The Quizbowl Resource Center

The Academic Competition Club at the University of Virginia is pleased to announce that the Second Annual Cavalier Open will be held February 12, 2005, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Last year's tournament was considered one of the most talent-heavy pre-Nationals tournament, and featured many of the nation's best teams, including Dorman, Dunbar, Dupont Manual, Richard Montgomery and St. John's, as well as Virginia powerhouses TJ, Maggie Walker Governor's School, Charlottesville, Spotswood, R.E. Lee, and Princess Anne. We hope for an even stronger field this year.

We will be using NAQT questions, though the set is currently undecided (an announcement on this will follow shortly).

Our pricing structure offers discounts to out-of-state teams, teams that are veterans of UVA tournaments, and teams new to the circuit:

$70 first team
$60 each additional team
-$10 buzzer discount (each, limit 2)
-$15 moderator discount
-$10 for MD and DC teams
-$20 for out of state teams not from MD or DC
-$10 Returner's Discount: Have sent at least one team to a tournament that UVA has hosted in the past calendar year.
-$10 New team Discount: Have not sent any teams to any non-TV, non-VHSL tournament (note: if there are out of state teams who think they meet the spirit of this discount, we can definitely make arrangements.)

More information can be found at http://www.student.virginia.edu/~quizbowl/cavopen.html .

Interested teams can register with me at [email protected]. If you have any questions, please contact me as well. I look forward to hearing from many of you soon.

Morgan Saxby, TD

I'm just writing to confirm that we will be using IS-46. A list of tournaments that have used or will use that set are here: http://www.naqt.com/assigned-packet-sets.jsp.

Thanks, and look forward to seeing many of you there. [/url]

Uh, Central Virginia is going to be having regionals that day, so 8 teams that might go will be out. Also, that is the last day of the ODU Model UN conference, so that also might affect your turnout.

Not to mention that it's the same day as Yale's winter tournament.

laszlow wrote:Not to mention that it's the same day as Yale's winter tournament.

Yeah, Yale's tournament will be preventing us from attending UVA's on the 12th.

bigtrain wrote:

laszlow wrote:Not to mention that it's the same day as Yale's winter tournament.

Yeah, Yale's tournament will be preventing us from attending UVA's on the 12th.

Unless these are irreversible plans or the purpose of the trip is a college visit, I would not recommend Yale. While Cav will be missing a few key teams who heard the set at Princeton, it is very much likely to sport a better field, to be better run, and to have a more even (though uninspired) question set.

Will your team be attending Yale because you already played this question set?

We may or may not send a small contingent to cav (composed of players who were not at princeton), but we are passing on yale due to the massive expense of money and effort it would require for a less than satisfactory return.

yeah, it was unfortuante about Princeton using that set. It didn't click with us until about a month ago, and by then it was too late to change the set satisfactorily.

Chanman, is there a VHSL website that says when the dates were going to be? Or if not, how do you guys find out about the dates? We changed the date early on because it conflicted with VHSL States, and apparently we jumped out of the pan and into the fire of Regionals. Hopefully you guys can still send a team (VHSL only allows one team, right?).

This is the page with the VHSL schedule. It's not likely we'd send a team to Cav, because our first team is definitely going to regionals, and any other team we send to Cav would get cut to pieces. Gov might send a couple of teams, but their first team is probably going to regionals too.

We probably will send a couple of teams to Cav. Not sure who we're sending to which yet [almost all of us want to go to Cav instead of regionals], but we'll probably send a mix of A and B teams to both [and more to Cav].

The VHSL website (http://www.vhsl.org) lists the latest dates by which district and regional tournaments must be completed.

When the district tournament is held is determined in part by where the district gets its questions. Districts that choose to get their questions from the Scholastic Bowl question-writing consortium must adhere to the district and regional two-week windows; districts must be completed between Jan. 22-29 and regionals between Feb. 5-12. Those that get their questions elsewhere are not restricted as to the dates for districts but they are limited for regionals since all regions, I believe, are using the same questions.

Some districts don't have a regular season since they are in areas where many competitions are available all year and just have round-robin tournaments sometime in Dec. or Jan. to select their representatives to regionals. Other districts have a full regular season with teams seeded into the double-elimination district tournament based on their regular season finish. Still others are somewhere in between.

The Valley District Tournament is scheduled for Jan. 22 at Stuarts Draft with the 29th as a snow date. The Region II Tournament is schedule for Feb. 5 at Turner Ashby with a Feb. 12 snow date. The state tournament is set for Feb. 26 at William and Mary. Each of the four regions and states will involve 8 teams in each of the three classifications-- A, AA and AAA.

