IHSA 2017

[mhasquin]

We had our Sectional Seeding meeting last night. For what it's worth, here is the Top Eight Seeds for the Class A Carlinville Sectional...

1. Southwestern (Piasa)
2. Carlinville
3. Althoff Catholic (Belleville)
4. Litchfield
5. Marquette Catholic (Alton)
6. Metro East Lutheran (Edwardsville)
7. Auburn
8. Gillespie

Each of the top four agreed to be a Regional Host.

[Hyrdofluoric_Acid]

1 Lincolnshire (Stevenson)
2 Barrington
3 Palatine (Fremd)
4 Mundelein (Carmel)
5 Wilmette (Loyola Academy)
6 Lake Forest (H.S.)
7 Palatine (H.S.)
8 Arlington Heights (St. Viator)
seeds in our sectional... it sucks that only 1 team can make it to state because at least 4 of the top 8 teams are here, in my exceedingly biased opinion.

[username_crisis_averted]

1 Lincolnshire (Stevenson)
2 Barrington
3 Palatine (Fremd)
4 Mundelein (Carmel)
5 Wilmette (Loyola Academy)
6 Lake Forest (H.S.)
7 Palatine (H.S.)
8 Arlington Heights (St. Viator)
seeds in our sectional... it sucks that only 1 team can make it to state because at least 4 of the top 8 teams are here, in my exceedingly biased opinion.

I would agree with that- this sectional looks pretty brutal.

[the return of AHAN]

1 Lincolnshire (Stevenson)
2 Barrington
3 Palatine (Fremd)
4 Mundelein (Carmel)
5 Wilmette (Loyola Academy)
6 Lake Forest (H.S.)
7 Palatine (H.S.)
8 Arlington Heights (St. Viator)
seeds in our sectional... it sucks that only 1 team can make it to state because at least 4 of the top 8 teams are here, in my exceedingly biased opinion.

Nothing new under the sun, four years later, eh John? When your Barrington Prairie team won state in 2012, you took a loss at sectionals, won the tiebreaker, and then utterly cruised downstate. When Barrington Station won MSNCT in 2013, the very next day we traveled to Hawthorn North for sectionals, where we needed the last toss-up/bonus sweep to defeat Daniel Wright (Stevenson feeder, for those who don't know). From there, candidly, state was easier, despite having to face Lily (of Homewood Hart, now at Homewood-Flossmoor), and facing down Nathaniel & Hanson of IMSA & Bloomington fame in the final. Good teams, of course, but not nearly as tough to beat as Daniel Wright. Last year's sectional win for us had to go to tie-breaker rounds after a circle of death between Station, Daniel Wright, and Hawthorn North. Luckily, we won and got to take home another trophy from State. My point is that I believe Daniel Wright assuredly could've done as well as we did, given the chance. It's tough to swallow, but the state orgs only concern themselves with having equal representation from all corners of the association.

[MLaudermith]

Here's the seeding for the Class AA Hinsdale Central Sectional:
1. Hinsdale Central
2. Oak Park - River Forest
3. (Chicago) Latin
4. Evanston Township
5. (Oak Park) Fenwick
6. (Chicago) St. Ignatius College Prep
7. (Lombard) Glenbard East
8. (La Grange) Lyons Township

Latin got bumped up to Class AA this year. Multiple state-caliber teams in this sectional as well IMO.

[Deviant Insider]

All of the seeds are now posted along with the Regional assignments of seeded teams. "Scholastic Bowl pairings will be posted about 4 pm on Sunday, December 31, 1899."

[mhasquin]

This may be the earliest the pairings have been posted... I seem to remember them coming out after Masonic Sectionals.

[the return of AHAN]

They're trying to build up the hype, of course.

[hcube]

When can we discuss Regionals Sets?

[MLaudermith]

When can we discuss Regionals Sets?

Every Regional has submitted results, so I'd say you are safe to discuss the questions.

[Hyrdofluoric_Acid]

not good. The fractal tossup made me very sad.

