The Quizbowl Resource Center

Well, Uni A came out of nowhere.

Now that University is actually coming to tournaments (on time), I think they're strain to emerge as a big great, as is San Dieguito, who's fairly new to quizbowl. As for schools in San Diego City, University City, Bishop's, Coronado, and Granite Hills are all showing considerable talent, and I expect that within a year or two, they'll become quite formidable. I also invited the aforementioned city schools to SWAG.

Uni A was already a power some two years ago. The real reason they're so surprising is that after last year's less-than-stellar perfomance and after dropping out of tournaments at the last second this year, they managed to take down ATLAS' second place team (NoHo A) to take fourth place (of 27 teams) yesterday out of nowhere.

Also, with all these new tournaments and new schools this year, it looks like the SoCal circuit is really starting to grow. To me, it looks like Westview and San Dieguito are on the cusp of joining the circle of teams that always end up in a -----fight for first (Torrey Pines A, NoHo A, Arcadia A, Irvine A, CCA A, and now Uni A apparently)

It's starting to get crowded up there...

pk14ster wrote:Now that University is actually coming to tournaments (on time)

Coming to one tournament on time after completely not showing up to the previous tournament you committed to isn't exactly a "trend" towards something positive.

The real question is why SoCal hasn't produced a team that can challenge for the national title? It's getting crowded up there, so why isn't one of those teams pulling away from the pack? NoHo and CCA both are still somewhat rebuilding, especially outside of their lead scorers. TP has potential if they ever get their full team together (and I believe they still have a year before their current talent peaks). Arcadia seems like they could be particularly dominant this year, but nationals always seems to bring out their worst luck.

San Dieguito has plenty of potential and, more importantly, has showed an admirable desire to go to as many QB tournaments as possible now. Should see them steadily improve too along with Westview and Del Norte (note the geographic location of all these schools--SD, TP, CCA, Westview, Del Norte, RB--all in a row from West-East between the Carmel Valley and San Dieguito Valley).

At Warhawk, I was particularly impressed by the new teams from University City, Mission Bay, and Granite Hills. Cathedral was missing their best player until the afternoon (Jan, who had an 81 PPG average w/10 powers) so they underperformed, but I'd like to see them play again at full strength. Francis Parker is also a much more complete team than last year and has a number of talented underclassmen (no seniors).

Coronado is peaking this year (most of their team was seniors). If they choose to actually study and go to tournaments, they could easily mount a strong challenge to any team in SoCal outside the very top few (Arcada, TP). Their lead scorer, Wright, is perhaps the best history player in SoCal besides John from NoHo and this year he has help from his teammates on other subject areas. Bishop's has a similar prescription in terms of having potential but needing to study more/go to tournaments, but note that most of their team is underclassmen.

The increase in teams is strongly concentrated here in San Diego county and not all of them will be signing on to good QB full speed just yet. The onus is now on the OC and LA area teams to start to grow new programs in their respective areas (and I know how tough it is, but the untapped potential in those counties is staggering). What got most of these new teams to Warhawk was the Madison HS coach's stubborn plugging away at new schools with phone calls, emails, contacting friends of friends, etc. It's easy for schools to be satisfied with 24-30 teams from "the usual suspects", but the goal should really be to get new ones (and ideally give them a taste of QB before throwing them into a bracket with experienced teams and watching them go 0-5).

My only problem with Chris' analysis is that Irvine isn't included in the running for (the top few) when according to yesterday's stats they probably should be. Arcadia A's two matches against Irvine A were the two of the most stressful games I've ever played, even including last year's HSNCT.

The untapped potential in LA/OC is completely true. Speaking from personal experience, though, it's very difficult to get LA schools interested in quiz bowl when we don't have any legitimate-looking backing when the main academic competitions in LA all do. Science Bowl is funded by the Department of Energy, Science Olympiad has tons of government and national alumni/corporate backing, and LA's most dominant academic competition, Academic Decathalon, has this untouchable prestige that leads to star AcaDeca students being featured on the front page of the LA Times on occasion. With the death of the UCLA program, LA quiz bowl no longer has any collegiate support, which means any attempts to do outreach is done solely by NoHo and Arcadia seniors, and we're all too busy with college apps and other activities to fully commit to cold-calling dozens of schools, staying in contact with them, and helping them set up programs. I know Irvine is facing a similar situation, too.

