Early College at Guilford Invitational--The "Quaker Bowl"

[smithp5]

We are now ready to announce that the first "Early College at Guilford Invitational," hereafter titled the "Quaker Bowl," will be held on Saturday, February 28, 2009, at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC. The tournament will be an untimed tossup/bonus format with NAQT questions. We will be using NAQT IS-81, so if you have attended or will attend a tournament using IS-81, you will not be eligible to come to this tournament.

We are still working on the details for the tournament, so we don't have a lot of specifics yet. In general though, we are looking at taking somewhere in the neighborhood of 24-32 teams, although we aren't certain. For the moment, we will just be taking first teams.

A formal announcement will be forthcoming and will be mailed to individual schools. In the meantime, if there are any questions, please feel free to email me at [email protected].

Paul Smith,
Tournament Director

[smithp5]

The invitations to the Quaker Bowl, The Early College at Guilford's new tournament, have been sent out and the early registration deadline is shortly approaching (December 31st). Hope to hear from you soon!

[DrakeRQB]

We're most likely there with 2 teams, possibly 3.

[AlexLoyal]

Hi,
East Chapel Hill Highschool would like to bring two teams. is this possible?

Alex Loyal
Team Captain

[ProsperoSMS]

Saint Mary's will bring a team.

[smithp5]

Alex from East Chapel Hill:
There is still room, please e-mail me back at [email protected] and I will re-send the registration packet. Thanks!

Paul Smith

[smithp5]

Hello!
Here is the field update for the first Quaker Bowl. Notice there are still some question marks, as some teams have indicated interest but have not completed the registration form:

With registration closing on February 7th (postmark), we currently have 24 teams and 12 buzzer sets (for certain). As you might expect, this is subject to change, but the deadline is coming soon, so please get your registration in by the end of the week. I also apologize for not sending out the information packets sooner (with rules and directions), but we were busy with registration and are in the process of finishing the packets.

West Harnett (1 team, 1 buzzer set)
Robinson (2 teams, ? buzzer sets)
Raleigh Charter (2 teams(?), 3 buzzer sets)
*North Myrtle Beach (1 team(?), ? buzzer sets)
Grimsley (2 teams, 2 buzzer sets)
East Randolph (1 team, 1 buzzer set)
Salisbury (2 teams, 1 buzzer set)
Greensboro Day (2 teams, 1 buzzer set)
Patrick Henry (2 teams, ? buzzer sets)
TJ Classical (1 team, 1 buzzer set)
Bassett (1 team, ? buzzer sets)
Northeast Guilford (1 team, ? buzzer sets)
South Caldwell (1 team, 2 buzzer sets)
St. Mary's (1 team, ? buzzer sets)
Wilkes Central (1 team, ? buzzer sets)
East Chapel Hill (2 teams, ? buzzer sets)
*Chapel Hill (1 team(?), ? buzzer sets)

Again, please help me clarify these question marks as soon as you can, or let me know if there is any change. Thanks!

Paul Smith
Tournament Director

[AKKOLADE]

Any word on results from this?

[smithp5]

Hello! Full results will be coming shortly, but the playoff results from the Quaker Bowl are as follows:

Quarterfinals
(1) Greensboro Day A 380, (8) Salisbury A 50
(4) Raleigh Charter A 315, (5) Raleigh Charter B 125
(3) Fort Mill 180, (6) Raleigh Charter C 170
(2) Walt Whitman 295, (7) Robinson A 185

Semifinals
(4) Raleigh Charter A 380, (1) Greensboro Day A 145
(2) Walt Whitman 440, (3) Fort Mill 30

Finals
(2) Walt Whitman 350, (4) Raleigh Charter A 175


Thank you for coming out to the tournament and we'll have the full results posted soon!

Paul Smith

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

Did North Myrtle Beach actually come to this tournament? Curious to see if they actually attended one this year finally.

[rchschem]

Did North Myrtle Beach actually come to this tournament? Curious to see if they actually attended one this year finally.

No.

edit: Results are now posted here.

[smithp5]

Hello!
Thanks to the great Patrick King, we have a place to hold our results from the Quaker Bowl. You may view those results at this site:

http://www.unc.edu/~pakman44/ncata/2009 ... uakerbowl/

Please let me know if you have any questions!

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

This tournament may have suffered from a little bit of poor bracketing.

Looking at the PPB, should Whitman and Raleigh Charter really have been in the same bracket together? These are probably the two best teams at this tournament.

