apparently at some schools,coaches are told that the academic team season can not stretch out over the entire year and must be over by a certain date. At least that's what I heard from more than one person on Saturday. If that is the case, perhaps the J.V. State tournament should be moved up a little bit earlier in the school year.

I don't know how one gets on the GATA board but I am willing to serve on it if there is ever an opening. And I am willing to help in whatever way is needed in the meantime.

Cathy Hirsch
Coach
Central Gwinnett H.S.

[Rountree]

Cathy, I think your suggestions are solid and I will bring them to the GATA board meeting with me.

While I do not claim to know all the reasons why things have been done the way they are, I will offer my ideas as to some of the possibilities.

1) In regard to the 2-day format of the GATA Varsity State Championship, I think part of the reason for it is to make travel easier for the teams coming from beyond the metro-ATL area. While there are not a lot of them, they do come and having a tournament finish at 2-3pm on a Saturday (because some games were played on Friday night), makes it much easier to get home at a reasonable hour on Saturday night. Again, this is not to say that is the only reason, but I know if I was the Coach of a team traveling from South GA to Athens, I would not want the tournament to finish at 5-6pm and then have to drive 5-6 hours back home. If it was a 1 day tournament, it would probably mean that most of those long-distance teams would have to stay somewhere other than their own beds for 2 nights - obviously, this doubles the hotel costs and could potentially hurt a team's budget.

It has been mentioned that for a year or two (in the future) GATA might move the Varsity tournament to somewhere away from the metro-ATL area (or as close as Athens). I wonder if the GATA Varsity tournament were in Tifton, would people from ATL prefer to play everything on a Saturday or split it up over 2 days. In other words, if we (from the metro area) were in the other people's shoes, how would we want the tournament structured so as to make the travel as easy as possible. Furthermore, would people from ATL even make the drive to Tifton for the State Championship? I would hope that they would, but I have no crystal ball.

2) I think moving the JV tournament earlier is an excellent idea. With EOCTs and AP Exams coming up, some schools/students/parents/coaches simply might not be willing to give up valuable time on a weekend for our tournament. It also certainly hasn't helped that the economy has tanked in the last year or so. Unfortunately, too many families and schools simply don't have the resources to send a group of kids to a tournament this late in the year. Of course, if we move it up we will have to compete with Spring Breaks and (maybe) proms, but I am confident we could find a good weekend a few weeks earlier than the middle of April.

3) Your first point speaks to the main issue at hand with all of these posts. What kind of information is appropriate for JV questions at a State Championship in GA? With such a wide range of team abilities in every classification, I am afraid there is not an easy answer, but many people have good intentions with offering their suggestions. It is a question that ultimately will help direct the future of quiz bowl in GA I believe. What you desire, Cathy, is exactly what I and many other people on the board want for quiz bowl in GA: it should be as inclusive and fun as possible for as many teams wishing to participate as there are. Why then do more teams not play in the state tournaments? Probably for many of the same reasons that the exact same thing happens in other states like SC, NC, etc. The list of reasons is too long to go into here and probably should be moved to the theory section anyway if someone cares to do so. I will reiterate some of the potential issues briefly: difficulty/appropriateness of the questions, the location of tournament (and travel costs inherent in attending), knowledge of quiz bowl as an activity, coach/parent/school involvement in academic competitions of any type, qualification rules and/or regulations, and the list could go on. By virtue of being on this board, some of us probably have no idea that some of these topics are even issues at some schools. That fact is not meant to bag on anyone who posts here at all. I think it is a positive thing to have this forum, and I agree with Jeff that we should all strive to use it proactively to help quiz bowl with all its many facets.

[AKKOLADE]

Ok. mea culpa. I'm still old school. In this age of overly sensitive people and emails, texts and blogging amongst people who don't know my blunt, taciturn, sardonic nature, I find myself backtracking often.

Stop making excuses for breaking forum rules and just stop breaking the forum's rules.

[millionwaves]

To repeat the same tired criticisms over and over again is not constructive. It's just beating a dead horse. Many people, including a GATA board member, have made their opinions known. We'll work on it. Someone else attacked other elements of the tournament without any supporting evidence. If there are valid concerns, they will be addressed as well.

Hello. I and the other members of the board staff will make the calls on what's constructive discussion and what isn't. Please do not try to quash discussion of any quizbowl competition on these message boards. If you persist in doing that, I will immediately ban you, and I don't really want you to become the next President of a state association of quizbowl coaches to have that happen to them.

Instead of tearing down, why not use this forum to offer advice on real problems like how to increase quiz bowl participation and how to build better teams.