Having some flashier and better organized tournaments with trophies and plaques or something could actually do wonders for the SoCal circuit and recruiting new schools, just by merit of slightly more prestige. Arcadia was looking into getting medals for top teams for its tournaments this year, until ATLAS turned out to only have 15 teams in attendance, despite our non-existent field cap :(

You were talking about having SoCal State at the PetCo stadium in SD earlier. Doing so would be a great step in that direction. How's that going, by the way?

cchiego wrote: It's getting crowded up there, so why isn't one of those teams pulling away from the pack?

Arcadia has been trying to pull away from the pack for the last two years, but you're right that the curse of Nationals always seems to follow us. We've been putting a lot of effort into doing exactly what you've said this year, though, by trying to strengthen all our teams (and players) across the board, and I know Dan Kim from Torrey Pines is spending ungodly amounts of time doing the same.

Yeah Irvine is quite a good team, but they're just a bit below the level of Arcadia and TP I think. That can certainly change very quickly.

DJCocoPuffs wrote:You were talking about having SoCal State at the PetCo stadium in SD earlier. Doing so would be a great step in that direction. How's that going, by the way?

The PetCo Park deal I can't do with my own commitments and it didn't get a lot of interest when I emailed teams. It would be a HUGE logistical undertaking (payment required long in advance), we have to sell a set number of extra tickets to the baseball game, and the setup at the ballpark would be NAQT-hotel tight. It would be cool though if anyone wanted to take a year to plan it all out.

Academic Decathlon is just plain evil. Mindless memorization, subjective "interviews," absurd rules that encourage students to suck in their classes to compete, essentially racial quotas on teams (see page 3 of the LA public schools official guide), company makes huge $$ selling official guides each year, insane costs (up $700+ for just one local competition!), and choking bureaucratic regulation at every step. I hope that QB doesn't get bureaucratized like that and it's worth having a smaller competition if that's what it takes to stay out of the red tape maze like AcDec. It should be a shining example of what NOT to do (along with SciBowl; doesn't good quizbowl have any govt. contacts to force the Dept. of Energy to change it?). Anyone with a brain who's not a shill for AcDec can easily see that quizbowl is far and away a better competition.

cchiego wrote:(along with SciBowl; doesn't good quizbowl have any govt. contacts to force the Dept. of Energy to change it?)

At risk of diverting the discussion, is your beef with Science Bowl about the format or the organization? I've been defending the format to my teammates for about a year now and I haven't seen any discussion of it on these forums (maybe my search button is faulty).

Also, best I can tell from a player's perspective, it's run by alumni more than by the government.

To be fair about the racial quotas rule, Arcadia's AcaDeca team is comprised of approximately 25 Asians (a couple of Indians too, but they're a subcontinent), so I'm not sure how strictly that rule is enforced.

Then again, the only people I know on Arcadia AcaDeca are the captain and two members who got kicked out because they ditched too many meetings to go to Arcadia Quiz Bowl things, so take that with a grain of salt.

I think AcaDeca caters to a wholly separate demographic than quiz bowl does. Their competition seems as it was meant for people who like to learn but maybe aren't as into the "fast pace hit the buzzer think quickly win" aspect of quiz bowl. I agree on your point about mindless bureaucracy and useless rules, though. I don't have a problem with any academic competition that encourages people to learn, but the sheer amount of money they make students pay for study guides and registration to compete a guaranteed one time is just ridiculous to me.

My larger point is that quiz bowl could do a lot better with some prestige, however. A couple of months back, I picked up an issue of the LA Times while eating breakfast and saw a front page article about a star AcaDeca player named "Demidec Dan" or something. That kind of publicity for quiz bowl would undoubtedly increase tournament field sizes. The problem with outreach in LA is that if there's not a lot of prestige behind a competition, potential students are a lot less eager to sign on.