[El Salvadoreno]

not good. The fractal tossup made me very sad.

They all made me sad

I think what was most disappointing about this year was that a lot of improvements that were made last year (i.e. getting rid of comp math, improvements in certain subjects like lit, etc.) got reversed, leading to probably the lowest quality set I have seen in my three years playing IHSA.

[TylerV]

Regionals was definitely a step down from the Prince-led effort of last year but i was surprisingly unrepulsed by many of the questions. I wrote a decent number of the history questions, as well as the film, and, save a few that were the victim of sub-optimal packetizing, they seem to have went well.

The standard issues still exist, and I may be biased because the Centennial site was rather exciting, but I found this year's regionals to be better than what I played in 2013 and 2014 and better than what I read in 2015.

[the return of AHAN]

I was ill last year, so I missed out on those regionals, but I thought the questions were better, overall, than what they were in 2015.

[An Economic Ignoramus]

Regionals was definitely a step down from the Prince-led effort of last year but i was surprisingly unrepulsed by many of the questions. I wrote a decent number of the history questions, as well as the film, and, save a few that were the victim of sub-optimal packetizing, they seem to have went well.

The standard issues still exist, and I may be biased because the Centennial site was rather exciting, but I found this year's regionals to be better than what I played in 2013 and 2014 and better than what I read in 2015.

As long as you weren't the one who wrote that Argentina tossup that clued Mapuche or that Athens tossup that put Delian League in the first line, your questions were pretty good overall.

[the return of AHAN]

I was surprised the Delian League clue wasn't enough for the teams I was reading for to get it right... But then, at the Thermopylae clue, one team buzzed with Sparta.
So, let that be a lesson that the 'Delian League' clue isn't enough for average teams to crush the answer line, I guess.

[nitzuga]

As long as you weren't the one who wrote that Argentina tossup that clued Mapuche or that Athens tossup that put Delian League in the first line, your questions were pretty good overall.

As a Chilean, this makes me unhappy.

[TylerV]

With regards to the Athens tossup, that was mea culpa and I ill this as a moment to discuss my regionals writing philosophy has a whole, how I failed in this specific instance, and other issues with the question.

The Athens tossup was originally written with the idea of it being slotted in Round 0, at the time I wrote the question in my mind this was Seed 8 vs Seed 9. Since then I have come to realize three things. 1. Tossups do not necessarily go where I request them to be placed. 2. That there does not exist any seeds beyond the top 8 in the sectional and thus the original goal was moot. 3. Even if there were the seeding is not accurate enough to where this is a bad idea.

The second issue with the tossup is that the Leonidas clue was an extremely bad idea. Had I been more on top of things, or working in a group more like SCOP, it is highly likely I would have recognized that clue as neg bait for the level of team that I specifically wrote it for.

Overall, my goal when writing regionals, at least for Rounds 0-2, was to focus on the ~350 teams that don't often play quiz bowl. The idea of this tossup was to help in Team #512 vs Team #330. The thought process behind this the top teams in the state, as long as they don't have to play each other, will hear enough tossups that they will beat teams they are better than. Unfortunately, that is a fatal flaw as the other regionals questions were too wonky for that to be true.

I apologize that the question didn't go where I wanted it to and that it was based on flawed assumptions. However, there is nothing wrong with an Athens tossup leading in with the Delian league. If the tossup existed in a vacuum, where we examine it for pyramidalty without regard to difficulty, the tossup is fine.

I will not be giving Argentina the same multi-paragraph post as I didn't write it.

[An Economic Ignoramus]

With regards to the Athens tossup, that was mea culpa and I ill this as a moment to discuss my regionals writing philosophy has a whole, how I failed in this specific instance, and other issues with the question.

The Athens tossup was originally written with the idea of it being slotted in Round 0, at the time I wrote the question in my mind this was Seed 8 vs Seed 9. Since then I have come to realize three things. 1. Tossups do not necessarily go where I request them to be placed. 2. That there does not exist any seeds beyond the top 8 in the sectional and thus the original goal was moot. 3. Even if there were the seeding is not accurate enough to where this is a bad idea.

