St. Joe's 6th Annual GSAC, December 19th, 2015

[Edward Powers]

Saint Joseph High School is pleased to announce that it will hold its 6th Annual Garden State Academic Competition, a Mirror of GSAC XXIII, on Saturday December 19, 2015.

The Set: The Question Set is authored by our distinguished friends from the Maggie Walker Governor's School in Richmond, Virginia.

Set Distribution: 4/4 Lit; 4/4 Science; 4/4 History; 3/3 RMP; 3/3 Fine Arts; 1/1 Social Science; .5/.5 Geography; .5/.5 Trash.

Fee Structure: $80.00 for the first team; $70.00 for each additional team.

Discounts: $10.00 for each working buzzer system; $20.00 for each moderator; $20.00 for travel of more than 100 miles to SJHS. Minimum payment per team: $40.00.

Registration: We are targeting a registration of 18-36 teams, with a limit of 4 teams per school, ideally hoping for three to six brackets of 6 teams each. HOWEVER, in order to give as many schools as possible a reasonable time to register, we will initially accept the first TWO teams a school wishes to register until Monday, December 7th, after which we will accept the 3rd or even the 4th team you wish to register if there is still room in the field at that time. So, let us know when you register how many teams you wish to bring, and any in excess of two will be placed on the waiting list in the chronological order that you register. At 6PM on December 7th teams will come off the waiting list on a first come, first served basis. As for the tournament itself, we will have round robin preliminaries, then re-bracket during our lunch break and have another round robin for all teams in the afternoon. We hope to have a minimum of 10 matches for all teams, and 11 for the Top 3 teams in each of the two Championship brackets who will play cross-over matches to determine the top 6 teams in the tournament overall. You can reveal your interest by posting here, but in order to officially register, please email me at [email protected]. Just place "SJHS GSAC" in the subject line and then provide your registration information as well as an emergency phone number where coaches or chaperones can be quickly reached if necessary. On the day of the tournament we will run registration from 7:45-8:45 AM and start Round 1 by 9 AM. During registration we will provide a light breakfast of bagels and juices while we finalize preliminary brackets. Also, we have ample parking in the back of our school if parking is a concern, and you can park behind our Main Building and enter the cafeteria in the back, which you cannot miss. Also, if you need an invoice for your school's financial officer, email me and I will send one via return email, or you can request one as you register in person on December 19th.

Payment: This is expected in cash or by check the mourning of the tournament, but if you wish to mail it sooner please make your check payable to Saint Joseph High School and mail it to : Ed Powers, c/o Saint Joseph High School, 145 Plainfield Avenue, Metuchen, New Jersey 08840. You can also place this address in your GPS device or your MapQuest/Google Maps program and find us easily. We look forward to seeing you on the 19th of December---and please, do not be shy about bringing moderators so that our field can be as large and as challenging as possible. And remember---there is a $20.00 discount for each moderator you bring, so please take advantage of this discount!

Current Field---School/Number of Teams/Buzzers/Moderators :

Shady Jawn, DE---1/1/0
East Brunswick, NJ---3/1/1
North Babylon, NY---2/3/0
Kellenberg, NY---2/3/1
Lehigh Valley, PA---1/0/0
Livingston, NJ---2/2/2
Middlesex County---3/2/0
Erehwon, NY---1/1/0
Smithtown West, NY---1/1/0
GOSAT, NY---1/1/0
Mountain Lakes, NJ---2/1/1
Ridgewood, NJ---1/1/0
Jonathan Dayton, NJ---1/1/0

Totals as of December 18th---21/18/5

[Edward Powers]

This tournament is less than 4 weeks away, but so far only 4 schools, representing 6 teams, have registered. So, don't be shy---come join the fun and enjoy the opportunity to face Maggie Walker's 23rd edition of its GSAC Set, a Set that is annually considered one of the year's best question sets.

[Antrobus63]

We're IN 100%, Ed! See you soon.

[Edward Powers]

This tournament is only 2 weeks away and there is still plenty of room for more schools to participate. So, come join the fun!

[Edward Powers]

East Brunswick's 3rd team has been taken off the waiting list, bringing our field to 14 teams. We certainly have room for more. Where are all of our friends from the region? We would love to see at least 4-10 more teams to make this a more challenging tournament. So please come and enjoy the fun!

[Edward Powers]

The registration of Mountain Lakes has just brought our field to 18 teams. So for now, registration will be provisionally closed, placing Rigewood on the waiting list, since creating a schedule for 19 teams would be a nightmare. My hope is that at least 4-5 more teams register so that we can have a more challenging field and also have a workable schedule. So please do not hesitate to continue to register and, hopefully, those new registrations will both expand the competition and allow for a reasonable schedule.

[Cody]

A small note: 19 isn't a bad schedule if you want to use it; prelim brackets of 10 and 9 to crossover splitting prelim brackets by 2s (and bottom 1 for the 9 bracket). Everyone gets 10-11 games in 11 rounds.

[Edward Powers]

Thanks Cody---I appreciate your help and creativity.

[Edward Powers]

This tournament is now about 24 hours away, and we have 21 teams from 13 schools currently registered. However there is still time for more teams to register---we would love to have at least 3 more to reach an ideal field of 24. So, if you are interested, please come and join the competition!

[Edward Powers]

We just finished this tournament. In an exciting Championship match, undefeated 9-0 Livingston and the undefeated 9-0 Legends of Tomorrow (from Delaware) were locked in a tense struggle. Going into the final question, Livingston held a 10 point lead, so it was anyone's match, but Livingston A powered toss-up # 20 to seal a 340-295 Championship victory. In the 3rd and 4th place match, Lehigh Valley defeated East Brunswick A, 340-230. The top two scorers after the Preliminary Rounds, Alex Schmidt of Lehigh Valley and Eric Kilgore of GOSAT were tied at 118.75 ppg, but Alex had superior power numbers and fewer negs, so Alex finished first using these two criteria as tie-breakers.

Statistics for the tournament might be delayed; our statisticians ran into a problem when trying to upload the tournament data and they could not discover their error. Suffice it to say that we will do our best to get the stats posted ASAP.

By the way: Middlesex County Academy of NJ left 2 buzzers systems here at SJHS. We are currently closed for the Christmas holidays until January 5th, but if the Coach of MCA contacts me via email, we can work out an earlier time when the buzzers can be picked up.

[The Polebarn Hotel]

When are we going to see stats for this tournament?

[The Polebarn Hotel]

I hate to beat a dead horse, but will stats ever be posted for this tournament? And if not, is it unreasonable to want an explanation for why the uploading of those stats has been impossible? I would drop it if it hadn't been a month with no explanation, and I would like to actually see the results from this tournament.