The Quizbowl Resource Center

This is our first announcement for the CENTENNIAL HIGH SCHOOL TOURNAMENT in Ellicott City, Maryland to be held on Sunday, November 5, 2017 at 8:30 AM (one day after the SATs).

For our 13th annual tournament, we will be using NAQT IS-171A set. ​​​​​​This question set is an INTRODUCTORY set written to accommodate new players, so this tournament will be ideal for teams new to quiz bowl or new members of established teams. These questions can also help to hone rapid buzzing skills for more experienced teams and players.

We have received Gold Certification from PACE and we are using an NAQT set.
TRANSLATION: 20% of the TOTAL high school teams will be eligible from the varsity side for the PACE Nationals in Reston, VA. Based on last year (field of 66 JV + varsity), this will mean 13 teams (all derived from the upper "varsity" bracket). 15% of the total number of high school teams will be eligible for the NAQT Nationals (HSNCT) in Atlanta, GA. Based on last year (field of 66), we anticipate 10 teams (all derived from the upper "varsity" bracket.

Everyone is invited and encouraged to attend, even the most experienced teams. Like last year, we are planning to have a novice field composed of teams with 9th and 10th graders OR teams of ANY AGE less experienced to Quizbowl and a varsity field composed of experienced teams. The novice field will have its own trophies but will not be eligible for the NAQT and PACE championship tournaments. Obviously teams can elect to participate in the varsity regardless of players' age and experience. We are using this format in order to avoid the 660 to 10 scores in mismatched contests that are frustrating for all involved.

As we did last year we will group the MIDDLE SCHOOL teams into their own bracket or parallel competition! Elementary Teams are welcome to participate and we may have a separate division for them if enough elementary school teams sign up!

LAST YEAR, 102 TEAMS SIGNED UP AND WE TURNED AWAY THE LATE REQUESTERS. We cannot expand beyond that number due to the physical size of the school.

Like last year, we are expecting all teams to stay for the rounds after lunch, and we will require reregistration at lunch to verify afternoon participation.

Registration will begin at 8 a.m., and we will provide our traditional breakfast banquet. For those teams wishing to stay on sitefor lunch, pizza will be sold at registration.

We will have a coaches/parents' round during lunch with fossils/minerals as prizes, the proceeds of which will be donated to the Howard County Special Olympics.

The cost for teams participating in the tournament is $75 for the first team and $70 for each extra team from the same school. Teams can bring a working buzzer for a $10 discount (but only one buzzer set per team entered).



REGISTER AT THIS LINK: https://goo.gl/forms/9dDOo0Tfc2gR6mWd2

However, for questions (not registration), e-mail [email protected]. Feel free to share this announcement with other teams that might be interested in attending. Please note the new email address. We are no longer using [email protected]

Eric and Sara Seifter, and John Heslin Coaches, Centennial High School It's Academic

We are now ready for you to register.
Please use this link:

https://goo.gl/forms/9dDOo0Tfc2gR6mWd2

Thank you.
Eric and Sara Seifter
John Heslin
Coaches Centennial High School

LIST OF TEAMS :

VARSITY (COMPETITIVE) TEAMS
Georgetown Day School - 2
Gunston School - 1
Joppatowne - 1
Manheim Township - 2
Montgomery Blair - 3
Norfolk Academic Guild - 2
Richard Montgomery - 2
Robinson - 2
Severna Park - 1
Southern Fulton - 1
St. Anselm's - 2
Thomas Jefferson - 6
Wilmington Charter - 3
Winston Churchill - 1
TOTAL: 29 TEAMS

NOVICE (REGULAR) TEAMS
Banneker - 1
BASIS Independent McLean - 1
Calvert Hall - 1
Easton - 1
Franklin - 1
Friends School of Baltimore - 1
Hammond - 2
Huntingtown - 1
Joppatowne - 1
Manheim Township - 2
Marriotts Ridge - 1
McDonogh - 2
Montgomery Blair - 1
Mt. Hebron - 2
NKA Homeschool Collective - 1
Oakland Mills - 1
Old Mill - 1
Quince Orchard - 2
Richard Montgomery - 4
River Hill - 1
Severn - 1
Thomas Jefferson - 2
Washington Latin - 1
Wilde Lake - 1
Wilmington Charter - 1
Wilson - 1
TOTAL: 36 TEAMS

MIDDLE SCHOOL
Burleigh Manor - 11
Clarksville Middle - 3
Easton Middle School - 1
Longfellow - 3
NKA Homeschool Collective - 1
Norfolk Academic Guild - 3
Robinson - 1
St. Anselms - 1
St Augustine School - 1
Seven Hills - 1
Washington Latin - 1
TOTAL: 27 TEAMS

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Centennial Elementary - 11
Ilchester Elementary - 1
Manor Woods Elementary - 1
NKA Homeschool Collective - 1
Norfolk Academic Guild - 1
TOTAL: 15 TEAMS

GRAND TOTAL: 107 TEAMS

WAIT LIST:
NOVICE DIVISION
Southern Fulton requests transfer to Novice if feasible - 1

We need one more team for Varsity (competitive).

With 5 weeks to go, all the slots have been filled.
We are creating a Wait List for each division. In prior years, 4 to 5 teams have come off the Wait List due to cancellations.
We are planning to combine the Middle School and Elementary teams into one division.