[smithp5]

Mr. Rodney:
Your point regarding the bracketing at this tournament is well-taken. In looking back, it is pretty clear that Raleigh Charter A and Walt Whitman were the two best teams in the tournament, and that they ended up in the same preliminary bracket was unfortunate. I will say that I made sure to break up multiple teams (A, B, C) from each school, and made a reasonable effort to spread out teams that had performed well in events in our region. One team's performance, however, as I'm sure you well know, often varies greatly from tournament, so I did not place as much emphasis on the latter criterion. Could that have been a mistake? Possibly. As tournament director, I did the best I could with the data that I thought was reliable.
Perhaps this is a "tournament format" topic, but, in attempting to level the playing field a bit, I am looking to change the morning format next year. I am thinking of having each team sequestered into individual rooms, and in each room (competing against no other school), the teams are read the same sets of questions. This is a format that was used for a long time by a local tournament, and I believe that this is a fair way to determine playoff seeding. There would be no concern about which teams were seeded in which tough or easy brackets.
Speaking to whoever reads this thread, I would love to hear your comments.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

Don't think i've ever been called Mr. Rodney before. I don't know if i'd like to have been dead for about 200+ years.

Anyway, yes, thanks for responding. Didn't mean to be too critical, but just wanted to make that comment out there.

Your suggestion for bracketing is interesting but time-consuming, and would you have enough extra moderators to pull that off? Also, that's a whole packet to play/waste that essentially doesn't "count."

[Susan]

I'm really not crazy about this idea (not least because it sounds awfully boring for the teams). I have a hard time with the idea of running a quizbowl tournament in a format in which you do not have to beat another team to a tossup, since that seems like a pretty essential part of quizbowl to me! Also, if anything, I think it increases the chances of wonky bracketing; unless the questions are too hard for the field, a lot of the teams will be able to convert a lot of the questions by the end, and then you're strictly relying upon bonus conversion to differentiate teams. Also, this system would require more staff and would quite likely take longer to run.

I sympathize with your difficulty in bracketing teams with which you were less familiar; next time you might want to check out Dave Bykowski's national rankings for guidance.

[smithp5]

Haha...my apologies to Mr. Chrzanowski :-) A slight slip there--I knew who I was talking to (and certainly know of the real Mr. Rodney) but wrote the wrong name.

Speaking to Susan of Chicago, I do know of the Byko rankings and tried to consult them, but the server has been down for a while. So I didn't get much of a chance to do any real in-depth comparisons that I would have liked. Next time I will be a bit more cautious about that aspect.

Please keep the comments coming about my early round formatting suggestion if you have them. Thanks!

[AKKOLADE]

I'm with Susan on this - the 'playing nobody in an empty' room thing just doesn't sound like it'd work to me. If you're unsure of of what teams in your field are the best, feel free to post about it on these forums. Someone in the know would help you.

[... and the chaos of Mexican modernity]

Did North Myrtle Beach actually come to this tournament? Curious to see if they actually attended one this year finally.

Again, our school couldn't afford it. I am the only person on my team willing to pay to go to tournaments, and please don't treat this like were going to travel to 20 tournaments in one season. We already applied for a wild-card bid to HSNCT.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

Did North Myrtle Beach actually come to this tournament? Curious to see if they actually attended one this year finally.

We already applied for a wild-card bid to HSNCT.

But... you haven't... done anything this year...

[... and the chaos of Mexican modernity]

I don't want to argue with you over this, but I said our school can't afford it. Now please stop treating yourself like the Deity of Quizbowl by posting stuff that everyone can see as obvious.

[AKKOLADE]

Stop it.

[The Toad to Wigan Pier]

Did North Myrtle Beach actually come to this tournament? Curious to see if they actually attended one this year finally.

Again, our school couldn't afford it. I am the only person on my team willing to pay to go to tournaments, and please don't treat this like were going to travel to 20 tournaments in one season. We already applied for a wild-card bid to HSNCT.

If your school couldn't afford this and your teammates are not willing to pay, how would your team finance going to the HSNCT?

[... and the chaos of Mexican modernity]

Did North Myrtle Beach actually come to this tournament? Curious to see if they actually attended one this year finally.

Again, our school couldn't afford it. I am the only person on my team willing to pay to go to tournaments, and please don't treat this like were going to travel to 20 tournaments in one season. We already applied for a wild-card bid to HSNCT.

If your school couldn't afford this and your teammates are not willing to pay, how would your team finance going to the HSNCT?

My coach claims the school is willing to save up money for us to go to nationals, and we are hosting a tournament on April 18th. I hope this answers your question Mr. Butler