Mississippi 12-13

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cchiego
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Mississippi 12-13

Post by cchiego »

Mississippi has an extremely active, yet relatively unknown quizbowl (or Academic Competition as some of the schools down there call it) circuit. There's plenty of teams; the Ole Miss tournaments get fields of 64 (!) teams and 32 teams. Didn't we once have some Ole Miss people from the college team side post on these boards? Do they know what's going on with that? Unfortunately, from an example of the questions available and the rules online, it sounds pretty bad.

The Jackson area seems chock-full of decent teams, but St. Andrew's seems to be the only school there with an understanding of the larger world of quizbowl. I'd be interested in hearing from them what their experience has been with the local tournaments.

Mississippi College sponsors a tournament each year that's actually videotaped. Check it out. Tons of hoses, terrible questions (with varying point values!), and a kind of bizarre format for bonuses. Clinton HS, the winner, seemed like a pretty good team in spite of the questions working against them.

Some of the top teams unfortunately seem to be Chippers. Madison Central, for instance, has consistently been a top team in the area and has attended a number of pyramidal tournaments over the years (as well as traveling all the way to Brookwood's tournament in GA). Amusingly, their websiteis full of NAQT "You Gotta Know" lists even while all their tournaments seem to be ChipBowl. I wonder why they haven't gone to NAQT or PACE championships that are much closer to MS than the Chip sites in Chicago and DC that they seem to like attending?

In Northern Mississippi, Tupelo apparently started hosting and attending tournaments. Itawamba also used to have a very dedicated coach who took his team to a bunch of the Nashville area events. DeSoto county apparently has some kind of county championship competition, but there's very little information out there on that. They also have a number of teams that do the Knowledge Bowl competition across the state line in Memphis.

Any Mississippi Quizbowlers out there who care to chime in?
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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by TulaneKQB »

I've met the kids from Madison Central a few times and they and their coach are really nice and enthusiastic--I invited them to our handful of HS tournaments, but they weren't able to come for various scheduling reasons (homecoming, I think, and then something else).

Mississippi State, Millsaps, and Ole Miss (as recently as first semester last year) have all had teams in the past ~5 years (since I've been in New Orleans), but they seem to fade in and out of activity every couple of years. I know that two or three kids from the Madison Central team last year are going to Ole Miss next semester--I've been meaning to contact their coach and get their contact information but had forgotten, so thanks for the reminder.

As far as the rest of the state is concerned: we're going to try to convince high schools from, like, Meridian, Biloxi, and some other areas in South-Central Mississippi to come to Tulane this year, and I guess teams in Oxford and Jackson and other points in the Northern parts of the state will continue to go to Memphis or whatever it is they do. My understanding is that organization in our handshake partner to the East is pretty nebulous, and that things would predictably be easier if there were more participation and stability on the college level. Again, I've been meaning to talk to the recent Madison Central grads about that, and will definitely try to get in touch with them once they're in Oxford and have Ole Miss email addresses.
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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by cchiego »

I've met the kids from Madison Central a few times and they and their coach are really nice and enthusiastic--I invited them to our handful of HS tournaments, but they weren't able to come for various scheduling reasons (homecoming, I think, and then something else).
Seems like they set their schedule pretty early, so hopefully y'all can convince them to come next time. I'm interested in why they continue to patronize ChipBowl though-- there seems to be some weird collective memory of the NAC as the only national championship tournament in a lot of these areas. I've gotten in touch with some Memphis area coaches who still thought Horace Greeley was the best team in the country...
we're going to try to convince high schools from, like, Meridian, Biloxi, and some other areas in South-Central Mississippi
How could I forget Meridian? They received a proclamation from the State of Mississippi for beating my old high school in the finals of St. Andrew's tournament this year. And, as the proclamation itself notes,
WHEREAS, on April 30, 2012, Meridian High School Academic Team won a title at St. Andrews High School in Jackson that qualifies them for national competetion, but it wasn't easy; and
WHEREAS, their final match-up was tied and Meridian High School had to win it in overtime;
That's a lot of community support there; it's great to see that the community really values quizbowl.

All of those teams in the Jackson area definitely have experience with good quizbowl as well as bad, so hopefully they can be convinced of the merits of the good stuff and start hosting more tournaments. One thing's for sure (based on the MS College video)--the MS teams definitely have the highest bowtie usage rate of any other state.
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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by Sandlapper »

Who are the best NAQT style programs, and how do they match up with a mid-tier GA-SC power like Grayson or Parkview?

I'd also like to know about any NAQT options in the SW corner of the state, and if there is an NAQT state championship.

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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by Important Bird Area »

Sandlapper wrote:Who are the best NAQT style programs, and how do they match up with a mid-tier GA-SC power like Grayson or Parkview?

I'd also like to know about any NAQT options in the SW corner of the state, and if there is an NAQT state championship.
We certainly hope there will be; schools interested in hosting the Mississippi state championship in spring 2013 should submit a bid here.

The strongest NAQT program in Mississippi in recent years has been St. Andrew's, who made the playoffs at the 2011 HSNCT. St. Andrew's put up 15.1 ppb on IS #92, while Grayson scored 15.71, so those two teams were of roughly similar strength in 2010 at least.
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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by cchiego »

A good number of programs don't appear to really distinguish between good or bad tournaments; they attend all of 'em regardless. If you hosted a tournament, you could probably get a pretty decent field if you could draw all the Jackson-area teams plus others.