Edit: see thread regarding VHSL and NAQT. Is there any possibility that Centennial could change to another A-set as a sizeable number of teams registered for this tournament are part of VHSL?

It is way too late for us to change sets. We will use NAQT 171A. We are firm on this.
Any team that needs to withdraw from the tournament because of the Virginia League should do so.
We provide the best opportunity for teams to qualify for Nationals: with 66 Varsity + JV teams, we will qualify 10 for HSNCT and 14 for PACE.
Obviously, given this late notification, you should ask NAQT to omit 171A from their conversion or to keep those questions away from your dates.
I understand if you must withdraw. Understand that there are other teams who planned their whole year based on our using that set (such as Mannheim).
However, I do have a call in to NAQT (Chad Kubicek) so we can resolve this issue amicably for all concerned. I was blindsided by this information.

For the record, IS #171A will definitely share questions with our 2017-2018 VHSL-style sets. (It's not possible to produce enough packets to supply the VHSL-style events without using 171A.)

One answer might be to have the 4 students affected by the Virginia League tournament from each school stay away from our tournament. All the other students could still come (for TJ that would be 5 out of 6 teams). We won't distribute the questions as usual to any Virginia school after the tournament to maintain security.

We have an amicable resolution to the VHSL and NAQT 171A overlap. This issue only applies to the local scrimmages and will not even affect some of the 5 Virginia schools involved with us due to using the questions derived from a different A packet. For all playoff rounds and championship rounds, VHSL will use questions derived from regular "non-A" sets, so all the teams will have no conflict there. NAQT will contact each of the Virginia schools to explain this issue.
We hope everyone can still come!

We just lost 4 teams from Langley due to this VHSL and NAQT 171A overlap (see prior posts).
So we are back in business looking for 4 more teams, 1 for varsity, 3 for novice, and any extras for the wait-list.
We have a hard cap now of 108 teams.

With 2 weeks to go, we need one more Varsity team to round out our field of 108 teams.
We are running 5 games in groups of 6 teams in preliminaries and then 5 games in groups of 6 teams in the afternoon. We will use record and PPB to assign teams to the afternoon brackets. We will use total points to break ties within the afternoon grouping.
We will send out roster and pizza order links in the next 24 hours.

FINAL STATS are up but here are the winners of trophies and eligibility for national tournaments.
http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/4722/

VARSITY: 1st place: Montgomery Blair A (advantaged final)
2nd place: Richard Montgomery A
3rd place: Montgomery Blair B
4th place: Thomas Jefferson F

NOVICE: 1st place: Manheim Township C
2nd place: Richard Montgomery D
3rd place McDonogh B
4th place Wilde Lake

MIDDLE/ELEM: 1st place: Norfolk Academic C
2nd place: Longfellow A
3rd place: St. Anselm's C
4th place: Burleigh Manor A

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS ONLY: BEST FINISH Centennial Lane A
2nd BEST FINISH: Norfolk Academic F
3rd BEST FINISH: Centennial Lane B
4th BEST FINISH: Centennial Lane C

HSNCT ELIGIBILITY: Based on record and points per game within each bracket (15% of field)
1. Blair A
2. RM A
3. Blair B
4. TJ F
5. Wilm. Charter B
6. Wilm Charter A
7. TJ C
8. Manheim Township A
9. TJ D
10. TJ E

PACE ELIGIBILITY: All the above for HSNCT plus these teams (20% of field as a Gold tournament with an "A" set)
11. TJ A
12. GDS A
13. Robinson A

There was a major change in our awards for the Novice section. Manheim Township C actually came in first and Richard Montgomery D came in second.
We are in process of switching the trophies and both teams are aware of the change. It may be instructive for other tournament directors to hear how we messed this up.

With 108 teams, we have 3 different war rooms and 3 different teams entering the data. The least experienced data entry team were in Novice. We played 5 preliminary rounds in brackets of 6 for 36 teams in Novice. All the 5-0 teams and the best 4-1 team by PPB advanced to the top bracket of 6 in the afternoon to round-robin 5 games. For the first time in my career, one of the 5-0 teams did not return to play the afternoon rounds. This meant that we were left with a bye when we realized they weren't just late and precluded us from shifting all the remaining teams up one slot. Incidentally, 4 other teams dropped out also from Novice in the afternoon, but we were notified prior to starting. The bye should have been no problem: just enter 0 to 0 and give the team attending the automatic win. But my less experienced data team actually entered numbers for the team that played out the set on their own!
Of course, this resulted in completely discrepant points per game. We re-entered the data for the afternoon fixing the improper bye numbers last night. This revealed our game day error. We were using improper points per game to break the final tie 4-1 in the afternoon rounds. We did have advantaged finals in the Varsity section for a 3 way circle of death for the victory.

In the future, we will be proactive in emphasizing how to deal with impromptu withdrawals during the tournament in terms of the stats. I remain shocked that a 5-0 team walked out on us at lunch. I was flabbergasted when this also happened with one of the teams from a highly ranked school nationally. Teams should understand that they should stay all day when signing up for a quizbowl tournament and that coaches should enforce this policy to the best of their ability.

We are also re-entering all the stats again for the Novice section. My team also managed to check a box that gave every player 20 questions for all 10 games with no ability to edit that to account for subs. So we have to re-enter in a new template in order to get accurate individual stats.