The second issue with the tossup is that the Leonidas clue was an extremely bad idea. Had I been more on top of things, or working in a group more like SCOP, it is highly likely I would have recognized that clue as neg bait for the level of team that I specifically wrote it for.

Overall, my goal when writing regionals, at least for Rounds 0-2, was to focus on the ~350 teams that don't often play quiz bowl. The idea of this tossup was to help in Team #512 vs Team #330. The thought process behind this the top teams in the state, as long as they don't have to play each other, will hear enough tossups that they will beat teams they are better than. Unfortunately, that is a fatal flaw as the other regionals questions were too wonky for that to be true.

I apologize that the question didn't go where I wanted it to and that it was based on flawed assumptions. However, there is nothing wrong with an Athens tossup leading in with the Delian league. If the tossup existed in a vacuum, where we examine it for pyramidalty without regard to difficulty, the tossup is fine.

Fair enough. I can definitely see that tossup working for the scenario you describe. I assume it was other packetizing issues that led to the amount of early buzzer races that resulted in Benet leading us for most of the first half of our match.

[An Economic Ignoramus]

Sorry to beat a dead horse, but here are some incorrect/ambiguous clues/answers that especially struck me (and that I remember three days after playing this set):
-Mass Effect for Radians (this struck some of my teammates as suspicious since some of them had played Mass Effect; upon further research, Mass Effect actually doesn't use radians as a measure. That's Fallout.) (Add to that the fact that a Mass Effect Clue almost definitely has no place in an academic tossup)
-Mapuche for Argentina (There are 140,000 Mapuche in Argentina. There are 1.5 Million Mapuche in Chile. This is thus technically correct, but is basically like cluing "Ethnic Hungarians are native to this country" for Romania.)
-Ellipsoid Mayan glyph for 20 (Whoever wrote this is obviously not entirely familiar with the Mayan numeral system; this same glyph can also be used for zero. While that answer does not jibe with other clues, this is still ambiguous.)
-Critical points not accepted or prompted for Extrema
-Center of Mass not accepted early for Center of Gravity
-That entire Institutions bonus (our team bageled this despite at least two of us having taken sociology; the other team only got 10 on the bounceback. None of those clues are unambiguous. No part of that bonus should be utilized at any level of quizbowl, ever.)
-Inverted Interval (it asked for an "interval". Here is a list of intervals: (Augmented, Diminished, Perfect, Major, Minor)+(Prime, Second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, octave). Also tritone because that interval has its own special name. Note that "inverted" is nowhere on this list. I did not suffer through a full semester of AP Music Theory to lastline tossups like this)
-loudness (amplitude not accepted)
tl;dr: there were quite a few good questions in this set, but there were also a lot of questions that were poorly phrased, ambiguous, or wrong.

[username_crisis_averted]

Unrelatedly, is there a reason that IHSA doesn't keep a public record of individual stats or PPB for their matches? It seems odd, seeing as the unreleased conference stats are supposed to be used as justification for sectional seedings. Even disregarding that, it would be convenient to be able to see the relative strength of teams based on something other than the vague information on the scoreboard. This would be especially helpful for teams that don't attend very many other tournaments during the regular season.

[Ent]

Unrelatedly, is there a reason that IHSA doesn't keep a public record of individual stats or PPB for their matches? It seems odd, seeing as the unreleased conference stats are supposed to be used as justification for sectional seedings. Even disregarding that, it would be convenient to be able to see the relative strength of teams based on something other than the vague information on the scoreboard. This would be especially helpful for teams that don't attend very many other tournaments during the regular season.

