Number of Tournaments per year

[Matthew D]

I was wondering how many tournaments that your teams try to partcipate in during a given year. Right now if everything holds, I have my team going to ~14 over the span of the year.

[Chico the Rainmaker]

Santa Monica went to 4 this past year, including NAQT Nats.

[DrakeRQB]

My varsity team will go to about ten (eight in N.C., one in TN, and one in SC). JV will probably go to six, all in state.

[Sir Thopas]

So far . . . 0. :(

[quizbowllee]

Between my high school and middle school teams, I went to 32 tournaments this past year... I guess that means I win

In all seriousness, though, take them to as many as you can. If they get "burned out," take your "B" or "C" teams. No amount of practice is as useful as actual tournament experience, in my opinion.

[Matthew D]

I feel the same way you do, Lee. I was just curious to see how many tournaments everyone goes to over the year.

[Matthew D]

Addition to the post above, for the most part, mine don't get "burned out" as much as I have parents that get a bit burned out from dropping their kid off every Saturday and I had some that were getting bent only doing 1 time a month..

[Tegan]

Illinois is notorious for having the season limitation rule ... thus it depends on the team.

Most leagues play 4-5 triangulars, modified quads, or quads (a few go as high as 6) + a conference tournament. That eats up anywhere from 5-7 of 18 potential dates, meaning you could theoretically got to 11-13 tournaments.

I try to get my team out to around 8-9 .... we start around the end of October, and go through to about mid February (right before our State Regionals), with breaks for Thanksgiving and two weekends for Christmas.

For the past two years, I have had enough to send an "A" and "B" team to every tournament.

Seperate from the Varsity "A" and "B", my Assistant Coach takes the frosh-soph team to frosh-soph tournaments .... generally about 6-7 a year. They are often on the same dates, so I only occasionally get to see the frosh-soph team play....this year, we finally had enough to have stable frosh-soph "A" and "B" teams.

[sweaver]

All else being equal, more is better.

[David Riley]

My teams play every weekend from Oct 1 through our state series, which includes about 12-15 varsity tournaments and 5-6 frosh/soph. We are not in a league, so we have the opportunity to play more tournaments, and we are still able to stay within the IHSA's 18-date rule.

[dschafer]

By my count, TJ went to 12 "local/regional" tournaments, 2 nationals (NAQT/PACE), our TV tournament (3 tapings), and we were planning to go to Duke.

[jrbarry]

Brookwood (GA) went to 12 varsity and 3 jv tournaments. (3 of the var tournaments also had jv divisions, so JV actually played in 6 events.)

Brookwood then played in NAQT Nationals for our 13th tournament.

We used to do about 18 var tournaments a year. 9/11 changed what our school board will let us do.

[quizbowllee]

We used to do about 18 var tournaments a year. 9/11 changed what our school board will let us do.

Just curious about this statement.... What is the reasoning behind this?

[The Time Keeper]

We used to do about 18 var tournaments a year. 9/11 changed what our school board will let us do.

Just curious about this statement.... What is the reasoning behind this?

I can't personally speak for Mr. Barry but I remember that during the months after 9/11 there were quite a few school boards (many of which tend to be made up of reactionary idiots with no grasp of rational thinking at all) that completely restricted travel for every aspect of their school systems regardless of anything. Many school boards still haven't changed from their post-9/11 "oh god if we let our kids go anywhere the terrorists will get them oh no!!!!!!" line of thought.

[quizbowllee]

We used to do about 18 var tournaments a year. 9/11 changed what our school board will let us do.

Just curious about this statement.... What is the reasoning behind this?

I can't personally speak for Mr. Barry but I remember that during the months after 9/11 there were quite a few school boards (many of which tend to be made up of reactionary idiots with no grasp of rational thinking at all) that completely restricted travel for every aspect of their school systems regardless of anything. Many school boards still haven't changed from their post-9/11 "oh god if we let our kids go anywhere the terrorists will get them oh no!!!!!!" line of thought.

I was just sorta wondering what the reasoning there was... I mean, are they afraid that the students will be killed by terrorists (but only if they go to more than 13 events)? That seems like an absurd notion to me. I was curious as to whether that was the reason, or if there was some other residual effect of 9/11 that had not crossed my mind.

[mentalchocolate]

We do about 10-12 Varsity per year and since our team is not so huge we do only about 7-8"B-Team/JV" tournaments. We also have a league for Varsity, JV, and Freshmen that does 10 games or the equivalent of an extra tournament. About half of the tournaments are out of state.

[Ben Dillon]

In 2003, our diocese wouldn't let us go to nationals in DC. I finally got them to agree by having each family sign a special permission form that said they understood the risk and that the school would not be liable if an incident occurred. In other words, a CYA-because-we're-afraid-of-lawsuits thing.

There was no such problem this year.

[bigtrain]

Many school boards still haven't changed from their post-9/11 "oh god if we let our kids go anywhere the terrorists will get them oh no!!!!!!" line of thought.

Our school board never adopted this philosophy because everywhere in the US is safer than DC. We play 10 to 15 tournaments per year, 1 JV tournament and 2 televised tournaments.

[SHP Pirate]

We (Seton Hall Prep - NJ) usually attend twelve to fifteen tournaments per year. However, in order to do so, we need to go on the road. Aside from Princeton, most local tournaments only have one or two other "national" caliber teams. (Millburn, NJ is a frequent foe of ours in the finals) We would love to get down to the DC area more frequently. (Of course, no disrespect to Brother Nigel at Kellenberg or Bill at Charter! We just have not been able to make their tournaments in a few years. Hopefully we will be back this fall!)

