Mid-Atlantic Quiz Bowl League

[mohanmal]

We are going to try to hold this for middle-school students from the states of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. We are creating the questions for the Fall and Winter Tournaments. For the spring tournament we will probably buy questions from NAQT so that it can be counted as an MSNCT qualifier. For more info go to http://maqbowl.webs.com/ . The tournaments will be held in Newark, DE. If you are interested please reply. We will reserve a registration spot for you as the league will be capped at 50 teams (if we even succeed in getting that many). League registration is $50 and each tournament will cost from $100 to $150 to enter.

Correction: We will try to buy NAQT MS series for our tournaments instead of writing them.

[Matt Weiner]

Hi, I have some questions:

1) Who are you?
2) What are your qualifications to write questions?
3) What middle school teams in Virginia do you believe exist aside from Longfellow?
4) Why would a middle school team in Virginia pay $200 to play a tournament in New Jersey when most high school teams won't even travel that far and high school tournaments generally cost between $50 and $70?

[mohanmal]

You have very good questions and I am very glad you asked. As I posted this I was thinking the very same thing about the question writing. I think that most likely we will buy questions for NAQT for all of our tournaments after reconsidering. To answer your question about who I am, I am from The Independence School in Delaware. My parents and friends are helping me with organizing this event as we would like to open the experience of quiz bowl to middle school students in the Mid-Atlantic region. I actually do not know of any other middle school teams that exist in Virginia aside from Longfellow, but I would love to know if any were interested. As for the price of the tournament, would it help to attract more teams if we pulled the price down to $50 to $70 ? I am new to trying to organize tournaments, so I don't really have much knowledge when it comes to pricing. Also, the tournaments will be in Newark, DE not Newark, NJ. If you have any more questions please reply. Also, if anyone else has advice (as this my first time trying to organize tournaments) please reply.

[yellow7206]

Since there are plenty of high school tournaments in Maryland, Virginia and DC, Longfellow probably would not go all the way to Newark to compete. To qualify for the MSNCT in the past, we have gone to the Charter Challenge or received a wild card from NAQT, so we would not need another qualifier. Generating interest from Maryland and Delaware middle schools is a worthy endeavor though, so I hope this league works.

I don't know of another middle school in Virginia who does quiz bowl. This is sad. Based on their incredibly strong science olympiad and math teams, there are middle schools that could field great qb teams. I have written letters to some of these schools, but I have received little to no interest. Arlington County middle schools all participate in the KMO, so if you want new Virginia teams, you may want to start there. You can easily find their names at the KMO website or from Arlington County.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

This is kind of a cool idea. I would be eternally grateful if it helped other middle schools in Delaware play, as currently not a single one south of the C&D Canal have played any quizbowl event (discounting the Texaco Star Challenge from the 1990s).

I'm curious as to how this is going to work. Where is your outreach? How are you going to contact schools? Where are the events going to be held (specifically, not just "Newark")? Are you raising money for a school or for your nebulous "organization"?

[the return of AHAN]

Darn. I got excited about the possibility of more MS quizbowl tournaments sets being available to mirror. Never mind. Hopefully NAQT produces more than the 2 sets they cranked out this year.

[Bad Boy Bill]

Darn. I got excited about the possibility of more MS quizbowl tournaments sets being available to mirror. Never mind. Hopefully NAQT produces more than the 2 sets they cranked out this year.

In fact this topic was discussed. My response was I think we could do a third set in a year with the caveat of an allowance for some level of repeat material between sets. (We tried to keep this to a minimum for MS#2 and MS#3.)

[mohanmal]

This is kind of a cool idea. I would be eternally grateful if it helped other middle schools in Delaware play, as currently not a single one south of the C&D Canal have played any quizbowl event (discounting the Texaco Star Challenge from the 1990s).

I'm curious as to how this is going to work. Where is your outreach? How are you going to contact schools? Where are the events going to be held (specifically, not just "Newark")? Are you raising money for a school or for your nebulous "organization"?

I'm happy you think this is a cool idea! As of right now we are still trying to see if we can generate enough interest to actually hold this. We are thinking about holding it at Independence Middle School and are currently still talking with the school about this possibility as we are not running this through the school. Our goal is with this is to generate an interest for quiz bowl among Mid-Atlantic students and to send stronger teams from our state and the surrounding states to MSNCT. Any money we raise will go to creating better tournaments in future years, lowering costs of future tournaments, and funding teams who need help raising money to go to compete at MSNCT. As far as contacting school go, I am hoping that this post on here will help alert schools. If you can give me any advice on this that would be greatly appreciated.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

This is kind of a cool idea. I would be eternally grateful if it helped other middle schools in Delaware play, as currently not a single one south of the C&D Canal have played any quizbowl event (discounting the Texaco Star Challenge from the 1990s).

I'm curious as to how this is going to work. Where is your outreach? How are you going to contact schools? Where are the events going to be held (specifically, not just "Newark")? Are you raising money for a school or for your nebulous "organization"?

