WUHSAC X (2/2/07)

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WUHSAC X (2/2/07)

Post by NotjustoldWASPs »

This is a preliminary announcement for the tenth annual Washington University High School Academic Competition, to be held on February 2. As has been tradition, it will be all house-written. Exact costs will be posted at a later time, but teams and coaches should mark this date on their calendars, and we look forward to seeing you in February!
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Post by NotjustoldWASPs »

So we're a little more than two months out, but here is some more detailed information regarding WUHSAC X:

Format will be as has been standard in recent years: 20 untimed TU/Bonuses; No penalty for incorrect interrupts; All bonuses bounce back, standard rules otherwise.

Pricing:

First Team: $75
Additional Teams: $65
Working Buzzer System: -$10
First-time Participants: -$15

Letters with further details are being mailed later today to all teams that have been invited in the past two-to-three years. If you have not received an invitation by next Friday, and are interested in coming, send me an email at [email protected], and I can forward it to you. Important thing to note: we are capping the field at 48 teams, so get those registrations in as soon as you can!
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Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Fort Zumwalt West's coach asked
When is the information for this due? I know I received it in the mail and we would like to bring two teams, but I need to relocate it and send it in. Usually this is due by the end of the month. If you could send it to me via e-mail, I will try to take care of it by next week.
on the Missouri board and I guess I'm kind of wondering the same thing. In particular, whatever happened to the document that was posted last year for teams to register with?
-Charlie
PS come to t3h trnamnt ppl kthx
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Post by akinney »

Notjustolddeadwhiteguys wrote:So we're a little more than two months out, but here is some more detailed information regarding WUHSAC X:

Format will be as has been standard in recent years: 20 untimed TU/Bonuses; No penalty for incorrect interrupts; All bonuses bounce back, standard rules otherwise.

Pricing:

First Team: $75
Additional Teams: $65
Working Buzzer System: -$10
First-time Participants: -$15

Letters with further details are being mailed later today to all teams that have been invited in the past two-to-three years. If you have not received an invitation by next Friday, and are interested in coming, send me an email at [email protected], and I can forward it to you. Important thing to note: we are capping the field at 48 teams, so get those registrations in as soon as you can!
Dang! MNH would love to come. But KAAC is holding District on that day.
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Post by mlaird »

hey, hate to burst anyone's bubble here, but this tournament is in 2008, right? if so, then I can say that Loyola Academy from Wilmette, IL will be there.
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Post by NotjustoldWASPs »

Three weeks and here we have another FIELD UPDATE:

Westminster Christian Academy(x2)
Ladue Horton Watkins HS(x2)
Loyola Academy--I've received a check, but no official registration, so mlaird, could you let me know about this...thanks
Hannibal High School
Francis Howell Central HS
Eureka HS(x2)
Parkway South HS(x3)
Fort Zumwalt West(x2)
Lafayette HS
Rockwood Summit HS(x2)
St. Louis Priory(x2)
SFBRHS (x2)
Helias HS(x3)
Clayton HS
Rockwood Auburn HS
St. Louis University HS1
New Trier HS



Total: 32; 8 spots still available; let me know ASAP at [email protected] if you want to register!
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Post by NotjustoldWASPs »

Ten days away, and another FIELD UPDATE!!!

Westminster Christian Academy(x2)
Ladue Horton Watkins HS(x2)
Loyola Academy--I've received a check, but no official registration, so mlaird, could you let me know about this...thanks
Hannibal High School (x2)
Francis Howell Central HS
Eureka HS(x2)
Parkway South HS(x3)
Fort Zumwalt West(x2)
Lafayette HS
Rockwood Summit HS(x2)
St. Louis Priory(x2)
SFBRHS (x2)
Helias HS(x3)
Clayton HS
Rockford Auburn HS
New Trier HS
Notre Dame Regional HS
North Kansas City HS
Parkway Central HS(x2)

32 teams; 8 spots still remain!
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Post by NotjustoldWASPs »

Five days away, and we have a full field:

Westminster Christian Academy(x2)
Ladue Horton Watkins HS(x2)
Loyola Academy
Hannibal High School (x2)
Francis Howell Central HS
Eureka HS(x2)
Parkway South HS(x3)
Fort Zumwalt West(x2)
Lafayette HS
Rockwood Summit HS(x2)
St. Louis Priory(x2)
SFBRHS (x2)
Helias HS(x3)
Clayton HS
Rockford Auburn HS
New Trier HS
Notre Dame Regional HS
North Kansas City HS
Parkway Central HS(x3)
Visitation Academy(x2)
Hancock HS(x2)
Rolla HS
O'Fallon HS
Carbondale Community HS

My co-director said she sent out a general information email about saturday last night...if you did not receive this, please let me know.
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Post by Stained Diviner »

New Trier and Loyola are backing out due to the weather/road conditions. Auburn is going.
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Post by NotjustoldWASPs »

Results:

1. North Kansas City
2. Rockford Auburn
3. Ladue
4. Carbondale

Full results will be posted eventually, hopefully tonight.