Instead of using your viewing time of this forum to make criticisms that have no basis in fact and to tell other people to stop talking about quizbowl, why not check out one of the tens of threads that are directed towards doing just that? You might learn something.

EDIT: Well, I see that, upthread, you already told people to stop talking about quizbowl. This is another warning, and if you do this again, one of us will indeed tempban you.

[ToXiCRAiN]

Having only received the questions 10 minutes before the event began, it was a little difficult to make changes for the tournament. As I stated, these questions were plan B or C.

10 minutes before the tournament is very disappointing. This tournament was statewide and I am sure it was long waited upon by all of the JV teams. What on earth went so horribly wrong for you to not be able to go with plan A? It is truly very disappointing to hear that the Georgia JV state questions were a "plan B or C" set of questions. I hope that mishaps like these will not occur in the future.

[cchiego]

This was in another thread but I thought it was relevant to the discussion here:

We go to lots of tournaments in Georgia where teams are only guaranteed 5 games. We have even gone to a few tournaments where a $60 entrance fee was charged and then only 4 games were guaranteed. At Dorman, all teams played 9 rounds and these 9 rounds were still over by 3:00 (and this was NAQT rounds with 20 questions, 3 part bonuses AND bouncebacks.) The final round was over by around 5:00.

Which tournaments have only 4 games and anything less than 20 questions and 3 part bonuses? I'd think that that would be the bare minimum for any hosted tournament to provide.

Also, one of the reasons we historically only guaranteed 5-6 games for our tournaments was that some coaches wanted to leave early and were suspicious of any attempt to make the tournament longer. Would enough teams be in favor of adding more rounds, especially at smaller tournaments? It adds a bit of a burden on the TD to get enough people to stay through the afternoon, but if you have the packets and teams then what's the point of not playing more rounds?

[AlphaQuizBowler]

Would enough teams be in favor of adding more rounds, especially at smaller tournaments? It adds a bit of a burden on the TD to get enough people to stay through the afternoon, but if you have the packets and teams then what's the point of not playing more rounds?

Personally, I would like to see more Georgia tournaments using rebracketing/round-robin as opposed to single elimination to allow teams to play more games. However, one big limit on tournament options is size. I'm not sure Brookwood's hundred-team tournaments can run anything other than single-elimination.

[centralhs]

Rebracketing/round robin is exactly what Dorman used. All teams played 4 preliminary games and then the teams were put in 3 brackets to play 5 "playoff" games. This was followed by a single-elimination semifinals and finals. I was pleased to see that none of the teams seemed to want to leave at lunch time and that everyone seemed to enjoy the opportunity to get to play a lot of rounds.

If tournament directors absolutely insist on having a single-elimination format for playoffs, why not at least have rooms set up with buzzers/readers for teams who have lost but who want to stick around and play more games? College tournaments often seem to have consolation brackets but high school tournaments don't (at least not in Georgia.)

I can't speak for any other teams besides my own, and maybe other coaches do want to get done as early as possible, but I would like to see Georgia tournaments add a few more rounds. I'm not saying that I want to stay until 10:00 at night... but tournaments that can guarantee 8-9 rounds and still be done by mid-afternoon, as Dorman did, are ideal.

Cathy Hirsch
Coach
Central Gwinnett H.S.

[Rountree]

I am not sure it is a question of finishing as early as possible for some coaches/teams, although many teams do have to pay for the use of their school's facilities (which includes janitor fees); thus, the longer the tournament runs, the more they have to pay. This can really eat into a team's budget if timeliness and efficiency are not top priorities.

I think the real issue, however, is sheer logistics and staffing concerns. The Dorman Season-ender tournament had 17 teams at it. The CATT 4 in December had almost 50 teams. To look at the numbers more closely, the 17 teams at Dorman played anywhere from 7 to 11 games, with only 2 of those teams playing 10 games and only 1 playing 11 games. At the CATT 4, if you made the top 16, you would have already played 6 or 7 games. If you were one of the 4 teams that made the Finals/Consolation Game, you would have played (at least) 10 rounds total. This is only 1 fewer game for the top 2 teams than at Dorman, but 1 more team got to play that 10th game than at the Dorman Season-ender. For the remaining teams at the CATT 4, all of them played at least 6 games with the majority playing at least 7 games. To me there isn't much difference in the numbers between the two tournaments as far as number of games played per team. Mr. Huff ran his tournament the best way he could given the number of teams in the field; if I were him I would have done the exact same thing. For the Cavalier Challenge back in January, he did not use rebracketing for the playoffs because that tournament had 70 teams, so it didn't make sense. I think most other tournaments with larger fields choose to use single-elimination because it is the most efficient way to do it.