I'm happy you think this is a cool idea! As of right now we are still trying to see if we can generate enough interest to actually hold this. We are thinking about holding it at Independence Middle School and are currently still talking with the school about this possibility as we are not running this through the school. Our goal is with this is to generate an interest for quiz bowl among Mid-Atlantic students and to send stronger teams from our state and the surrounding states to MSNCT. Any money we raise will go to creating better tournaments in future years, lowering costs of future tournaments, and funding teams who need help raising money to go to compete at MSNCT. As far as contacting school go, I am hoping that this post on here will help alert schools. If you can give me any advice on this that would be greatly appreciated.

A grand total of 1 middle school from Delaware knows about/reads this forum. You're going to have to do a whole lot better than that. I suggest sending physical letters AND calling the administrations of the middle schools you're interested in reaching.

[yellow7206]

Yes, you have to be aggressive if you want to get new schools to participate. Announcements do not reach schools who do not frequent these sites. You need to send letters through regular mail. Plus, you need to visit these schools' math clubs or science clubs. Ask to give a demonstration. Take a buzzer set and a several sets of questions. Put on a scrimmage. Then leave some sets for them to practice on their own.

[SunWukong]

I'm not very involved with it, but I know that GDS does have a middle school quizbowl program (tended and trained by my high school teammates) that would probably be interested in playing some tournaments. I'm not sure what to make of the idea of a league that one has to pay to get into. I think you're probably going to have enough trouble getting teams (very few tournaments reach their caps in this area nowadays) as is, without restricting the field with the idea of a league. Also, unless I've read this wrong, you're writing the questions yourselves; if you're looking for a writers/editors I'd be interested in helping out.

[Mr. Joyboy]

I'm pretty sure there isn't a single middle school in Maryland that does quizbowl. However, many middle and elementary schools do Black Saga, which deals exclusively with African-American culture/history. In Howard County alone 15 teams attended the county tournament. If those teams could be contacted, I'm sure at least a few would be interested in joining the league.

EDIT: P.S.: Isn't the fee a bit pricey? If you want at least 50 teams to sign up, maybe you should lower it from $150 per tournament.

[bt_green_warbler]

Here's a Maryland school.

[Grams's Go-Go Boots]

Is this actually a planned league, or just a one day tourney?

[mohanmal]

I'm pretty sure there isn't a single middle school in Maryland that does quizbowl. However, many middle and elementary schools do Black Saga, which deals exclusively with African-American culture/history. In Howard County alone 15 teams attended the county tournament. If those teams could be contacted, I'm sure at least a few would be interested in joining the league.

EDIT: P.S.: Isn't the fee a bit pricey? If you want at least 50 teams to sign up, maybe you should lower it from $150 per tournament.

We have reduced the price to $70. Thanks for the information on the Maryland Schools. I will try to contact them to see if any are interested in coming

[mohanmal]

Is this actually a planned league, or just a one day tourney?

Its a series of hopefully 3 tournaments...though if NAQT only writes 2 middle school packets this year it may only be 2 (although we could use A series).

[Bad Boy Bill]

Its a series of hopefully 3 tournaments...though if NAQT only writes 2 middle school packets this year it may only be 2 (although we could use A series).

Don't forget that Wilmington Charter probably has first right of refusal on one of those sets if they are running a tournament again this year. They ran NAQT tournaments the past two years, and ran six house-written middle school events before that.

[Standard-winged Nightjar]

On the other hand, NHBB had about 15 schools in MD and VA take part this year, and I think 10 in PA. (nobody in DE yet, though that will change next year). You need to get in touch with Nick Clusserath - email him at info at historybee dot com - he can certainly help spread the word about your worthy endeavor. Next year, we are aiming for 2000+ middle schools to be involved across the country, so this can work. Also, we *may* have a formal middle school bowl next year, though no announcement on that will be forthcoming until August 15 or so. In any case, though, middle schools will be for NHBB, at a minimum, welcome to compete in the JV level at high school tournaments, and have their own separate National title (Longfellow won the inaugural one this year). But again - start a dialogue with Nick. He and Mr. Tressler are going to be your biggest allies here, if you are serious about pursuing this.

[mohanmal]

I am going to take a step back here for a while. We will continue with the planning of this after the end of the school year, in June. I also have to wait for the Independence Board to get back to me on whether it is okay to hold the tournament there, and the earliest I will get a reply will be sometime after the end of this school year.

[mohanmal]

I talked to my coach at the Independence School and have decided that we will not have this tournament this year. The reason is that most likely NAQT will put out 3 middle school sets this year and the Charter School of Wilmington will most likely have a tournament as well as Bergen County Academies in Hackensack, NJ. Independence may attend both of these and as for the third set, they would like to hold a tournament themselves. Also, I can get experience on how to run a tournament for the future if I volunteer to work with Independence to run theirs. If they are going to run one they will make a formal announcement about that, so that is not final. As of now, I'm not sure when I will get to work on MAQ Bowl again.