When Scholastic Bowl started with the IHSA back in the late 1980s, I don't think there was much talk of keeping stats. There were no individual awards given at IHSA State, and no organization to give awards. There were no All-State awards, so not many coaches had even thought to do this. In Illinois,keeping individual stats grew out of the start of All-State awards, but that wasn't until well into the 2000s. Even today, very few coaches keep individual stats ... you would be surprised how many coaches don't want to put in the time to learn this ... either they are in this for the short haul, or they don't think they are getting paid enough money. Heck, there are times when coaches know of a player who is clearly All-Sectional or even All-State worthy, but their coach has no stats and won't bother to fill out a nomination form.

I think the reason it hasn't caught on is because quite a few hosts for regionals and sectionals are just not schooled in keeping stats, and for many of them, this would be difficult (it might not be difficult for you or me, but it would be difficult for them). The last I heard, I thought Brad Fischer had introduced a bill at AdCo asking the IHSA to turn over scoresheets for stat purposes (because I'm sure the IHSA has no one to do stats, and my guess would be that there is no real interest by the IHSA in keeping them).

In the end, a lot of coaches won't do anything unless the IHSA codifies it, and there are still plenty of people advising the IHSA who don't want to create more work for coaches. I'm not painting the IHSA in a terrible light ... it is mostly ignorance on their part. There have been much bigger fish to fry over the past 16 years than getting people to keep stats (though I 100% agree with you that good statkeeping should be a thing all programs do).

[MLaudermith]

I just wanted to take a moment and wish all teams competing in the IHSA Scholastic Bowl State Finals tomorrow good luck!

As a coach and officer in the IHSSBCA, I would also like to extend my thanks to the players who wrote and organized the student petition to the IHSA. In the relatively recent past, I have known more than one Scholastic Bowl coach who took offense at the mere suggestion that students might have something fresh and positive to contribute to this activity. That players might even know better than coaches what they want out of quizbowl and should be allowed to express that desire is a notion that I'm sure is still beyond the pale for many adults connected to Scholastic Bowl. For myself, I find the efforts of Illinois quizbowl players this year very inspiring. I really hope their work leads to effective change for next season.

[mhasquin]

I'd like to second what Mr. Laudermith said. It's comforting to know that the there are young people that are passionate about what we do and that they are willing to be active in the growth of scholastic bowl. Best to luck to everyone.

[MLaudermith]

2017 IHSA Scholastic Bowl State Finals results:

Class 1A:
1. Timothy Christian (Elmhurst)
2. Williamsville
3. Southwestern (Piasa)
4. Robinson

Class 2A:
1. IMSA
2. University Lab (Urbana)
3. Auburn (Rockford)
4. Dunlap

Congratulations to Timothy Christian and IMSA!

I am anxious to hear feedback on the questions used in the state finals rounds.

[An Economic Ignoramus]

2017 IHSA Scholastic Bowl State Finals results:
Class 2A:
1. IMSA
2. University Lab (Urbana)
3. Auburn (Rockford)
4. Dunlap

Congratulations to Timothy Christian and IMSA!

I am anxious to hear feedback on the questions used in the state finals rounds.

How?

[Hyrdofluoric_Acid]

Guys I think the real question on everyones mind is how was the math? was it good? Were there any obscure mathematicians beginning with the letter B?

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

Now that the AdCo minutes are posted, I am thrilled to report that the IHSA Scholastic Bowl Advisory Committee has recommended me as the next Head Editor for the IHSA State Series. (It technically isn't official until the next level of IHSA meetings approves it, but this is one of those things that doesn't require a vote by prinicipals or anything, so it's expected to be green lit.) I'd like to thank Kraig Garber, Rob Grierson, and the members of the AdCo for their consideration and trust.

The final determination was between myself as Head Editor and NAQT as question vendor, largely because Kraig, Rob, Sharon Lorinskas, and Sister John Baricevic met in April and, informed by the pair of petitions (one by the IHSSBCA, one by a group of students), narrowed down the list to our two bids. I don't know if any noticeably "bad" bids made it to that April meeting, but if they did, they were apparently quashed. To that end, I'd like to thank those four people again for speaking for the community and giving the AdCo a great set of options. I'd like to further thank Sister John and Rob, who have noted that they'd like to continue to help with the IHSA State Series by serving as proofreaders in set production. I'm grateful for Sister John's dedication as the previous Head Editor, and happy that I can continue to benefit from her experience.

