Regionals discussion

Old college threads.
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SnookerUSF
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Post by SnookerUSF »

The Shock Master wrote: Since people are complaining about the turnout at ACF Regionals and mentioning my team (South Carolina) by name, I would like to throw in a few cents since we are one of apparently many "usual suspects" that didn't go to ACF. I am not playing for South Carolina these days, but still help the team with practices and drive them to tournaments when I'm able. USC usually has an active tournament schedule, and we've been to I think 3 this semester already with plans on going to at least 3 more. We went to the NAQT SCT last weekend at VPI (it should be noted that there were only 8 teams in both divisions at that tournament).
Actually I was suggesting just the opposite, South Carolina and UTC were both at ACF Regionals last year, and so the Southeast turnout was even more depressed by those two teams not showing up. It would have been a bit better had it turned out that both teams came, but even then there are other teams in the region that did not send teams that I hoped might.
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Post by Matt Weiner »

I think it might be a good idea to move Regionals to the third week of January. The two weeks in a row thing does matter for some people, and I don't necessarily want to compete with College Bowl Regionals when we're in the nascent stages of an effort to bring College Bowl teams into quizbowl. This would also allow the editor to set the final deadline as December 30, which people could use the beginning of their winter breaks to meet.
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Post by Kyle »

The two schools trapped in the nineteenth century (i.e. Harvard and Princeton) would complain bitterly about you holding ACF regionals during our post-Christmas finals.
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Post by ValenciaQBowl »

Ahmad wrote:
I don't think the timing of the tournament has anything to do with it. Can teams honestly say that the busy tournament schedule prohibited them from attending ACF regionals?
I can honestly say it was the reason Valencia didn't send 2-3 teams. We love playing in any tournament of any level, as my players are exposed to all kinds of questions in our practices and don't mind taking some butt kickings to hear good packets. But SCT was our fourth tournament in five weeks, and many of my players needed the weekend to work (most CC students do) and/or catch up on school. And our school policy is that they can't travel without me, and it's tough for me to leave the family that much.

This is not to bore people with our particular situation, but I think that in the Southeast we're hitting a point at which if you want to have a big tournament field, you'll want to draw the CCs. Bevill-Jasper, Chipola, South Georgia, Faulkner, Valencia and Dalton, among others, have been regular attendees at four-year events in the Southeast in the last few years, and we have a busy Jan/early Feb schedule. Also, all these teams have faculty coaches/advisors, who often find it harder to travel so many weekends so close together. So maybe having ACF Regionals this coming weekend or next might have helped some more of us go.

Having said that, Matt W made an effort to contact schools in Florida to find a Regionals host closer to our center of gravity than Nashville but had no luck. Of course, maybe that would have been worse, as it might have kept two or more teams from going to Vandy, which might have collapsed that field completely. Anyway, we'll hope to make Regionals next year; heck, maybe we'll host!
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Post by alkrav112 »

Matt Weiner wrote:I think it might be a good idea to move Regionals to the third week of January. The two weeks in a row thing does matter for some people, and I don't necessarily want to compete with College Bowl Regionals when we're in the nascent stages of an effort to bring College Bowl teams into quizbowl. This would also allow the editor to set the final deadline as December 30, which people could use the beginning of their winter breaks to meet.
First of all, I don't really know how many teams can plausibly meet over their winter breaks. I know I'm at home, doing holiday-esque things. Unless I've misunderstood your meaning.

Second, MLK is pretty much always the third week of January, and it's a fairly established tournament (despite not being house-edited this year). That's a great time to run a tournament, but we thought of it first so BACK OFF MATT WEINER.

