The Quizbowl Resource Center

Posting this up here so everyone has an idea of where and when tournaments in Michigan will be this year. So far I know of White Cloud's annual tournament being on October 17th. U of M's Autumn Classic is typically the first weekend in December. We will be hosting our annual Novice Tournament and a middle school tournament some time in either October or November.

September 12 (ACT)
September 19
September 26

October 3 -
October 10 (SAT)- 5th Annual DCC Novice Tournament (Novi, MI- Questions TBD)
October 17 - Jan Rademacher Memorial Tournament (White Cloud, MI- Olympia Questions)
DCC Fall Middle School Tournament (Novi, MI NAQT MS-15)
October 24 (ACT) -
October 31 -

November 7 (SAT) -
November 14 -
November 15 (Sunday)-Nelly Bly Memorial Tournament (East Lansing, MI- NAQT-150)
November 21 - National History Bee and Bowl (Ann Arbor, MI)
November 28 (Thanksgiving Weekend)

December 5 - University of Michigan's Autumn Classic (Ann Arbor, MI- NAQT-152)
Swim 'N Win Invitational (Berrien Springs, MI-NAQT IS-148)
December 12 (ACT) -
December 19
December 26 (Christmas/New Year's Weekend)

January 2
January 9 -
January 16 -
January 23 (SAT) - Detroit Country Day Middle School Tournament (Beverly Hills, MI- NAQT-MS-16)
January 30

February 6 (ACT)
February 13 - 13th Annual Rube Goldberg (East Lansing, MI)
February 20 - Blessed Angela Quiz Tournament (Livonia, MI- NAQT-MS-17)
February 27

March 5 - Michigan National History Bowl State Championship (Ann Arbor, MI)
March 12- NAQT Middle School State Championship (Novi, MI- NAQT MS-18)
March 19 - NAQT State Championship (East Lansing, MI - NAQT IS-156)
March 26 (Easter) -

April 2
April 9 (ACT)
April 16 -
April 23 -
April 30 - NAQT Small School National Championship Tournament (SSNCT), Chicago, IL

May 7 (SAT) - NAQT Middle School National Championship Tournament (MSNCT), Atlanta, GA
May 14 - DCC Spring Invitational (Novi, MI NAQT-SSNCT)
May 21
May 28 - NAQT High School National Championship Tournament (HSNCT), Dallas, TX

June 4 (SAT) - PACE National Scholastic Championship (NSC), Chicago, IL

RED: Middle School Event
BLUE: NAQT Event
GREEN: Non-NAQT Event
BLACK: Nationals

Does anyone from MSU know if you guys are planning on hosting a fall tournament again? We'd like to avoid any scheduling conflicts.

Confirming that we do plan on hosting Autumn Classic on December 5th this year.

CGismondiCC wrote:Does anyone from MSU know if you guys are planning on hosting a fall tournament again? We'd like to avoid any scheduling conflicts.

Michigan State is tentatively planning on hosting a high school tournament on November 14.

We were just able to confirm the 14th for a Catholic League Fall Kickoff Tournament.It's legitimately the only day we can host this tournament, and I'd rather not have us competing to recruit teams.

DCC will be hosting our annual Novice Tournament on Saturday, October 10th.

Hey U of M guys,

What question set are you planning on using for Autumn Classic?

We'll be using IS-152!

Kenyon College will be hosting a mirror of CALI on 10/31. Michigan teams are very much welcome and encouraged to come — though the drive is relatively long, we're offering substantial distance discounts. Feel free to contact us if you have questions.

The National History Bee and Bowl will be hosting the 2015 Michigan History Bee and Bowl at the University of Michigan on Saturday, November 21st!

Will either U of M or MSU be putting in a bid for NAQT States this year?

CGismondiCC wrote:Will either U of M or MSU be putting in a bid for NAQT States this year?

My current understanding is that MSU will be putting in the bid

I'm not sure if any Yoopers read this board, but Northern Michigan University's quiz bowl team has started running high school tournaments. I'll make sure to announce them here so they can be added to the calendar (we just had one on December 5th--Escanaba finished 9-0 to take the trophy). We will probably run a spring tournament of some kind--either high school or intercollegiate.

(And if you'd like to become a temporary Yooper (and keep playing quiz bowl in college), keep NMU's team in mind! It's a friendly, very active group with about 12 students coming to weekly, sometimes twice-weekly, practices. We travel to at least one intercollegiate tournament per semester (ACF Fall at Northwestern this past November, SCT at Minneapolis this coming February) and qualified for the ICT in 2014. We'd love to have you join us! For more information, just email the team at [email protected].)

mjoy wrote:I'm not sure if any Yoopers read this board, but Northern Michigan University's quiz bowl team has started running high school tournaments. I'll make sure to announce them here so they can be added to the calendar (we just had one on December 5th--Escanaba finished 9-0 to take the trophy). We will probably run a spring tournament of some kind--either high school or intercollegiate.

