The Quizbowl Resource Center

Awehrman

The fact that it's the third in a series doesn't really make it any better. Why doesn't it mention that it is the third letter sent, so that if the first were missed, forgotten, or thrown away (as is probably the case with Loyola), the individual receiving it might contact NAQT to receive the first ...

Awehrman

I did not hear any complaints about my lifting of the slaughter rule at the Junior Wildcat. That doesn't mean there weren't any, but none were directed to me. In the blowout games that I saw, the middle school students handled themselves perfectly well. I heard a lot more "Wow, that team's real...

Awehrman

I tracked down the flyer and scanned it, so people can see what I'm talking about and perhaps make suggestions about how to improve it in the future. Front Back I would also like to ask Jeff and NAQT more broadly about the goals of the company. What are NAQT's plans for expansion, if any? How does N...

Awehrman

While this is certainly an important office, I wonder if NAQT will consider expanding the position or creating another one to communicate with people outside of the quizbowl community. While NAQT certainly needs to appease its core, its marketing, especially to non-circuit colleges and universities,...

Awehrman

American Revolution Tossup 13.**One theater in this general war saw forces under Haidar Ali defeated at the Battle of Porto Novo, part of the Second Anglo-Mysore War. The defeat of a fleet commanded by Juan de Langara in Cape St. Vincent became known as the Moonlight Battle and allowed George Rodne...

Awehrman

Here are the playoff results from Saturday. If I find some time, I may plug the information into SQBS and post them online as well. Round 6 #1 Station A 400 #16 Prairie B 70 Leading Scorers: Station A: Connor 30 pts. Prairie B: Hayley 20 pts. #2 Northlawn vs. #15 Quest Forfeit #3 Station C 390 #14 P...

Awehrman

As mentioned in the middle school thread, I would like to invite colleges, high schools, and middle schools from around the country to host mirrors of Northwestern's 2009 Junior Wildcat tournament this winter and spring. The tournament, which was held on 2/21/09 in Evanston, IL, featured rounds of 2...

Awehrman

Dan, you're right that Loyola Chicago doesn't have a team, but my wife, Ellen, is the student activity coordinator there and would be more than happy to help you start your club when you arrive on campus. It's very rare to have someone in a student activities office be aware and supportive of quizbo...

Awehrman

Thanks for all the high praise! It really was my pleasure to see the event work out as well as I did. We had 10 teams drop out of the tournament due to weather concerns on Friday and Saturday, so I was scrambling to get a tournament schedule written up at the last minute, since I was not sure who wa...

Awehrman

Here are the brief results from the tournament. Barrington Station B was the winner defeating Barrington Station A in the final match. I'm sure that Station A was exhausted after a thrilling semifinal comeback victory over Daniel Wright A that was tied going into the last tossup on Jules Verne. Dani...

Awehrman

Before I go to bed, a quick update. The Bolingbrook teams are out as are the Rockfords and Joliet. Down to 23 at this point. We'll split a team to make it 24 if there are no further drops. It actually works out a bit better schedule-wise since we'll only need to be in one building.

Awehrman

The Crystal Lake teams (Lundahl and Beardsley) are the only definite drops so far.

Awehrman

I have had 2 teams drop so far. There will likely be more. I think that there will be enough adults around (we should have 2 staff people in every room, assuming they all can make through the weather) that it will not be a problem if some teams do not have a coach. We may just have to run a more cas...

Awehrman

I just sent an email out to all teams letting them know that the tournament is still on. The only way we would cancel is if the vast majority of teams drops out. We ran our high school tournament with 7 teams this year, so we are not opposed to very small tournaments. Hopefully the snow will only ca...

Awehrman

The tournament will go on. Northwestern never closes. Do you think that teams will cancel because of six inches or so of snow? Stupid February.

Awehrman

Well, Jonah and Jack beat me to the punch. Google is telling you to take Lake Shore Drive, because it is the fastest way. It's the way I almost always take to get to Evanston from the south. It's also quite scenic, if you want to give the students a nice view of the city. Sheridan Road (once you get...