General tournament discussion is encouraged, but please do not discuss question content, as this tournament is being mirrored in two weeks in Virginia. Thanks!
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Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

I will be the first to discuss the set I guess, and I'll be Mr. Negativity again and say that I was not greatly enthused with what we played on yesterday. I was disappointed at the presence of a lot of biography bowl, where questions made frequent use of clues in the form of "He was born in [year or place]" or "They studied at [college]" and things like that which just are not good clues for tossups. There was occasionally extended worthless verbiage describing something vague about the answer. Particularly problematic was the variablity in bonus quality. There were a good number of easy 30s, hard 10s or 0s, bonuses without much information that only tested list memorization like "Name the author from titles" and a particularly bizarre art bonus from the first round that was similar to that but that I can't really discuss yet.
The most egregious problem though was the crazy jump in difficulty from the preliminary matches to the playoffs. I understand the idea behind it, namely "The questions should get harder as the better teams stay in the game," but this really is an idea that sounds good and doesn't work well in practice. It's a lot worse when a huge chunk of the questions for a tournament are hard (by hard I mean some of the stuff wasn't really even canonical for college sets that I've read through, much less for high school) and the majority of those "hard" questions were all clumped together in the last 4 games, making the scores suddenly go way down and making the games really hard, pretty much inordinately so for this kind of field. If you look back at last year's WUHSAC playoffs I think you will see that they were much much much easier. I would recommend going back through between now and the William and Mary tournament and resorting questions so that they are much more balanced throughout the day, even if it means having slightly harder preliminary games.

Also, I was disappointed that we signed up to play 9 games and were forced to play only 7. There were 7 pools, and I'm pretty sure every pool had 5 teams. I don't understand why one pool wasn't dissolved and one team added to 5 of the other pools, which would have cut down significantly on the downtime for most teams there and given more play to everyone. (If I am wrong about that pool sizes then feel free to ignore this whole thing). However, this part I know I am not wrong on, which is that the tournament adhered to a dumb rule that you had to finish in the top 2 of your pool to make the playoffs, which only let the top 14 teams into the playoffs and forced us to have 2 byes in a row. Why couldn't you just let a couple wildcard teams advance to the top 16 to let everyone play the bracket all the way through? That was something very frustrating for us. I wouldn't have minded maybe losing one game to a bye, but we paid to play 9 games, and I don't like getting 2 of them taken away from us.

There were still plenty of good questions and until I got my sinus headache (and even after) I enjoyed myself, and it was fun meeting some people from the various quizbowl teams in St. Louis as well as well as on the Wash U team.
Last edited by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) on Sun Feb 03, 2008 5:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08
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"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White
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Post by jbarnes112358 »

Notjustolddeadwhiteguys wrote:
General tournament discussion is encouraged, but please do not discuss question content, as this tournament is being mirrored in two weeks in Virginia. Thanks!
So, are these the questions that UVA is planning to use on Feb 23? Or are they being used somewhere else in Virginia?
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Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

They are being used at William and Mary's tournament.
Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08
"I won't say more because I know some of you parse everything I say." - Jeremy Gibbs

"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White
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Post by jbarnes112358 »

Deesy Does It wrote:They are being used at William and Mary's tournament.
Thanks. Now. if someone could tell us for sure what UVA will be using.
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Post by Jeremy Gibbs Paradox »

Deesy Does It wrote: Also, I was disappointed that we signed up to play 9 games and were forced to play only 7. There were 7 pools, and I'm pretty sure every pool had 5 teams. I don't understand why one pool wasn't dissolved and one team added to 5 of the other pools, which would have cut down significantly on the downtime for most teams there and given more play to everyone. (If I am wrong about that pool sizes then feel free to ignore this whole thing). However, this part I know I am not wrong on, which is that the tournament adhered to a dumb rule that you had to finish in the top 2 of your pool to make the playoffs, which only let the top 14 teams into the playoffs and forced us to have 2 byes in a row. Why couldn't you just let a couple wildcard teams advance to the top 16 to let everyone play the bracket all the way through? That was something very frustrating for us. I wouldn't have minded maybe losing one game to a bye, but we paid to play 9 games, and I don't like getting 2 of them taken away from us.
Actually, you signed up and paid to play the prelims and earned the privilege of competing in the playoffs. We charged everyone the same base price whether they make the playoffs or not, and no extra for those who advance.