(And if you'd like to become a temporary Yooper (and keep playing quiz bowl in college), keep NMU's team in mind! It's a friendly, very active group with about 12 students coming to weekly, sometimes twice-weekly, practices. We travel to at least one intercollegiate tournament per semester (ACF Fall at Northwestern this past November, SCT at Minneapolis this coming February) and qualified for the ICT in 2014. We'd love to have you join us! For more information, just email the team at [email protected].)

I just want to say how happy I am that NMU's program is proving to not only be stable and active, but also proactive in spreading quiz bowl in one of the more geographically disadvantageous to quiz bowl places I can think of. I don't know what the state of quiz bowl was previously like in the UP, but if you're successfully doing outreach and getting teams to come quite a distance, maybe you can share some of your insights with us.

EDIT: added missing words

Habitat_Against_Humanity wrote:I just want to say how happy I am that NMU's program is proving to not only be stable and active, but also proactive in spreading quiz bowl in one of the more geographically disadvantageous to quiz bowl places I can think of. I don't know what the state of quiz bowl was previously like in the UP, but if you're successfully doing outreach and getting teams to come quite a distance, maybe you can share some of your insights with us.

Thanks! We've been fortunate, these past 6+ years, to have a yearly infusion of 2-4 enthusiastic and dedicated students, eager to practice, play, and spread the word about quiz bowl. We've also been fortunate to have a number of administrators that support the team financially (because it's 7 hours from Marquette, Michigan to the nearest major center of quiz bowl life, we generally have to have two hotel nights per trip--or else I'm driving a van at 2 am on a Sunday morning through the cold, dark UP night). And they've also allowed me to count my work with the team as the major element in my service portfolio when I've gone up for tenure and promotion, which I appreciate.

College quiz bowl in the UP prior to our formation was nonexistent (at least for a couple of decades--there was a College Bowl team back in the days of College Bowl). High school quiz bowl in the UP has been pretty active--around 40 teams or so, in a very sparsely populated area. But it has been almost exclusively the domain of WNMU's "High School Bowl" program, which has a single-elimination format. So, half the teams lose their first game in the fall and then have little incentive to stay active. That's why we've started to run tournaments. NAQT supplied us contact information for the coaches, and we pretty quickly filled up fields of 12 each time, with some of the schools coming from as far as two hours away. It's been very gratifying--the high school students seemed to relish the opportunity to play (and even gave us an enthusiastic round of applause at the conclusion of both tournaments). We've kept entry fees pretty low, probably lower than average ($50 per team), in an effort to make the tournaments as accessible as possible, and because the public schools in the UP just don't have a lot of money.

Gogebic Community College also runs a tournament most years (I think) and Michigan Tech is hoping to run one in the spring, as well. And Tech also has a fairly-new collegiate quiz bowl team itself, which we're happy about--it means we can now enjoy a friendly UP rivalry.

That's probably a longer answer than you were seeking!

rxailagan wrote:

CGismondiCC wrote:Will either U of M or MSU be putting in a bid for NAQT States this year?

My current understanding is that MSU will be putting in the bid

Confirm that Michigan State will be hosting our championship on March 19th.

I see that Northern Michigan University held an Upper Peninsula Fall Quiz Bowl Championship on December 5, 2015, with Escanaba taking first place, and Houghton, Kingsford A, and Negaunee also placing in the NAQT Nationals qualification range.

I'm going to assume this was a first-time tournament, or at least, the first time run as an NAQT tournament, as I don't recall seeing any other Upper Peninsula tournaments on the NAQT Results pages.

It's good to see "good quiz bowl" expanding into relatively uncharted areas.

Also, based on a very quick search for other tournaments which used the packet set IS-149A, Siouxper Bowl XII did, and the first place team in that tournament, Brookings, had a PP20TH of 253.4, and the second place team there, Bishop Heelan A (out of Sioux Falls) had a PP20TH of 313.1, while Escanaba's PP20TH on that packet was 391.1.

Now, obviously, that doesn't automatically mean that Escanaba is 80 points better than Bishop Heelan A, but at least that Escanaba would be at a comparable level to Heelan A or Brookings.