Yeah, if people want to competitively take tests they should self-study AP and SAT IIs. At least those don't discriminate on the basis of GPAs like AcDec does!

Quizbowl is really, really bad about media exposure. The last two big media stories on quizbowl--the Slate article on ACF and the AJC article on HSNCT/Adam Silverman--came about because Mike Bentley and myself, respectively, randomly emailed media people who responded favorably. Usually, you need a PR person to send out careful press releases, strike up working relationships with reporters, have nice websites, etc.--things that AcDec invests in and it pays off.

What we need is a strong tournament in SoCal that we can really sell to the media as being THE quizbowl thing they should cover and then work every angle we can to get the media out here. That's usually HSNCT or NSC, but here in SoCal our state champs have been pretty bad lately (it's also weird to try to explain why there are two state championships). I would really, really like to change that and have a 48 team SoCal States this year with reporters from all over the place there after a strong media campaign (that means calling and emailling and tweeting at reporters several months in advance).

I personally don't think I have the time to organize that without significant help and I don't know of any team around here who has both the logistical skills and media savvy to effectively publicize it. We can't host it at UCSD and to staff a tourney of that size we'll need a ton of competent mods, probably more than the entire effective college circuit these days. We would need it make it a joint venture between several teams (HS and college) probably, which means some good players would probably have to give up playing in it. Madison HS has indicated interest in providing the venue (and they'd be good for hosting with location right off interstate and all the rooms we could desire), but we would still need a considerable number of staffers.

If people want to host an awesome SoCal State Championship, I'm happy to help organize but I need people at a number of schools to help to make this work. And if anyone has connections in the media, that would be highly desirable as well.

EDIT: Speaking of which, anyone see any conflicts on March 16th? That's before most school's spring breaks in the SD area at least. April is really bad with a ton of conflicts.

cchiego wrote:it's also weird to try to explain why there are two state championships

Could you elaborate on this? I was only aware of one state championship, which was held at La Jolla last year. How are each different?

I believe he was talking about NorCal Championship, which Bellarmine won last year I believe.

cchiego wrote: I personally don't think I have the time to organize that without significant help and I don't know of any team around here who has both the logistical skills and media savvy to effectively publicize it. We can't host it at UCSD and to staff a tourney of that size we'll need a ton of competent mods, probably more than the entire effective college circuit these days. We would need it make it a joint venture between several teams (HS and college) probably, which means some good players would probably have to give up playing in it. Madison HS has indicated interest in providing the venue (and they'd be good for hosting with location right off interstate and all the rooms we could desire), but we would still need a considerable number of staffers.

If people want to host an awesome SoCal State Championship, I'm happy to help organize but I need people at a number of schools to help to make this work. And if anyone has connections in the media, that would be highly desirable as well.

EDIT: Speaking of which, anyone see any conflicts on March 16th? That's before most school's spring breaks in the SD area at least. April is really bad with a ton of conflicts.

Could this be done in May? Like as a precursor to HSNCT? That way, some people from Berkeley might be willing to make the drive down to help with the staffer shortfall. Our finals end on the 17th.

List of Fighting Spirit characters wrote:

cchiego wrote: I personally don't think I have the time to organize that without significant help and I don't know of any team around here who has both the logistical skills and media savvy to effectively publicize it. We can't host it at UCSD and to staff a tourney of that size we'll need a ton of competent mods, probably more than the entire effective college circuit these days. We would need it make it a joint venture between several teams (HS and college) probably, which means some good players would probably have to give up playing in it. Madison HS has indicated interest in providing the venue (and they'd be good for hosting with location right off interstate and all the rooms we could desire), but we would still need a considerable number of staffers.

If people want to host an awesome SoCal State Championship, I'm happy to help organize but I need people at a number of schools to help to make this work. And if anyone has connections in the media, that would be highly desirable as well.

EDIT: Speaking of which, anyone see any conflicts on March 16th? That's before most school's spring breaks in the SD area at least. April is really bad with a ton of conflicts.

Could this be done in May? Like as a precursor to HSNCT? That way, some people from Berkeley might be willing to make the drive down to help with the staffer shortfall. Our finals end on the 17th.