When I first put together my bid for Head Editor, I reached out to a small number of experienced writers to work with. (EDIT: the team is listed in a post below.) Thank you to all who have messaged me offering their help with writing the set; even though I'm only directly taking on a few writers for this set, there are numerous secondary ways to help ensure the set's success, including writing for NHBB (thereby making my job there a little easier) or for other sets/companies (thereby making their jobs a little easier, which has an underrated ripple effect across the quizbowl landscape). I strongly, strongly encourage you to seek out those opportunities.

The IHSA State Series is the biggest laboratory for the theory that the same pyramidal questions can play well no matter the quality of the teams - whether it's between two top-5 national teams or between two teams that won a regional on their first night of playing quizbowl all year (both of which happen at Sectionals!). To make sure teams are prepared for what this will look like this year, I'm planning on writing an essay outlining my approach to making the IHSA set. That'll be distributed in the fall.

Thanks again to Kraig Garber, the IHSA, and everyone for their support!

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

Also, it was un-reported in the minutes because it doesn't require action by anybody above Kraig & the AdCo, but we recommended that stats, including individual tossup totals and part-by-part bonus conversion, be kept at Regionals/Sectionals/State and tabulated for online records.
Rob Grierson is tinkering with the official scoresheet to make reporting these things easier, we're going to put together a short training video explaining what we need on the scoresheet, and Kraig is going to include "submitting scoresheets" as part of the hosting duties for Regionals/Sectionals host. (It's as easy as just scanning/e-mailing, faxing, or mailing the scoresheets after the fact, which Kraig noted is done without hassle in swimming, track, and other sports.) I was thrilled with Kraig's enthusiasm for the idea, and I'm looking forward to using the conversion data to refine set production for future years.

[the return of AHAN]

It's very encouraging to hear that Mr. Garber is embracing practices that are commonplace in good quizbowl circuits.

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

The writers for IHSA 2017-18 are:

Brad Fischer: history, social sciences other than religion, auditory-based fine art, miscellaneous, some math
Noah Prince: literature other than mythology, math, visual-based fine art, religion, miscellaneous
Andrew Wang: science, mythology

We'll be working together to calibrate difficulty and the like. We'll also be working with a wide group of proofreaders and playtesters once the set is ready; I'll post notices for people interested in helping with that process later this fall.

[El Salvadoreno]

Well let be the first (hopefully of many) to congratulate Mr. Fischer, Mr. Prince, and Mr. Wang on winning the IHSA contract. Have met Mr. Fischer during the roundtable, I know how much he cares about this game and having seen all of their work I know they will produce a great IHSA set.

[heterodyne]

While it's great that quality writers are taking over the production of IHSA questions, I'd just like to note that this certainly does not warrant referring to Andrew as Mr. Wang.

[Banned Tiny Toon Adventures Episode]

While it's great that quality writers are taking over the production of IHSA questions, I'd just like to note that this certainly does not warrant referring to Andrew as Mr. Wang.

[El Salvadoreno]

While it's great that quality writers are taking over the production of IHSA questions, I'd just like to note that this certainly does not warrant referring to Andrew as Mr. Wang.

Understood, Andrew.

[An Economic Ignoramus]

I'm going to have missed the Brad Fischer/Noah Prince golden age of IHSA writing by just one year. Feels pretty bad man.

[nsb2]

I'm going to have missed the Brad Fischer/Noah Prince golden age of IHSA writing by just one year. Feels pretty bad man.

I feel the same way. On the other hand, at least there is a golden age of IHSA writing in the first place. I'd be glad to help with proofreading and just about anything else.

Good luck to everyone playing IHSA next year!