Tournaments Run by College Teams

Trevkeeper · Post by **Trevkeeper** » Fri May 12, 2006 7:50 pm

How many college-run tournaments does you or your team attend each year? Are they all sponsored by the same colleges, or multiple colleges? In general, are they of better quality (question quality, efficiently ran, overall experience, etc.) than tournaments run by high schools? Do you have to travel a few hours to get to these tournaments?

I'm interested to see how things are in other regions. We went to three tournaments at colleges this year. Only one was rather close (Northwestern) while the other two (Illinois and WashU) took a couple hours of driving to get to. However, they were probably the best tournaments we went to all year (though, Northwestern is only one of the two NAQT events in the area, so that helps).

Also, I'm curious to see the extent of college involvement in the high school game. The three colleges I mentioned are probably the closest to us with active quiz bowl teams (Save for the University of Chicago, and they would probably run a great high school tournament if they had one).

dschafer · Post by **dschafer** » Fri May 12, 2006 8:04 pm

TJ this year went to 3 UVa tournaments (including NAQT States, run by UVa), 2 UMD tournaments, and were planning to go to Duke (until its cancellation). We floated for a very brief time the idea of attending Carnegie Mellon's tournament, and were seriously considering attending MIT, but both of those tournaments used NAQT packets which were also used at local tournaments, so we attended the local ones instead.

I have found UVa's and UMD's tournaments to be extremely well run, but the high school run tournaments in this area are also of extremely high quality. I don't usually notice much of a difference in quality.

AndyShootsAndyScores · Fri May 12, 2006 8:06 pm

We attended UTC Fall this year and were planning on going to the Spring one, but scheduling conflicts intervened.

Byko · Post by **Byko** » Fri May 12, 2006 9:21 pm

I think it often depends on the area. In some areas, the college teams that run high school tournaments run them VERY well. In other areas, they see the high school tournaments as simply ways to get money, so an emphasis on running a good tournament is not at the forefront of their minds, so logistics and organization (among other things) are lacking. So I think it's really hard to make a judgment call one way or the other on college-run tournaments; I know some people feel that they are universally not as well run as high school tournaments (and perhaps that's the case in some areas of the country), but I think it probably comes down more to the program's emphasis as well as how much the tournament director cares about the high school game.

unnecessarily hot · Post by **unnecessarily hot** » Sat May 13, 2006 6:41 pm

Here in Southern California, at least in my short experience, attending college tournaments is the norm. In two years, my team has only attended one high school hosted tournament.

Colleges such as UCLA, CalTech, UC Irvine, and USC usually host the tournaments using NAQT questions. The tournament directors that I've seen, especially from UCLA since they host a couple a year, have cared a lot about putting on good tournaments. A good lot of them (I think) are former high school players from the area which probably contributes to that.

Matthew D · Post by **Matthew D** » Sat May 13, 2006 7:34 pm

We attended Snead State CC's tournament and we are planning on attending that one, UTC, and I think that Northeast Alabama Community College is holding one next year also.
Snead's had a bit of trouble due to the fact that a team was late and they waited on them UTC's usually runs well

Stained Diviner · Post by **Stained Diviner** » Sat May 13, 2006 10:40 pm

A rule of thumb I used to have was that college tournaments had better questions and high school tournaments had better logistics. The three college tournaments we went to this year, however, were very well run. I'll have to devise a new theory.

DrakeRQB · Post by **DrakeRQB** » Sun May 14, 2006 11:35 am

We went to North Carolina and N.C. State this year. Both were fairly well-run, though I'd have to give the edge to State this year just because the questions were more reasonable. I think Carolina is looking to adjust the difficulty for next year.

For next year, I imagine we'll do both again, plus we're eyeing Vanderbilt and we'll probably do any Duke tournaments that actually make.