[jrbarry]

Lee:

My Board and school administration does not want us FLYING anywhere except Nationals. For that Chicago flying trip, my parents had to sign their lives away and the trip would be automatically cancelled if Homeland Security raised the alert level one notch. We cannot fly to NYC or DC, period.

We used to go to 1-2 far away tournaments per year. We've been to Oklahoma, Kentucky, Michigan, Virginia, DC, NYork, Yale and Boston at one time or another between 1993 and 2001. I really wanted to go to Texas A&M while Mr Romero was there but never could figure out the trip datewise. Same deal for Savannah, MO. And I was sure we would get to a California tournament one day. Now we can hardly get to Vanderbilt and other tournaments in neigboring states.

A second factor is the cost of transportation now. My system administration severely limits what we can travel in and the cost of renting has become prohibitive. Plus, my insurance is now limited in covering me as I drive anything larger than a car.

It boils down to liability considerations as my school system is self-insured.

I am really tired of all the hurdles I must go through to travel. To get permission to go to NAQT Nationals, I was required ot fill out 9 pages of repetitive information forms and give literally every detail of everything we would do. My forms were submitted in January and not finally approved until April as they sent them back to me THREE times asking for ZIP CODES and PHONE NUMBERS of restaurants we would be eating in in Chicago! It is utterly absurd and I am sick of it.

The kicker is this: my local school is and has been very supportive of our activities. But, in August of 2005, we lost 50% of our local school funding ($3000) because the money is not tied SPECIFICALLY to NCLB goals for the school. I fear we'll lose the rest this coming year.

Sorry for the diatribe.

[quizbowllee]

Sorry for the diatribe.

No need to apologize for the diatribe. I completely understand. The flying issue makes sense. It's never been an issue for us, because we've never been able to afford to fly. Even going via bus, though, I have to fill out a huge amount of paperwork. It is a hassle, and I invariably forget some minute detail.

BTW - He have NEVER received any local funding. We've had to do all the fund-raising ourselves. We host tournaments, have car-washes, host dances, and have an annual yard sale. The school board did give us a Chevron credit card when we took the bus to Chicago... And we found out that there are no Chevron Gas Stations north of Kentucky.

Of course, we are in (literally) the most financially-strapped school system in Alabama right now, so I can't complain. I have never been turned down for a request to travel anywhere at any time as long as I can come up with the money. I know that if they had the money, they'd give us some.

[NotBhan]

I'm amazed at how many tournaments y'all get to play in a year -- even 10 seems like a remarkable number to me, let alone 15-20. Of course, I was oblivious to the existence of an active HS quizbowl circuit till 2002 or so. For those who've been coaching for a while, or those familiar with the past 15 years or so of their HS programs ... has it always been like this? Have your schools been playing this many tournaments since the early 90s, or is this a relatively new phenomenon?

Also, FWIW, as the coach at Broward CC from 1996-2002, I also saw a steep rise in the amount and specificity (and absurdity) of paperwork. But in our case, most of it was before 9/2001 -- it arose from various insurance-related stuff which seemed to add a new form or new restriction every year. It may also have arisen from the accounting folks trying to avoid any misappropriation of funds, since we'd had a problem with some administrator funneling money hither and (from what I hear) thither. (None of our trips were less than 200 miles, so maybe that's part of it -- they might have been more lenient on a day trip.) So in my case, the metastasis of paperwork arose more from school insurance policies than from the Sept 11th stuff.

--Raj Dhuwalia

[David Riley]

Raj--when I began to coach in 1993, there were relatively few tournaments in Illinois, and most of them were in central and southern Illinois (that has now shifted to the north). Around 1996, the number of tournaments in Illinois began to mushroom-- I think the reasons are (new) active coaches and the realization that hosting a tournament is a great way to fund-raise. We are getting to the point where we are having conflicting tournaments in the same region on the same dates. As it is, I can (and usually do) take my team to a tournament every weekend from October through late March, excluding Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

[jrbarry]

The number of tournaments in GA/SC grew dramatically in the late 1980s. In 1986-87, we had only 3 tournaments in GA. In 1989-90, we had 12. The last half of the 80s is when quiz bowl here grew. The number of competitions in GA/SC has actually declined a bit since 2002.

[mhanna]

In SC the decline dropped off more than a bit. There used to be as many as 10, but now there are only 3 - James Island, Dorman and USC. Proliferation of tournaments in GA and NC as well as travel expenses also impacted the Palmetto State. Alas, we are victims of our own success.

[ASimPerson]

Man, not being able to fly anymore...I remember how outraged we were that our coaches/parents/ourselves weren't allowed to drive anywhere after November my senior year. (Luckily, we made it to Vanderbilt's ABC before that.)

Luckily, the bus thing ended up not cramping out style too much - that spring we went to tournaments on consecutive days (ASCA regionals and then one in Tuscalooosa), and a UTC event that spring. Basically, if it's within a 2 hour drive, we tried to go, and (last year, at least) Bob Jones still tries to do that.

[zwtipp]

I'd say mid to high teens is prolly the most any team should do. My junior year, we did like 25 and we were pretty burnt out at the end of the year.

We did a few less my senior year and around 20 is perfect without burning out.

[Zip Zap Rap Pants]

For the record, I believe MLW went to 8 invitational/open tournaments, 2 state tournaments (including VHSL, which is really like playing 3 tournaments in one), 2 national tournaments plus we had 2 members of team VA for Panasonic, and also Battle of the Brains (6 tapings plus the seeding test). So that makes a grand total of 12-16, depending on how you count it. Attending Duke is also the norm, but that was cancelled, and plus we tried going to the RTO down in Raleigh but stuff happened...