Merged this into the existing Michigan thread; look up a few posts for commentary about the expansion of quizbowl in the Upper Peninsula. --Mgmt.

edit: that's fine, thanks for merging it. I should have looked a bit further before starting a new thread.

mjoy wrote:I'm not sure if any Yoopers read this board, but Northern Michigan University's quiz bowl team has started running high school tournaments. I'll make sure to announce them here so they can be added to the calendar (we just had one on December 5th--Escanaba finished 9-0 to take the trophy). We will probably run a spring tournament of some kind--either high school or intercollegiate.

(And if you'd like to become a temporary Yooper (and keep playing quiz bowl in college), keep NMU's team in mind! It's a friendly, very active group with about 12 students coming to weekly, sometimes twice-weekly, practices. We travel to at least one intercollegiate tournament per semester (ACF Fall at Northwestern this past November, SCT at Minneapolis this coming February) and qualified for the ICT in 2014. We'd love to have you join us! For more information, just email the team at [email protected].)

It's been a while, obviously, but Hancock was a part of the 2001 NAQT HSNCT, with Hancock A finishing 20th out of 40 teams, and Hancock B taking 39th

https://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament-t ... nt_id=1148

Also, I'm going to assume that Hancock and/or Houghton have competed various times at the Michigan State University Honors College Tournament (before and after it switched over to pyramidal questions), and probably way back in the days of the Dan DeGrow tournament held at St. Clair Community College in Port Huron.

mjoy wrote:

Habitat_Against_Humanity wrote:High school quiz bowl in the UP has been pretty active--around 40 teams or so, in a very sparsely populated area. But it has been almost exclusively the domain of WNMU's "High School Bowl" program, which has a single-elimination format. So, half the teams lose their first game in the fall and then have little incentive to stay active. That's why we've started to run tournaments.

That's the good and bad of having TV tournaments. Having the "Quiz Central"/"High School Bowl"/"Quizbusters" thing is great for garnering exposure to quiz bowl, but the single-elim format is not great for creating an sustainable competitive environment beyond a certain school getting a strong run of "smart kids" and winning the TV tournament a bunch of times.

That's probably a longer answer than you were seeking!

You've got to work awfully hard to give a "TL'DNR" reponse on these boards.

mjoy wrote: That's the good and bad of having TV tournaments. Having the "Quiz Central"/"High School Bowl"/"Quizbusters" thing is great for garnering exposure to quiz bowl, but the single-elim format is not great for creating an sustainable competitive environment beyond a certain school getting a strong run of "smart kids" and winning the TV tournament a bunch of times.

I would entirely agree. I give full credit to Quiz Central as the catalyst to us learning about NAQT format and going to HSNCT. However, it's exactly why I'm thinking (read: thinking) about holding an invitational next year on a mirrored set (SCOP Novice or something similar) and making a major recruitment push, especially within my league: not every school that does QC is lucky enough to have a team that can win the Grand Championship. As a matter of fact, half of the schools that play QC don't win a single game, simply because of the format. My league has been using -like questions (Patrick's Press) for years, so these teams haven't had an experience with pyramidal questions outside of Quiz Central. I think that if these teams can have a novice-ish tournament experience without having the demoralizing experience of losing 665-0 to Detroit Catholic Central A (our B team had hard feelings about that one for weeks), they might be more inclined to (a) improve and (b) attend more and harder tournaments.

EDIT: The hard feelings were not at DCC A; rather, they were at SHA A for not warning SHA B about just how good (read: they won PACE last year) DCC A is. SHA B had never played non-novice competition before.

Personally, I've been really into Michigan high school quiz bowl outreach and thought about this at the beginning of the year, but would people be interested in the creation of a Michigan Quiz Bowl Association promoting good quiz bowl and outreach? PACE just contacted me about it and I wouldn't mind helping to create one.

Completely unrelated to my last post but the National History Bowl will be hosting the Michigan State Championships at Skyline High School in Ann Arbor, MI on Saturday, March 5th. More information here: http://www.historybowl.com/michigan-sta ... pionships/

rxailagan wrote:Personally, I've been really into Michigan high school quiz bowl outreach and thought about this at the beginning of the year, but would people be interested in the creation of a Michigan Quiz Bowl Association promoting good quiz bowl and outreach? PACE just contacted me about it and I wouldn't mind helping to create one.

Not currently in Michigan, but there's a small chance I'll be moving back there starting in the Fall. I'd be interested in helping out if I'm there (or even if I'm not, but that's probably less effective).

dhumphreys17 wrote: EDIT: The hard feelings were not at DCC A; rather, they were at SHA A for not warning SHA B about just how good (read: they won PACE last year) DCC A is. SHA B had never played non-novice competition before.