Unfortunately, the college-sponsored tournaments at Mississippi College (54 teams) and Ole Miss (64 teams) are on really bad questions and strange formats. Amusingly, I heard that the Memphis area schools kept on overpowering the Mississippi schools at the Ole Miss tournament so they put all the Memphis teams in one bracket to "give the Mississippi schools a chance."

You're fighting the good fight for good quizbowl if you're trying to get a program going in Southern MS. I know one of the Jones County schools went to HSNCT a few years back and Madison Central went to HSNCT in 2011 but finished near the bottom and went back to Chip (thereby supporting one of my suspected theories about Chip's strangely lasting popularity), but that's about it.
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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

West Jones from Laurel, MS went to HSNCT in 2011, if that is who Chris is referring to?
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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by David Riley »

cchiego wrote:Amusingly, I heard that the Memphis area schools kept on overpowering the Mississippi schools at the Ole Miss tournament so they put all the Memphis teams in one bracket to "give the Mississippi schools a chance."


Geez, this practice used to run rampant in Illinois with "Chicago area" vs. "downstate" schools; as far as I know, we've (hopefully) outgrown it.
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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by cchiego »

Yeah here's an old record of that happening for proof: http://www.outreach.olemiss.edu/academi ... brawl.html

Not cool Ole Miss.

I'm going to go through and gather a list of contact info for all the MS teams that I can find online (probably at least 20 or so, particularly the best ones). I'm happy to send it to anyone who wants it. I also have a Memphis-area contact list that may be of interest to some people.

In the meantime, enjoy Itawamba High's quiz team homepage, complete with a tribute to the ALMIGHTY Stanford Packet Archive: https://sites.google.com/site/johnsonap ... holarsbowl
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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by Henrytw »

I'm sorry for reviving a slightly dead post, but I'd like to chime in. I'm a player on the South Jones team from Ellisville, MS (South-state). We only started our team last year, and due to the coach retiring, had to find a new sponsor. He's completely inexperienced in managing a quiz bowl team. Having no idea where to start, we often have trouble finding tournaments in Mississippi. Due to that, we don't play in many tournaments (although I'm obsessed with quiz bowl). We recently played and lost against PCS at Mississippi College (175-235), partly due to MC's abundance of terrible questions. If there are any tournaments (preferably pyramidal) in Mississippi, we would love to know of them. Thanks.

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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by Mnemosyne »

Henrytw wrote:I'm sorry for reviving a slightly dead post, but I'd like to chime in. I'm a player on the South Jones team from Ellisville, MS (South-state). We only started our team last year, and due to the coach retiring, had to find a new sponsor. He's completely inexperienced in managing a quiz bowl team. Having no idea where to start, we often have trouble finding tournaments in Mississippi. Due to that, we don't play in many tournaments (although I'm obsessed with quiz bowl). We recently played and lost against PCS at Mississippi College (175-235), partly due to MC's abundance of terrible questions. If there are any tournaments (preferably pyramidal) in Mississippi, we would love to know of them. Thanks.

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There's a tournament at Tulane in New Orleans on November 17th, which shouldn't be too far from your school if you're in the south.
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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by cchiego »

Good to hear from someone from the Free State of Jones! So long as the students on the team (espeically the underclassmen who will take over in the years to come) know about good quizbowl and the coach is willing to go to tournaments, it shouldn't be too hard to keep going to good tournaments.

Murrah (near Jackson) is hosting a pyramidal tournament on Dec. 15th. That's probably the closest pyramidal one for awhile. There are tournaments in the Birmingham area if you care to drive up I-59 a bit and there should be a few more this year in the Memphis area as well. NAQT's scheduleusually seems to get most of the MS tournaments.

Got any contacts at West Jones to see if you can make them go pyramidal too?
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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by TulaneKQB »

It looks like Ellisville is about a two-hour+ drive to New Orleans--if your school wanted to come to the tournament at Tulane in November (or any future tournaments at Tulane), we would be happy to have you!
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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by Henrytw »

Hey guys, thanks for the good responses. We're planning on going to Murrah on Dec. 15th, but we won't be able to make it to Tulane. We're planning on bringing two teams to Murrah: our veteran team and our new team. Hopefully this will provide them an opportunity to play without relying on the veterans. Oh, and I'll definitely get in contact with my friend who's on the West Jones team.
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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by Kevin »

I may try to put a team together for that Murrah tournament. Jackson is only three hours away from the New Orleans area, Meridian is about the same, and Hattiesburg, Natchez, Biloxi, etc. are all closer than that; hopefully in the future we can attract a few more teams from MS to tournaments in New Orleans, and vice versa.
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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by Henrytw »

The Murrah competition happened today. I don't know the results of the final round, but from first to fourth:
1. Either Clinton or Lamar
3. South Jones
4. Madison Central

Other teams that made quarterfinals include Itawamba A, Madison Central B, and Lawrence County. There was one more which I can't remember.
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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by Henrytw »

Are there any upcoming tournaments you guys are going to within driving distance of Hattiesburg? Our team is currently at a standstill.
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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by mithokie »

http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/1440/

is the closest to you that I could find on the tournament database. Admittedly a 5 hr drive for a Friday tournament is not very close. I hope something turns up soon.
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Re: Mississippi 12-13

Post by TulaneKQB »

Henry:

Tulane University is hosting a mirror of BHSAT in New Orleans (~2 hours from Hattiesburg) on 4/13--we'd love to see you and any other interested Mississippi teams attend. Feel free to contact me at [email protected] or Tulane's club president at [email protected] if you'd like more information.
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