The other major issue is staffing. For a tournament with 50 teams, if you wanted every team to play the entire set of, say, 10 rounds, you would need 25 readers for the day (let's estimate 8am-5pm). At the Dorman Season-ender, you would have needed 8-9 readers for the day. This is a HUGE difference in staffing numbers as most teams do not have 25 players who would be able to read, or the team cannot find 25 people who would sacrifice their entire Saturday to help. (This isn't even factoring in the need of more scorers/timers/buzzers/etc.) If you run single elimination playoff you get to send more and more readers home as the tournament moves along, so that by 5pm you only need 2-3 workers to finish the tournament. Believe me, as our tournament has grown substantially over the past 3 years, it has been harder and harder to get enough experienced readers to make the tournament go smoothly. To get some readers, people are much more willing to come when you tell them they can leave at 1pm rather than at 5pm.

Anyway, I have no problem with getting teams the most "bang for their buck"; therefore, I have absolutely no issue with rebracketing for the playoffs in order to give teams the chance to play more rounds. However, this shouldn't come at the expense of the team's budget, the efficiency of the tournament, or the overall quality of the tournament.

[centralhs]

ALL teams at the Dorman tournament had the opportunity to play 9 rounds. All 17 teams. I don't know if a few teams opted to leave early but a bracket was set up that involved 9 games for all teams -- 4 preliminary games and then, following lunch, 5 round robin games. 4 teams (the teams in the semifinals -- Grayson, Central Gwinnett, James Island, and Southside ) definitely played 10 games. 2 teams (the ones in the finals, Central Gwinnett and Southside) definitely played 11 games. Dorman's stat sheet is wrong because James Island definitely played 10 games, just like Grayson who also lost in the semifinal round.

As I said earlier, all games except the semifinal and final games were over around 3:00. Only 2 readers needed to stay past 3:00 and they were both Dorman team members who presumably would be there until the end anyway.

I mentioned about coaches wanting to leave early, because that was the reason that Chris Chiego (from UGA) mentioned as the reason that their tournaments don't go longer. I have also heard numerous coaches at the Varsity State tournament over the years say that they don't want to see more rounds on Saturday because they like to get finished early. Of course, it is their prerogative to say that they want to get done early; I was just stating my opinion that I would like to see more rounds played.

Cathy Hirsch
Coach
Central Gwinnett H.S.

[Rountree]

I was only working with the numbers of what actually happened at Dorman, not what should have happened. I based my numbers on the final Taft report of the tournament and not what I thought had happened. I apologize that I missed the second team that played 11 games, but I only see 1 team with 10 games played, so the numbers don't shift much at all for those top 3-4 teams when comparing the 2 tournaments. (Perhaps James Island is missing the data for 1 of their games?)

The total number of games at the Dorman Season-ender was 158, which averages to 9 games per team. The total number of games at the CATT 4, which had 48 teams, was 336, which averages to 7 games per team. Obviously, there is a 2 game difference on average per team, but considering that one tournament was nearly three times larger than the other, I don't view this as a huge discrepancy. Plus, there is little to no difference for the number of games among the top 4 teams when comparing the 2 tournaments. And, all games except for the Semifinals and Finals/Consolation Game finished around 3pm at the CATT 4 (and the Dorman Cavalier Challenge for that matter) this year too, so I don't really see any difference of note there either.

Cathy, I think you might have missed my main points about logistics and staffing concerns of a smaller tournament (under 20 teams) compared to that of a larger one (over 45 teams). For a smaller tournament it is logistically easier to run and staff; thus, it makes more sense to have more guaranteed games; for a larger one this isn't the case most of the time. I think most other Coaches who host tournaments in GA would follow Mr. Huff's fine example if they too had smaller tournaments.

I have never heard the Coach of another Team that hosts tournaments tell me that they were concerned over their tournament ending earlier than it already does. 5pm seems to be the end-time goal of most tournaments around here, and for many of the tournaments posted on this board. And as I have pointed out, that ending time does not significantly change the number of games teams play at these larger tournaments with single-elimination playoffs versus the smaller ones with rebracketing for the playoffs.

As for the State Varsity tournament, I believe I have already addressed in another post the reasons why that tournament finishes earlier on Saturday than most other tournaments in GA.