Devin,

I'm glad to hear there are no hard feelings between our two schools. We are actually glad to see a new Catholic school participating in good quiz bowl tournaments.

rxailagan wrote:Personally, I've been really into Michigan high school quiz bowl outreach and thought about this at the beginning of the year, but would people be interested in the creation of a Michigan Quiz Bowl Association promoting good quiz bowl and outreach? PACE just contacted me about it and I wouldn't mind helping to create one.

Roxanne,

Count the DCC coaches in for joining/supporting any Michigan Quiz Bowl Association. Just let us know if there's anything you need. It's very encouraging to see all this discussion happening about Michigan quiz bowl.

rxailagan wrote:Personally, I've been really into Michigan high school quiz bowl outreach and thought about this at the beginning of the year, but would people be interested in the creation of a Michigan Quiz Bowl Association promoting good quiz bowl and outreach? PACE just contacted me about it and I wouldn't mind helping to create one.

Echoing the sentiments of Mr. Gismondi, the team at SHA would very much be in favor of this. In terms of outreach, we're working on converting our league to good quizbowl, and I'm hoping we can increase retention among central-Michigan schools.

I'm really happy to see interest in this! Sid Dogra and I have been brainstorming some ideas that we plan on discussing more after our collegiate tournament next week.

I have a few Michigan Quiz Bowl questions. Will MSU be hosting a tournament in January?

Also does anyone have Model UN conflicts? There are two big Model UN events in Michigan. One is the first weekend of December which is the same weekend as the UM, Berrien Springs and Marquette tournaments. The second Model UN weekend will be March 19 which is the same as the NAQT State Championship at MSU. I also have FIRST Robotics conflicts with Quiz Bowl in March and April. Just wondering if anyone else has these problems. A number of my Quiz Bowl kids are in Model UN.

I would be happy to help with the Michigan Quiz Bowl Association.

Thanks,

Failorjo wrote:I have a few Michigan Quiz Bowl questions. Will MSU be hosting a tournament in January?

Also does anyone have Model UN conflicts? There are two big Model UN events in Michigan. One is the first weekend of December which is the same weekend as the UM, Berrien Springs and Marquette tournaments. The second Model UN weekend will be March 19 which is the same as the NAQT State Championship at MSU. I also have FIRST Robotics conflicts with Quiz Bowl in March and April. Just wondering if anyone else has these problems. A number of my Quiz Bowl kids are in Model UN.

I would be happy to help with the Michigan Quiz Bowl Association.

Thanks,

Last I heard they were hosting Rube Goldberg on February 13th. We've hosted Autumn Classic the first weekend of December for years, but we'd consider moving it if there are continued conflicts. It was really odd how 3 NAQT Michigan tournaments ended up being on the same day, so hopefully this association could help that.

The UAIS (Sterling Heights) is looking to host our now annual spring tournament on Saturday, May 14th. Just waiting on NAQT confirmation.

I'd also be up to participate in any state-wide quiz bowl discussions.

Will U of M-Dearborn be hosting the Maize and Blue High School Classic again, and if so, when?

To the best of our knowledge, UM-Dearborn does not plan to host this spring.

Sacred Heart attended the MSU Honors College State Championship and tied for 5th place in the Class C/D bracket. We lost a close one to UAIS and a less close one to Bad Axe, knocking us out of the tournament. Now, I know that many people have concerns about the Auk and KMO's question quality, but I don't think anyone can deny that the Honors College does a good job of outreach to teams that are practically invisible on the circuit. Here are some examples:

In Class A, although TC Central and Okemos are both regular participants, Flushing won the bracket, and they haven't participated in anything besides Quiz Central since 2009.

In Class B, although DCD is a circuit regular, Houghton is only starting to get active on the circuit, and there is nothing on Three Rivers in either the NAQT or HSQB databases.

In Class C/D, although UAIS (who beat us) is a regular, Bad Axe (who beat us worse) has nothing in NAQT or HSQB, and Manistee Catholic hasn't done anything outside of league play or Quiz Central that's recorded.

My point is that the Honors College has successfully gotten teams to come to their tournaments who may not even know about the circuit. By my count, there are five schools that took top-3 in their class that haven't shown up to an invitational tournament, and I don't think that can be written off as "those teams are just better at KMO". I propose the following for the proposed MQBA: that after its formation (whenever that may be), we use the most up-to-date Honors College States results available to recruit high-quality, non-circuit teams onto the circuit.

EDIT: After reading an earlier post, I found it fitting to announce that we were able to successfully bring our league into the light! The MSAC will be using NAQT questions starting next year.

I'd like to try to convince the MSU Honors College to switch back to HSAPQ for their state championship series.

