Morristown-Beard Fall Invitational, Morristown, NJ

[Schietroma10]

Hello All!

It is with great pleasure that I am able to announce the first annual Morristown-Beard Fall Invitational! My name is Timothy Schietroma and I am a Junior at MBS, as well as entering my second year as President of Quiz Bowl. This tournament comes at a very exciting time, when the rebuilding of our program is in full swing. For those who don’t know much about us, Morristown-Beard is an independent school in Morristown, New Jersey. Our beautiful campus sits on 22 acres just minutes from the heart of Morristown. It is with our unique campus that we hope to create a special tournament. To learn more about us, please visit www.mbs.net.

The tournament will be taking place on Sunday, November 10, with registration beginning at 8:00am and gameplay at 8:30am. Our tournament is also a qualifier for the PACE National Scholastic Championship taking place on the weekend of June 6-7 at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare outside of Chicago This means that the top 10% of teams competing in our event will be eligible to qualify for the National Scholastic Championship. We will be using the IS-187A question set. Moreover, we will use standard timing rules with 20 tossups and no timed halves. There will not be computational math bonuses, nor computational math tossups. Live stats will be posted on neg5.org during the tournament.

As transportation is very important when planning, allow us to tell you just a few of the ways you can easily access our campus. Located near both I-287, and I-80, as well as SR-10, our campus is easily accessible by car, with plenty of parking on campus, as well as overflow parking right next door in the astonishing Frelinghuysen Arboretum. In addition, the Morristown Train Station is just a 5 minute car ride from campus, where there are also various bus stops. Finally due to our proximity to Morristown, car services like Lyft or Uber are always just a tap away. Our address is 70 Whippany Road, Morristown, New Jersey. There will be volunteers to help you navigate the campus.

For those teams who may be coming from out of town, there are a multitude of lodging options in the area, both luxury and affordable, and we would be more than happy to help you find the best option for you. For more information please contact the Tournament Director.

At Morristown-Beard we believe in giving back to the community, which is why throughout the day, we will have various clubs from our school as well as organizations from the greater community, holding fundraisers and information sessions to support their various causes. If you would like to participate in this way, and support a cause you believe in or for more information please contact the Tournament Director, all contact information will be listed below.

At the moment, we have a cap of 32 teams. We also will have lower registration fees than are traditionally seen, with the prices being listed below:

$50 per team
$40 per additional team
-$10 per working buzzer system
$20 minimum fee for a team

For payment, please bring cash, or check made out to Morristown-Beard School on the day of the tournament. Other payment options can be arranged, but only if contacted before the tournament.

For Lunch there are a variety of options within the immediate area such as Panera, Smashburger, Burger King, and Qdoba. In addition to this, we will be selling Pizza, as well as other food which will be announced closer to competition.

You can register at https://www.naqt.com/registration/field ... t_id=10666

We hope that you can join us this November for our first ever Morristown-Beard Fall Invitational!

Sincerely,
Timothy Schietroma
Tournament Director
[email protected]

[Guybo]

It's great that you guys want to host a tournament in NJ! Welcome to the fray! We hope to be able to attend your tournament.

May I, however, suggest that you pick another weekend? There is an established regional tournament at Kellenberg scheduled that weekend and it's always very popular with NY and NJ schools... and it would be a shame to have to choose between those tournaments. We do are best to not try and have tournaments compete against one another. December is very wide open and perhaps picking a weekend then would be good... or maybe January? Either way, look at the regional schedule and decide among your team and school. Your call but I think it would be better for you and other teams.

Good luck!

[jonpin]

While it is the same weekend as Kellenberg, I notice this tournament is on Sunday, rather than Saturday (and it's on a separate set), so it's not necessarily impossible for teams to do both. A more pressing concern might be that it's the weekend of the NJEA convention, and most public schools in the state are closed the Thursday-Friday beforehand (and that might make it more difficult to get a school trip that weekend).

[Schietroma10]

Thank you to everyone who registered! Our field is now closed at 32 teams. Additional information as well as brackets will be sent out next week. Please reach out with any questions.

Timothy Schietroma
[email protected]

[jonpin]

Stats were kept on Neg5 and are available here. Some games are assigned to the wrong round, and some stats are incorrect; I hope some of that gets cleaned up before they send the data to NAQT, but I don't know if that will be possible without a paper record. Most of the moderators I saw (and possibly the scorekeepers) were new to quiz bowl, which made things a bit of a struggle.
The tournament logistics as a whole were poor, with long delays and playoffs being a 16-team single-elimination playoff bracket.

To the best of my ability to figure it out, here are the results for the top 8 teams in the playoffs:
Quarterfinals
East Brunswick A def Bergen Academies A
Middlesex Academy B def Millburn
Livingston A def BT Teterboro
Ridgewood A def Morristown-Beard A

Semifinals
East Brunswick A def Middlesex Academy B
Livingston A def Ridgewood A
Cons: Millburn def Bergen Academies A
Cons: BT Teterboro def Morristown-Beard A

Finals
1st: East Brunswick A def Livingston A
3rd: Ridgewood A def Middlesex Academy B
5th: BT Teterboro def Millburn
7th: Bergen Academies A def Morristown-Beard A