Not if it's a formal NAQT state championship (we want those to be far enough in advance that teams have time to make HSNCT travel plans).

That being said:

1) Having a mid-May nationals-prep event is a great idea.

and

2) I could drive down to southern California to help out at a March 16th tournament, and anyone else from Berkeley is welcome to join me.

Could you please elaborate on how state championships work? Who is eligible, what do top teams get, and what set is used?

NAQT state championships use the last IS set of the year (so IS #126 for 2012-13), which is free to the host. All high schools in the relevant state are eligible. The state champion earns a reserved berth to HSNCT. In addition, the top-finishing team that has not yet qualified for HSNCT automatically qualifies at the state championship (thus they qualify even if they finish outside the top 15% of the tournament field). Note that the new qualifier does not have a reserved berth.

If Irvine wins the bid to host Southern California state championships, we will PROBABLY be hosting it on 6 April 2013. That being said, we'll have probably enough rooms to host a 30+ team tournament, we just need teams that usually don't participate outside of San Diego to come, send buzzers. We should be about fine on moderators.

Also, does merging files on SQBS work more efficiently now? I want to be able to provide quick statistics for the tournament.

Has there been a problem with merging files in SQBS? I recall that I could do it fairly easily last year. Also, could you please elaborate on the process of bidding for state championships? I'm a little confused as to how this works.

pk14ster wrote:could you please elaborate on the process of bidding for state championships? I'm a little confused as to how this works.

More information here. Note that the official bid deadline was November 1st, but as usual there are a number of states with no bids. I expect that we will announce the first batch of state championships by December 1st (and extend the host call for those states that still lack their own championships).

Well, apparently Chris Chiego has ceased all quiz bowl activities, so I guess as far as SoCal quiz bowl organization goes, Eddie Kim, Dan Kim, Benjamin Chiang, and I will be handling those affairs and updating the socalquizbowl website for 2012-2013.

Thanks for all the hard work over the years, Dwight and Chris!

I've been looking to get a lot of the SD city schools to come to quizbowl tournaments. Andy is a really strong humanities player at Granite Hills and Alex at University City is an all-around generalist. I'm not sure what grade they're in, but it looks like they'll stick around for at least the remainder of the year - both schools are signed up for SWAG. Madison's fairly new to quizbowl but they also have tons of enthusiasm and have strong players, but other than that I haven't had a lot of success yet. I'm trying to get in contact with the schools that went to Warhawk but missed out on Triton Fall and get them to come to SWAG as well.

SoCalQuizBowl.org rankings and wrap-up/discussion, just in time for Thanksgiving.

In a similar vein to what Jeff said, I'm not currently active in the circuit, but would lend any administrative or moderating skills I possess to something big. As well as my gravitas and huge backlog of potential book prizes.

I hope some Southern California teams will consider making the trip up to Northern California to play in the California Cup series. You'll get a heavy discount and free food, as well as the chance to play plenty of games against solid competition. Great prizes and fun are guaranteed.

The problem is, of the three sets listed two have already been hosted and played in SoCal, and the third (LIST III) is going to be hosted by Westview for their April novice tournament :X

Also, if Arcadia were to make the trek, it would most likely only be Arcadia A, and a quick glance shows that two of the three dates conflict with 3 of the 4 Arcadia A members' schedules. Otherwise, we'd definitely consider attending at least one of the tournaments to see if we can get a single tossup against Sameer.

If only Central California had less cow poop and more quiz bowl...

DJCocoPuffs wrote:If only Central California had more quiz bowl...

I do plan to work on this project this spring. (Start off with a novice tournament for the local schools first before we plan "Arcadia and Bellarmine collide in Fresno and emit a burst of high-energy radiation.")

This is a "where are they now?" question for anyone who can answer it, although he was well before current players' time. About 15-20 years ago, there was a guy named John Goss who used to sponsor quiz bowl tournaments, at least what were considered such during the bad quizbowl era. These were often hosted at UNLV, he pulled out all of the stops, then he just disappeared. Anyone know what happened to him?