Alternately, the fourth week of January could be a great ACF Regionals week. I think many teams would appreciate using MLK (especially as it has come down a bit in difficulty), TIT, or associated tournaments as ACF Regionals warm-ups. And yet, it still carries all the benefits of Matt's suggestion. The only major problem is that, yet again, it puts two tournaments in a row, which seems to be a problem for some clubs.
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Post by Auks Ran Ova »

alkrav112 wrote:
Matt Weiner wrote:I think it might be a good idea to move Regionals to the third week of January. The two weeks in a row thing does matter for some people, and I don't necessarily want to compete with College Bowl Regionals when we're in the nascent stages of an effort to bring College Bowl teams into quizbowl. This would also allow the editor to set the final deadline as December 30, which people could use the beginning of their winter breaks to meet.
First of all, I don't really know how many teams can plausibly meet over their winter breaks. I know I'm at home, doing holiday-esque things. Unless I've misunderstood your meaning.
I think he meant "meet" as in "meet the deadlines".
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Post by Matt Weiner »

Update: This was talked over and the official suggestion for next year's Regionals editor will be to try to do it on the first weekend in March, pending non-conflict with too many spring breaks. However, the decision ultimately rests with whoever that person is.

It will be two weeks after Sectionals, so the 95% of quizbowl that does not do College Bowl will get the option of going to both tournaments with a break in the middle, and there will be no direct conflict for any College Bowl teams who still want to go.
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Post by Mike Bentley »

alkrav112 wrote:
Matt Weiner wrote:I think it might be a good idea to move Regionals to the third week of January. The two weeks in a row thing does matter for some people, and I don't necessarily want to compete with College Bowl Regionals when we're in the nascent stages of an effort to bring College Bowl teams into quizbowl. This would also allow the editor to set the final deadline as December 30, which people could use the beginning of their winter breaks to meet.
First of all, I don't really know how many teams can plausibly meet over their winter breaks. I know I'm at home, doing holiday-esque things. Unless I've misunderstood your meaning.

Second, MLK is pretty much always the third week of January, and it's a fairly established tournament (despite not being house-edited this year). That's a great time to run a tournament, but we thought of it first so BACK OFF MATT WEINER.

Alternately, the fourth week of January could be a great ACF Regionals week. I think many teams would appreciate using MLK (especially as it has come down a bit in difficulty), TIT, or associated tournaments as ACF Regionals warm-ups. And yet, it still carries all the benefits of Matt's suggestion. The only major problem is that, yet again, it puts two tournaments in a row, which seems to be a problem for some clubs.
The last weekend in January is typically Penn Bowl.

March seems to be something of a void in terms of tournaments, I don't see why ACF Regionals couldn't be like the first week in March.
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Post by alkrav112 »

strifeheart wrote:
alkrav112 wrote:
Matt Weiner wrote:I think it might be a good idea to move Regionals to the third week of January. The two weeks in a row thing does matter for some people, and I don't necessarily want to compete with College Bowl Regionals when we're in the nascent stages of an effort to bring College Bowl teams into quizbowl. This would also allow the editor to set the final deadline as December 30, which people could use the beginning of their winter breaks to meet.
First of all, I don't really know how many teams can plausibly meet over their winter breaks. I know I'm at home, doing holiday-esque things. Unless I've misunderstood your meaning.
I think he meant "meet" as in "meet the deadlines".
Dur. Of course.
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Post by vandyhawk »

Matt Weiner wrote:Update: This was talked over and the official suggestion for next year's Regionals editor will be to try to do it on the first weekend in March, pending non-conflict with too many spring breaks. However, the decision ultimately rests with whoever that person is.

It will be two weeks after Sectionals, so the 95% of quizbowl that does not do College Bowl will get the option of going to both tournaments with a break in the middle, and there will be no direct conflict for any College Bowl teams who still want to go.
I think we're in the minority, but Vandy's spring break always starts the first weekend in March. I'm curious how many other schools have it that early. In theory, I like the idea of having some time after MLK, Penn Bowl, Card. Classic, and SCT to gear up for regionals, as long as it doesn't start excluding schools based on schedules.
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Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

I will just throw out that the NKC library computers can't download the 2008 regionals link either. Also, clicking the Fall link takes me to this weird template looking page that I haven't seen since the site was originally revamped over the summer.
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Post by Krakki »

Ahmad wrote:
But SCT was our fourth tournament in five weeks, and many of my players needed the weekend to work (most CC students do) and/or catch up on school.
I think there is a problem with the tournament schedule being saturated. While it is nice to have more tournaments to attend, the fact that there is a tournament/mirror in every region almost every week in the spring creates fewer big tournaments and several smaller ones where only 5 or 6 schools attend. I feel this lowers the competitive field and decreases the excitement of a particular tournament since school choose between Event X on one weekend or Event Y the next instead of everyone making it a priority to go to Event Y. Some schools will only be able to attend Event X instead of Y because of schedule conflicts but oftentimes it comes down to a priority or attending the more convenient option just because they can choose between the two.