Cheynem wrote:I'd like to try to convince the MSU Honors College to switch back to HSAPQ for their state championship series.

Funny you mention that Mike. I am going to schedule a meeting with the MSU Honors College today to talk to them about that. I suggested that we (The MSU team) rights the questions for next year's tournament in a 20/20 pyramidal set. I have already got members of the MSU team to agree to help me write this set and I will be writing and editing. We have a preliminary distribution that is pretty much ACF with a little more current events.

Do you have any thoughts on this? I would really appreciate your help here. I'd happily let you help me edit or coordinate this effort. I enjoyed playing the HSAPQ set in 2014, but the Honors College is a little strange with their traditions, so it could be difficult to switch. I will try to convince them that they don't need 20 packets first of all.

I'll talk to you a little more once you've had your meeting to see what the Honors College wants (and I'd be happy to give them my contact information to represent HSAPQ). What might be a possibility if this makes it more palatable to the Honors College is that HSAPQ would provide the majority of questions, while the MSU team could write some of the expanded current events, popular culture (is that even in this set), or things such as Michigan history.

Remember that, for the Honors College, it's primarily a soft recruiting event. They see teams waiting on byes as a positive, since it gives them time to explore campus, Grand River, etc. I'd encourage you to plan for that in any proposal you make - they don't really care where questions come from, but changing the location out of the Union or major format changes will be very challenging to get them to agree to.

Steeve Ho You Fat wrote:Remember that, for the Honors College, it's primarily a soft recruiting event. They see teams waiting on byes as a positive, since it gives them time to explore campus, Grand River, etc. I'd encourage you to plan for that in any proposal you make - they don't really care where questions come from, but changing the location out of the Union or major format changes will be very challenging to get them to agree to.

Thanks Joe. I was going to talk to you about this at ACF Nats but I didn't have a chance. You were the President of MSU Quizbowl the last time the tournament questions was good so I definitely appreciate your input.

You are 100% correct. I was trying to find a way to reduce the number of packets they need down from 22 to like 15 because the best teams only hear like 7 packets I believe. I will not suggest them doing away with the Union and double elimination format but 22 packets is just too many. That said, I don't know a way to fix the problem because they only run 6 rooms at once. The one format change I want them to agree to is 30 point bonuses because those are easier for us to write, and a 20/20 packets takes about 30 minutes which is what their clocks run to.

Do any Michigan coaches have any opinions here?

Progcon wrote:

Steeve Ho You Fat wrote:Remember that, for the Honors College, it's primarily a soft recruiting event. They see teams waiting on byes as a positive, since it gives them time to explore campus, Grand River, etc. I'd encourage you to plan for that in any proposal you make - they don't really care where questions come from, but changing the location out of the Union or major format changes will be very challenging to get them to agree to.

Thanks Joe. I was going to talk to you about this at ACF Nats but I didn't have a chance. You were the President of MSU Quizbowl the last time the tournament questions was good so I definitely appreciate your input.

You are 100% correct. I was trying to find a way to reduce the number of packets they need down from 22 to like 15 because the best teams only hear like 7 packets I believe. I will not suggest them doing away with the Union and double elimination format but 22 packets is just too many. That said, I don't know a way to fix the problem because they only run 6 rooms at once. The one format change I want them to agree to is 30 point bonuses because those are easier for us to write, and a 20/20 packets takes about 30 minutes which is what their clocks run to.

Do any Michigan coaches have any opinions here?

I'm not a coach de jure, but I'd note that it's hypothetically possible for a team to hear 10 packets; if a squad loses its first-round game and gets demoted to the losers' bracket, they'd hear Winners' Round 1 packet followed by Losers' Rounds 1-7, then up to 2 finals packets against the winner of the winners' bracket. This is close to what happened to Bad Axe (they heard 8 packets, by my count).

The issue of packet set size is one that has been causing me to scratch my head for the past 90 minutes. I would advise that if more rooms were utilized, the problem would be lessened, but the inherent problem that pops up as a result is that more rooms would need to be utilized. I'm still thinking, and a lot of issues could be solved by establishing a fixed field cap. I'd say that keeping the Union and double-elimination is reasonable if a field cap and a switch to good questions are proposed as changes. Then the room issue would need to be discussed. That's my take.

dhumphreys17 wrote:In Class C/D ... Bad Axe (who beat us worse) has nothing in NAQT

Fixed.

bird bird bird bird bird wrote:

dhumphreys17 wrote:In Class C/D ... Bad Axe (who beat us worse) has nothing in NAQT

Fixed.

Well then! That's encouraging. I hope they come to a circuit invitational or two next year as well.