[centralhs]

Elliott -- Maybe I can do a better job here of clearing up a few points than I apparently did before:
(1) I believe the Dorman statistics as posted on the TAFT report are incorrect. To my knowledge, all teams played at least 9 games and I am not aware of any teams leaving early. It appears that not all of the games played in each round are included on the TAFT report. If you look in the TAFT report under "Scoreboard", it shows only 7 games played in Round 5 but then 9 games played in Round 8. It seems unlikely that teams would have left or refused to play game 5 but then would have reappeared to play Round 8.
(2) My comment about coaches wanting to leave early was in direct response to a question posed by Chris Chiego in his post on May 4 about whether coaches would really want to play more rounds, as I had suggested in an earlier post. His post (and mine) was referring to coaches in attendance at tournaments wanting to leave early, not coaches hosting tournaments.
(3) My desire to add rounds to tournaments is not for the benefit of those teams perennially in the quarterfinals/semifinals/finals at tournaments but for the teams at the other end of the spectrum. All teams pay the same amount to participate in a tournament, but with the typical single elimination tournament that we have in Georgia, a team that doesn't make the playoff rounds often plays only 5 rounds while a team that makes the finals plays somewhere between 8 and 11 rounds. That IS a big difference. Dorman's season-ender tournament is one of the only tournaments (big or small) that I have attended in the southeast that guarantees 9 rounds for all teams. Obviously running a small-ish tournament is different from running a large tournament. However, I would like to see tournaments make an effort to keep as many teams playing for as long as possible. The way that the NAQT Nationals in Chicago offers scrimmage rounds on the second day for teams that don't make the playoffs is an example of what I mean.
(4) I was in no way attempting a comparison between Dorman's tournament and Chattahoochee's, which is an excellent tournament. This year's CATT did, in fact, guarantee each team 6 games which is one game more than many Georgia tournaments guarantee. I don't want to slam any particular schools by naming names, but we have been to more than one tournament in Georgia that had only 5 preliminary rounds AND byes. For a team that draws one of the byes and doesn't make the playoffs, getting to play only four games is pretty skimpy. While it might be difficult for the really large tournaments to increase the number of rounds, I would like to see the smaller Georgia tournaments emulate Dorman's season-ender by guaranteeing more rounds than the usual 5 or 6.

Cathy Hirsch
Coach
Central Gwinnett H.S.

[scquizbowl]

Remember, Mr. Rountree from Chattahoochee has his Jeopardy appearance tonight. It is on at 7:30 on MyATL TV, WMAZ, WSAV, WRDW, WDEF, WTLV, WTVC and WLOS.

Hopefully, all the teams going to nationals will do well!

Joe
James Island '10

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

Buzzer speed, Elliott... buzzer speed. :) Hope it was a fun experience. And i hope to share it soon!

[AlphaQuizBowler]

Congratulations on Walton and Brookwood making the top playoff bracket at PACE. Two Georgia teams in the top 16 is really impressive.

[grashid]

Chatt got screwed in the bracketing, imo. Southside was much better than the bracketing people expected.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

Chatt got screwed in the bracketing, imo. Southside was much better than the bracketing people expected.

Agreed. Looking at that bracket (my kids would know, we were in it and suffered five beatdowns), it might have been the most stacked of all the prelim ones. Maggie Walker, Chatt, Loyola, Southside, and even SC B have legitimate shots at saying they could play tough enough to make the playoffs. My kids, in particular, were extremely impressed with Southside (well, obviously MW, but we're used to getting demolished by them up here frequently)... in the "South" (whatever that means) there isn't anyone better except Dorman, and Brookwood might be only slightly better.

[CSQuizJags]

I know we're already calming down from 08-09, but here's the tournament hosting schedule for Cedar Shoals for 09-10, FYI.

JV Jaguar Bowl- Oct 24, 2009 (grades 10 and under, NAQT A-set, Prelim/SEPO format)
Possible MS tournament the same day and in the same building with our feeder school, Hilsman (if enough teams interested)
Bulldog Brawl at Cedar Shoals- Jan 30, 2010 (NAQT Reg Set, Prelim/SEPO format)
Jaguar Bowl IV- Feb 27, 2010 (NAQT Reg Set, Prelim/Bracketed PO format)*

*We've had some teams request we try this, so we will. We'll compare feedback from those common teams at the Brawl and Jag Bowl to make a permanent decision as to future formats.

There is a possible tournament at Kennesaw State on Sep 12, 2009. Granted, that's early, but they really want to host one. It would be a prelim/rebracketed PO system ala Dorman (Read: small field 42 teams at best) with NAQT A set.

Good luck to the GA teams heading to Chicago in four days!

[BuzzerZen]

I spy a 2009-2010 thread!