If teams have already attended 4 or 5 tournaments by the time ACF Reg's rolls around they may not have time, energy or money to devote to yet another tournament at that time of the season, especially if they are expecting a smaller than average turnout yet again.
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Post by pray for elves »

For me, it was my sixth tournament in five weeks, having done the TIT/Chris McCray weekend, Penn Bowl, MIT Cardinal Classic mirror, SCT, and Regionals. It's very draining. A move to March for Regionals would be beneficial for Brandeis, because as it is Regionals has been during our very early break the past few years.
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Post by The Logic of Scientific Disco »

The biggest problem for us, and a bunch of other teams, I would guess, is that March is the typical time for (lucrative) high school tournaments--for example, we run MITBAT the first weekend of March (and there's a ton of State Championships run by colleges that day, as well). If you're going to move Regionals, make sure to get the date absolutely set within the next month or so, so that teams can plan their high school tournaments appropriately (for example, so that we could move MITBAT back a week).
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Post by Eärendil »

Speaking for schools on the quarter system, the first weekend in March is towards the end of Winter Quarter, i.e. exams, papers, projects are due. For us, its still two weeks from finals though. I don't think the late date is going to be an issue for people who are dedicated quiz bowl players, but it will discourage occasional players from coming out.

As a player, I prefer having the current format of several tournaments in a row. I think it's much more fun and breaks the monotony of weekly team practices by having something palpable to look forward to.
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Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

See, it seems to me like there are a lot less tournaments in the fall then in the spring. While that is not a good idea to significantly move ACF regionals, maybe something like Cardinal Classic, TIT, or who knows what might be better served moving up earlier in the year for say October or something.
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Post by Kyle »

A potential solution to Chris's problem about scheduling opposite high school tournaments is to put ACF regionals on the same Saturday as the SAT (like ACF fall this year).
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Post by NoahMinkCHS »

Deesy Does It wrote:See, it seems to me like there are a lot less tournaments in the fall then in the spring. While that is not a good idea to significantly move ACF regionals, maybe something like Cardinal Classic, TIT, or who knows what might be better served moving up earlier in the year for say October or something.
Well, one issue might be that it's easier to get new players to submit (decent) packets after they've had a semester of college quizbowl under their belts. I know ACF Fall is a successful autumn packet-sub tournament (for novice players, no less), but the fact that it's one of the few and a nationally-known, annual big deal tournament, work in its favor; getting new players to write two or three packets in their first months on the team seems like a not-great idea in terms of quality and recruitment/retention.

Also, and I don't know to what extent this matters in other regions, but at least in the south, fall Saturdays are reserved for football. And not just in the hearts and minds of students -- on any given weekend in the fall on most major university campuses, there's about a 50% chance that no non-tailgate event will be possible due to home games. So that limits who can host, and who will want to go. And while Sunday tournaments have their benefits, they also bring significant problems for long-distance travelers.

So, almost out of necessity I think, spring ends up being crowded. When you figure that most of March is out due to spring breaks, and April is taken up with nationals, it's no wonder that the late January/February period is slammed.
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Post by vandyhawk »

Deesy Does It wrote:See, it seems to me like there are a lot less tournaments in the fall then in the spring. While that is not a good idea to significantly move ACF regionals, maybe something like Cardinal Classic, TIT, or who knows what might be better served moving up earlier in the year for say October or something.
This is actually a reasonable idea. In the fall, pretty much all that can happen in September is NAQT jr. birds and the like since clubs are just reconvening or even forming for the first time, and then in October, all we really have are things like EFT and COTKU, and November has ACF Fall, plus Illinois Open (not meant to draw big fields at multiple sites) and maybe PARFAIT. I think there's definitely room for one of the Jan/Feb tournaments to move in. I agree with Noah that getting submissions from new people would be a problem, but with multiple sites, that could probably get taken care of. As for football, I think the south does suffer during football season, but there is still pretty decent attendance at COTKU and ACF Fall most years.