The gist of all this is that you can pretty much figure the last two Saturdays in January and the first two in February are reserved for district and regional Scholastic Bowl in Virginia with states being the last Saturday in February.

The only correction to Marian's post I'll make is that the policy of *having* to have district/region tournaments on the pre-assigned dates died an unofficial death. (i.e., I won't be sending the VHSL Enforcement Goons, if such creatures exist, out to those ill-behaving districts.)

The deadlines still exist, however, simply because we don't want regions and districts to wait until the last minute -- one year we did not even *know* who the Northwestern Region representatives would be until the day before the tournament. E.C. Glass travelled from Lynchburg to Manassas (144 miles) to Lynchburg (144 miles) to Williamsburg (185 miles) in a trek within 24 hours.

Some Districts in the Central Region have already held their tournaments, and a few may even be dipping into February to hold their tournaments (I checked, and my alma mater's district, the Northwestern, is having their tournament on 2 February.)

A few districts are having their tournaments during the week, for example, the Beach District (which Princess Anne and Ocean Lakes reside in) are having their tournament on Monday the 1st February.

But it *does* seem most districts who purchase from us are holding their tournaments on the weekends Ms Suter mentioned, simply because it's when other winter sports are having their district/region tournaments.

StPickrell wrote:The only correction to Marian's post I'll make is that the policy of *having* to have district/region tournaments on the pre-assigned dates died an unofficial death. (i.e., I won't be sending the VHSL Enforcement Goons, if such creatures exist, out to those ill-behaving districts.)

Why was this? As it stands, what's essentially one tournament is taking up five weekends during prime tournament season. Harming the invitational circuit to such an extent is too great of a price to pay for any one tournament, VHSL or otherwise.

Matt Weiner wrote:Why was this? As it stands, what's essentially one tournament is taking up five weekends during prime tournament season. Harming the invitational circuit to such an extent is too great of a price to pay for any one tournament, VHSL or otherwise.

It's a remnaint of the old "we do it this way for sports" system and a reluctance to disrupt existing regional leagues, etc.

Many districts are holding their tournaments during the week and thus taking out part of problem -- however some districts are not so geographically compact as to make this a possibility. Most regions are so geographically widespread that holding region tournaments during the week is not really a desirable thing.

Just a reminder that the deadline to register for the Cavalier Open II is a week away (Feb. 5). If you are planning on registering, please email me at [email protected] ASAP.

So far, we've got 25-30 teams registered (depending on some VHSL stuff), including Richard Montgomery, Gov School, Dupont Manual, and Charlottesville (Howard is currently a maybe).

If teams are waiting on results from VHSL Sectionals/Regionals to see if they would want to register, please email me about that and we'll see what we can work out.

Thanks, and hope to see many of you on the 12th.

Only four days remain to register for the Cavalier Open, though with 29 teams, I may cap the field at 32.

Here is the current field:
Bassett 1
Benedictine 1
Blake 1
Blue Ridge School 1
Charlottesville 1
Covenant 1
Dorman 2
Dupont Manual 4
J.E.B. Stuart 1
Lancaster 1
Loudon County 1
Mills Godwin 2
Richard Montgomery 3
Maggie Walker Governor's School 3
Walt Whitman High School 1
Warren County High School 3
Woodberry Forest High School 2


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The field for the Cavalier Open is now techincally closed; however, we currently have the difficult number of 37 teams, so I'd be willing to take three more teams to round that out to a nicer number.

Registration will begin at 8:30 in Wilson 402. The team meeting will begin at 9:15, and matches will start at 9:30. Each team will play 6 or 7 rounds. The playoff format has not yet been finalized, but will most likely be a sixteen team single elimination playoff (top three teams from each bracket, one wild card)

The current field is:
Bassett
Benedictine
Blake
Blue Ridge
Charlottesville
Covenant
Dorman (2)
Dupont Manual (5)
JEB Stuart
Lancaster
Loudon County
Madison County (2)
Mills Godwin (2)
Montgomery Blair
Richard Montgomery (3)
Robinson
STAB (2)
St. Christopher's
Maggie Walker Governor's School (3)
Walt Whitman
Warren County (3)
Woodberry Forest (2)

Again, if there are any teams who would like to join to help me round this out, please email me ASAP at [email protected]. Thanks, and see you all Saturday.

morgan