Awehrman

Yeah, scheduling our tournament at the same time as Masonics made good sense schedule-wise but limited the potential staff who could help. I did not know about the math tournament going on the same day. I could use 2 or 3 more expereinced moderators, but I have plenty of staff. The Illinois Institut...

Awehrman

Yes, they should know that we are not using IESA rules. I mentioned the format in the tournament announcement and in several emails to the team as well as on the website. I expect to fully explain it again during the general meeting before the tournament, but they should know what they have signed u...

Awehrman

No, those are both accurate. Jason and the argonauts all participated in the Calydonian Boar hunt, and Theseus was an Argonaut. He may be confusing the Calydonian Boar with Heracles's Erymanthian Boar.

Awehrman

I thought it was about time that I created a thread for pre and post tournament discussion of Northwestern's Junior Wildcat tournament to be held on February 21. Information about the tournament can be found here: http://groups.northwestern.edu/quizbowl/juniorwildcat/2009/index.html As far as I know...

Awehrman

I agree with what Chris says regarding the trade-off between expanding length in certain cases to avoid difficulty cliffs and promote better layering of questions - I think it worked well at this tourney, as a lot of players seem to agree. Also, I think people are sometimes under false pretenses wh...

Awehrman

I just have a couple quick comments from a reader's perspective. I thought the questions were quite good overall. They did a nice job differentiating between teams and in general were had lots of good clues. On the not quite as good side, many of the questions were overly long (9 or 10 lines). The p...

Awehrman

Jeff, I sent out the information on the bonus format to teams about a month ago. I have tweaked it a little bit since then but not substantially. If you didn't receive it, let me know. We also updated the tournament information on our website: http://groups.northwestern.edu/quizbowl/juniorwildcat/20...

Awehrman

All of this seems very silly and petty to me. The petition does not offer any specifics on why ACF bonuses discourage teamwork. I would argue that they encourage more practice as a team (it's important that team members know what other team members know), and ultimately require more teamwork to be s...

Awehrman

We've tried for several years to figure out a way for Northwestern to host ICT or HSNCT, and it just hasn't worked out for us. We've had a host of problems ranging from nearly no available staff (we've since overcome that one), issues with Spring Break and our quarter system, the limited number of r...

Awehrman

For any coaches or area college or high school players not attending Masonics or the math competition (or area college players or former players), I am in need of a few readers and/or scorekeepers for Northwestern's Junior Wildcat middle school tournament on 2/21. It might be a good chance to scout ...

Awehrman

I was not planning on instituting a "slaughter rule" for the Junior Wildcat tournament. Do you think I will get any complaints for that from coaches if I am upfront about it? I'm running 20/20 rounds with 30 point bonuses, so I suppose I could have a 410 point limit. If one team goes up 41...

Awehrman

That list is up to date. I have not heard back from the teams wavering between bringing one or two teams. Since the tournament is nearly at capacity, any additional teams will be placed on the waiting list. We shall see how the Junior Wildcat goes this year, before we think about next year. I certai...

Awehrman

There's not much we can do about the lack of good high school tournaments in January this year, but do you all think it would be a good move if Northwestern moved its Wildcat tournament to January next year? We've had less than 10 teams the last 2 years, so we certainly need some change. We Usually ...

Awehrman

This is the distribution that I am working toward for the Junior Wildcat tournament on February 21. 4 history (split between US and world) 4 science (split between life, physical, and earth sciences, and some computer, astronomy, etc.) 3 literature 2 math (at least one calculation tossup and bonus p...

Awehrman

Another thing that might force administrators' hands is the presence of siblings on middle school and high school teams. In middle school many years ago, I practiced with my older brother who was on the varsity high school team in informal practices, and we shared study materials and things. I also ...

Awehrman

As Jeff Price mentioned above, Northwestern University is hosting a middle school quizbowl tournament on February 21st. We still have a few spots available, and we would be glad to have you and your team attend. The tournament will not be in Illinois format, so your team should not be at a disadvant...

Awehrman

I think this is probably an improvement distribution-wise, but I have a couple questions regarding the new one. Why did history draw the short straw of the big 3? It seems that science went up because of the inclusion of math (why not a separate 1/1 in non-computational math?), but why the increase ...