Tanay wrote:I hope some Southern California teams will consider making the trip up to Northern California to play in the California Cup series. You'll get a heavy discount and free food, as well as the chance to play plenty of games against solid competition. Great prizes and fun are guaranteed.

"Great prizes"? Are suggesting that this tournament will have... actual trophies?! [gasp]

Assuming the tournament happens on March 16 (which I believe is a 3-day weekend), then I'm down for attending.

So I'm going to be in Southern California from the 24th-29th this month; is there anything going on then, or interest in having a practice or something?

I'm trying to arrange some winter break practices right now, but unfortunately they'll probably be San Diego-centered.

Arcadia Quiz Bowl will be having some stuff going on over winter break, but 0% of it will be actually quiz bowl related. I'd be happy to see if I can get some kind of scrimmage or something going between any player from SoCal who wants to come, though.

Whoops I meant in SoCal. Max, I'll let you know if we ever get a scrimmage off the ground so you can come in and club us all.

Hi, this is a member of the Uni quiz bowl team. Recently, we hosted a history bowl competition, which I now many quiz bowl players take part in. Many of the teachers that had their rooms used complained of stolen items, usually their personal belongings that they kept in their desks and whatnot. One teacher even complained that a bow, arrows, and spears had been stolen, and others complained about stolen books, personal items, and money. An acquaintance of mine from Irvine High (Satya) described how some teachers there complained about stolen material as well, like books and a Princeton coffee mug during IHOP. I know other people who have also related something like this from other schools. Since many teams participated in many QB tournaments, it is hard to track down who is doing this. However, please stop, and respect the property of the school that you are using, otherwise teachers will stop agreeing to let their rooms be used for quiz bowl and it will reflect badly on quizbowl as a whole. Thank you.

Benjamin Chiang on the SoCal Facebook Group wrote: It has come to my attention that one of our teachers (in the room H5) has had a Princeton mug stolen from his room. It is believed to have been stolen during Round 3/4 and teams that played in that room throughout the day include Arcadia A, La Jolla B, Arcadia E, University B, Edison C, NoHo A, Rancho Bernardo, San Dieguito, Arcadia B, and (Ripen Oyster). If you have any information about this please contact me as soon as possible.

We may NOT be able to host large quiz bowl tournaments like this in the future if this is what's going to happen when we host.

I don't know who keeps stealing these things, but we didn't have any problems like this at Arcadia Carnal Embrace or N.O.H.O, so I'm not sure I can help narrow down the list of potential suspects. In general, though, it looks like we'll have to start taking measures such as keeping team members in rooms at all times or moving anything that's not nailed down to the far side of the classroom, because apparently, some quiz bowl players don't understand common courtesy.

djqb wrote:Hi, this is a member of the Uni quiz bowl team. Recently, we hosted a history bowl competition, which I now many quiz bowl players take part in. Many of the teachers that had their rooms used complained of stolen items, usually their personal belongings that they kept in their desks and whatnot. One teacher even complained that a bow, arrows, and spears had been stolen, and others complained about stolen books, personal items, and money. An acquaintance of mine from Irvine High (Satya) described how some teachers there complained about stolen material as well, like books and a Princeton coffee mug during IHOP. I know other people who have also related something like this from other schools. Since many teams participated in many QB tournaments, it is hard to track down who is doing this. However, please stop, and respect the property of the school that you are using, otherwise teachers will stop agreeing to let their rooms be used for quiz bowl and it will reflect badly on quizbowl as a whole. Thank you.

User was reminded to enable a signature. --Mgmt.

If you have a roster of which teams were in which rooms, I think it would be possible to use the information from Uni's tournament and IHOP and narrow down the suspects. It's not something I feel very comfortable with, and hopefully steps like this won't be necessary.

Chris Chiego and I are writing a series of posts discussing the aspects of bad quizbowl embodied in the San Diego Academic League, beginning with North County. Here's the first post, discussing the differences between good and bad quizbowl, and here's the second post, pinpointing the specific problems with Academic League questions using examples from a match between two North County schools. Expect more over the next few days.

EDIT: Here's the third post. That's probably going to be the last one for now, at least until more videos are uploaded to the iTV website.