As I had a direct hand in the scheduling, I'll proffer the explanation. When we initially sent out the invites, we capped the field at 40 with the idea that there would be 8 brackets of 5 teams. Someone was always going to be on a bye. This was because of three considerations: room availability, buzzer availability and staffing. We did not have as large a staff this year as in previous years. We usually have a sophomore honorary helping us, primarily as scorekeepers. They were not available this year. This schedule would have meant running 16 rooms. In addition, we used basically every reliable buzzer system available to us and that barely covered 14 rooms.

Then the snow came. We went from a field of 40 to one of 35. My first thought was to do what you suggested and make 6 brackets of 6 teams. Then I realized that would mean running 18 rooms. That would mean about 4 rooms of slapbowl IF everyone's buzzer system was functioning properly and IF everyone brought the systems they said they would. Some people did not due to the fact that their school was cancelled on Friday and they could not get back in to retrieve their systems. It was suggested that 7 brackets of 5 teams would address those concerns, which it did.

I understand though that advancing only the top two teams ended up giving your team an inordinant amount of down time due to the fact that you had the bye in the round immediately following lunch and the first playoff. For that I am very sorry. The reason that we didn't do wild cards (and frankly don't) is a matter of principle. It seems grossly unfair to tell two third place teams they get to advance because of the luck of scheduling placed them in a bracket where they could score a lot of points (e.g. not play games where a team like you guys is going to put up over 500 or 600 points) and not five others. Every first and second place team ended up having an equal record, as did every third place team to my knowledge. We didn't want to have to do it but that was the situation the cancellations put us in. In the interest of fairness, we elected for the byes, which again I am very sorry caused you to have such significant downtime.

On a separate note, I would like to thank and congratulate Neel for directing this thing and WUAT for running it. He was much more hands on than other TD's and the team itself much more involved in writing and editing than in previous years. I'm usually insanely exhausted after WUHSAC due to the work I've put in, but this year I blessedly wasn't which was a nice change.
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Post by NotjustoldWASPs »

So, I've mentioned this to our stats person multiple times in the past week, and he has yet to get me info about prelim stats, but here's what I have found regarding playoffs:

Seedings:

1- North Kansas City
2- Rockford Auburn
3- Ladue
4- Carbondale
5- Notre Dame
6- O'Fallon
7- Helias A
8- Parkway Central A
9- Eureka A
10- Westminster A
11- Lafayette A
12- Parkway Central B
13- Westminster B
14- Fort Zumwalt West B

First Round:
[1] NKC, [2] Rockford Auburn Byes
[8] Parkway Central A def. [9] Eureka A 230-190
[4] Carbondale def. [13]Westminster B 310-150
[12] Parkway Central B def. [5] Notre Dame 150-120
[7] Helias A def. [10] Westminster A 190-140
[3] Ladue def. [14] FZW B (forfeit)
[6] O'Fallon def. [11] Lafayette A 270-170

Second Round:
[1] NKC def. [8] PC A 420-120
[4] Carbondale def. [12] PC B 260-50
[2] RA def. [7] Helias A 350-40
[3] Ladue def. [6] O'fallon 260-90

Semi-finals:
[1] NKC def. [4] Carbondale 360-80
[2] RA def. [3] Ladue 350-170

Finals:
[1] NKC def. [2] RA 300-230

Third-Place:
[3] Ladue def. [4] Carbondale 260-140
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WUHSAC X Statistics (Finally)

Post by wustlpk2010 »

To all those who were waiting for statistics for so long, thank you so much for your patience. We apologize for taking so long; unfortunately, we were experiencing problems with our Web server here (unable to connect for whatever reason).

Anyhow, here are the stats for WUHSAC X. Let me know if there are any errors or problems you see. Enjoy!

http://sugroups.wustl.edu/~collbowl/wuh ... dings.html
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