Awehrman

Yeah, I'm not comfortable with the fact that the (admittedly very few) questions I've seen have been very much Biography Bowl. It would be much more helpful to use early clues that are firmly in the high school canon and that would probably be central to a high school class on the subject. I'm thin...

Awehrman

This seems like a prime opportunity to unveil this announcement (I will be posting it to the main page and sending it to teams shortly). Thanks to Jeff Price for his help and encouragement in getting this thing off the ground. Dear Scholastic Bowl Coach, Northwestern University cordially invites you...

Awehrman

Of course there has been lots of work done on the subject. I think I've heard it argued that there are more books written on the US Civil War than all other books on US History combined. It will always be among the most popular topics of history buffs. I'm just saying that the current coolness of th...

Awehrman

I have not attended many recent tournaments, but I think I can speak to this issue in a different way. As I have said before on this board, military history is becoming more and more difficult to find in academia. When it's found, it is usually presented as the "new" military history which...

Awehrman

I'm interrupting this discussion to ask....is anyone going to Northwestern next weekend? I've gotten some instructions about the tournament, where it will be held etc. but no idea of what or how many teams are coming. Andy? Rebecca? Anyone??? I'll have to get back to you on this, but I do know as o...

Awehrman

My own question on this discussion: does the MHSAA control ALL quiz bowl or academic competition formats in Missouri? No, they do not. This is one of the many loopholes that teams in Missouri use to get around some of MSHSAA's rules. There are several competitions that do not count as "academi...

Awehrman

Colby, I'll send you an email shortly regarding the questions. You may pencil in our middle school tournament for February 21st, but we have not made a formal announcement.

Awehrman

Hey, Colby, This wouldn't be a good long term solution by any means, but I'm working on writing a pyrmaidal style middle school tournament to be held at NU in February. Perhaps you could use my set for your tournament at the end of this year to introduce those schools to good quizbowl at a low level...

Awehrman

Northwestern's deal is always a bit up in the air this time of year. We had some conflicts with Illinois over the date of our tournament last year too. Ultimately we kept that date (last weekend in October), but I'm not completely satisfied with it. We have been seeing a diminishing number of teams ...

Awehrman

You're right that MSHSAA as an organization would have no clue if a player or players were to compete at a college tournament under a different name. As you know, they're pretty clueless about this quizbowl stuff. Nevertheless if that player were to tell someone else (or post on the message boards o...

Awehrman

I was implying that we were fortunate because the 250 mile rule doesn't not hinder Missouri teams as much as it might in other states, especially those west of the Mississippi. While there is not the high level of play that is found in other parts of the country, when I was at NKC we drove to regula...

Awehrman

It should be noted that the 250 mile limit prohibits travel more than 250 miles from Missouri's border. If you measure as the crow flies from Athens, MO, in the far Northeastern part of the state it's 230 miles to Wilmette, IL, so Chicago is within range but barely. NKC has never gone to Chicago for...

Awehrman

2. This goes to another question: how will you ever be able to enforce this rule? I only attended one college-level tournament in my high school career, and I played as "Burnt Norton," one of Eliot's Four Quartets. If you managed to figure out that that was me, then you'd deserve to ban m...

Awehrman

That might be theoretically possible, but it is unlikely that an athletic director would so strongly advocate for someone who was really good at quizbowl. Most of the arguments in favor of Perkins (the track guy) were that competing in the Penn Relays would help him gain college scholarships. I thin...

Awehrman

Yeah, 14 also is not good. Do you know the rationale for having such restrictions? Are they trying to keep certain teams from getting too far above the less serious teams? Why can't individual teams decide what is appropriate and how much they can afford? Can a school's quiz bowl team opt out of MS...

Awehrman

The ACUI website indicates that they are looking for "how to best provide a fun, team-building, educational program for college students in the future," but that could really be anything, and they do not list a timetable. It seems like they would be open for NAQT or any other "fun, te...

Awehrman

Well, Charlie just tied the single-game scoring record, reclaiming North Kansas City's spot there, as I believe Andy Wehrman had the single-game scoring record at one point. Yeah, that record (of 200 points in a game) stood for five years. It's interesting that Charlie has been able to top it in 3 ...

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