I could also see keeping regionals in Feb., when pretty much everyone can theoretically go and before there are already nationals submission deadlines, and moving a different Jan/Feb tournament to March perhaps. Now that I think about it, I like this idea better than the above, and better than moving regionals to March.
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Post by NatusRoma »

When I attempt to open the zip file after downloading it, XP tells me that the folder "is invalid or corrupted".
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Post by grapesmoker »

NatusRoma wrote:When I attempt to open the zip file after downloading it, XP tells me that the folder "is invalid or corrupted".
Ok, I'll reupload it today.
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Post by Matt Weiner »

Some info about difficulty of 2008's ACF Regionals and NAQT D1 and D2 Sectionals, now that all stats are in:

Image

All stats are for the totality of teams who played the tournaments--e.g., .77 tossup conversion means that 77% of all the tossups that were read in every D1 game across the country were converted by somebody.

"Adjusted PPKA" is how many points were scored per thousand points available, treating all 15s as 10s and pretending -5s didn't happen, in order to get a truer measure of tournament accessibility unaffected by other factors which affect scoring.
Last edited by Matt Weiner on Wed Feb 20, 2008 11:27 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Sima Guang Hater »

Matt Weiner wrote:stats proving regionals was about as hard as SCT
I believe this is time for the token ACF IS IMPOSSIBLE joke
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Post by Matt Weiner »

To further correct for a hypothesis of a selection bias in teams who play Regionals (i.e., the idea that better teams play that tournament, so the scoring numbers look better than they really are when compared to the larger SCT), I identified 18 teams who played both Regionals and D1 Sectionals with roughly the same lineups. Among them, I found that 9 had their bonus conversions decrease from SCT to Regs, by a maximum of 25%. 9 had their bonus conversions increase from SCT to Regs, by a maximum of 52%.

6 of the teams had their total scoring (measured as PPKA) decrease from SCT to Regs, by a maximum of 35%. 12 had their total scoring increase from SCT to Regs, by a maximum of 137%.

On the average, a team who played both D1 SCT and Regionals had about 4% better bonus conversion at Regionals, and 23% better total scoring.
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Post by johnboy81918 »

Deesy Does It wrote:I will just throw out that the NKC library computers can't download the 2008 regionals link either. Also, clicking the Fall link takes me to this weird template looking page that I haven't seen since the site was originally revamped over the summer.
Yeah, I'm having the same issue with the template page, and also got the same error earlier about the regionals set (which grapesmoker said he'll fix today, so I'll try again later).

Another (very minor) issue I noticed - I'm not sure where to put it, so I'll post it here. The spot on the ACF archive that says "08 Fall" should read "07 Fall", as it appears to skip the 07 Fall competition (going straight from 06 to 08). Pointing it out to whomever can fix it :)
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Post by dtaylor4 »

For those having issues with downloading the set, try this link.

EDIT: Link fixed.
Last edited by dtaylor4 on Wed Feb 20, 2008 2:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by sabine01 »

DaGeneral wrote:For those having issues with downloading the set, try this link.
Just as a headsup: Link provided is the one to the HSQB forums... Is there something else I'm missing?
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Post by grapesmoker »

johnboy81918 wrote:
Deesy Does It wrote:I will just throw out that the NKC library computers can't download the 2008 regionals link either. Also, clicking the Fall link takes me to this weird template looking page that I haven't seen since the site was originally revamped over the summer.
Yeah, I'm having the same issue with the template page, and also got the same error earlier about the regionals set (which grapesmoker said he'll fix today, so I'll try again later).

Another (very minor) issue I noticed - I'm not sure where to put it, so I'll post it here. The spot on the ACF archive that says "08 Fall" should read "07 Fall", as it appears to skip the 07 Fall competition (going straight from 06 to 08). Pointing it out to whomever can fix it :)
Thanks for the tip, will fix.
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Post by grapesmoker »

Ok, I've reuploaded the regionals set, so please check the link. I can't find my copy of the fall set though, which is why the link people have been clicking on is faulty. As soon as I find it, I will upload that too. That template page just means a dead link and I should probably put a custom 404 message in there if possible but I've just neglected to do so.
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Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Regionals works, Jerry.
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