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How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 11:55 am
by Madoc
I was sitting around today, and I started wondering how often other teams around the U.S. practiced. So I ask you. Does your quizbowl season practice year-round, or only for a few months at a time? HHS usually practices twice a week from the months of September until early March. :neutral:

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 12:04 pm
by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
I would practice with my team from the first day of school until the last day before nationals for 2 to 3 hours a pop, almost every day. I know many other high school teams practice for the entire summer as well. If you want to be nationally competitive, tell your coach to extend your practicing season and go to some national events like the PACE NSC. Twice a week is enough to practice assuming its for a couple hours each time to make a team good if you use that time well and supplement it with personal reading, writing, or research, but cutting it off in March seems like a bad idea because February to May are probably some of the most important months of the quizbowl year.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 12:10 pm
by AKKOLADE
On top of what Charlie said, you can always organize practices with other players if your coach doesn't/can't hold practices. Just go to one of your houses instead.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 1:12 pm
by quizbowllee
Right now, we have the following practice schedule:

Monday: 6:15 am - 7:15 am
Tuesday: 2:45 pm - 4:00 pm
Wednesday: 6:15 am - 7:15 am
Thursday: 2:45 pm - 4:00 pm

We no longer have a class period to practice. This is significantly less practice than in years past, but I think we get more accomplished this way. It's a good balance without overkill.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 3:15 pm
by Terrible Shorts Depot
Damn, you all are lucky. Due to mandatory athletics and MANGA CLUB(which I am thankfully not a member of), we have literally 45 minutes of practice a week. Our better players have worked considerably outside of school, which is arguably more valuable. I'm going to try to insititute occasional weekend practices sometime soon.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 3:22 pm
by Andrew from jc
Everyday, except, when one of our coach's is not here to conduct it.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 3:38 pm
by at your pleasure
twice a week, 2:15 to 3:30 /4-ish, if coach can stay that long, all year until after NSC/HSNCT.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 4:23 pm
by The Laughing Man
I don't really understand the emphasis that many people put on practice. Certainly, it is important to practice some to keep yourself from getting rusty; when I played for the first time after 5 weeks at a summer program my recall was really slow. It seems to me, however, that practicing every day is really excessive; this time would be put to better use through individual study. Although I love going to practice, I don't think I retain that much knowledge from it. The questions go by too quickly for me to take detailed notes. I learn a much larger portion of my knowledge by reading questions on my own, when I can take copius notes, and I would have suspected that this would be true for most players. I am curious about which method others prefer.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 4:26 pm
by theattachment
EP did daily lunch practices as well as 3-5 (or whenever speech kicked us out) pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Most of the good practices were the after school ones, since people were usually staying for more than 20 minutes/cared enough to come in the first place.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 4:33 pm
by theMoMA
The Laughing Man wrote:I don't really understand the emphasis that many people put on practice. Certainly, it is important to practice some to keep yourself from getting rusty; when I played for the first time after 5 weeks at a summer program my recall was really slow. It seems to me, however, that practicing every day is really excessive; this time would be put to better use through individual study. Although I love going to practice, I don't think I retain that much knowledge from it. The questions go by too quickly for me to take detailed notes. I learn a much larger portion of my knowledge by reading questions on my own, when I can take copius notes, and I would have suspected that this would be true for most players. I am curious about which method others prefer.
I think most people just enjoy the competition/camaraderie of playing questions. I'm of the mind that you can't practice enough. Every time our team goes on a car trip, we break out the packets for at least 90% of the time, and it's helped all of us gain a much better understanding of the canon. For high schoolers, I think it's even more important. I'd say that it's possible to become a dominant high school player just through packet osmosis.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 4:50 pm
by Blackboard Monitor Vimes
Our school is small enough to have one lunch period, so we practice every day at lunch all year and Mon/Wed/Fri from about 3:30-5:00 until usually the Monday of the last week of school (as that Wednesday and Friday are half days for exam schedule). We bring packets on long trips and usually read questions online whenever a trip mandates a stay at a hotel (we actually played a 5 round doubles tournament at our hotel the night before Cave Spring last year). Several of us went to the VCU open practices this summer. I'm not really qualified to comment on how much practicing a lot actually helps you/how much is necessary, but we enjoy it, so we do it.

Also, to whoever mentioned mandatory athletics: are you in public or private school? I've only ever heard of one school that makes you play a sport (St. Christopher's; they have a qb team some people here may have seen if you've played in the Richmond area).

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 5:00 pm
by Mechanical Beasts
MLWGS-Gir wrote:Our school is small enough to have one lunch period, so we practice every day at lunch all year and Mon/Wed/Fri from about 3:30-5:00 until usually the Monday of the last week of school (as that Wednesday and Friday are half days for exam schedule). We bring packets on long trips and usually read questions online whenever a trip mandates a stay at a hotel (we actually played a 5 round doubles tournament at our hotel the night before Cave Spring last year). Several of us went to the VCU open practices this summer. I'm not really qualified to comment on how much practicing a lot actually helps you/how much is necessary, but we enjoy it, so we do it.

Also, to whoever mentioned mandatory athletics: are you in public or private school? I've only ever heard of one school that makes you play a sport (St. Christopher's; they have a qb team some people here may have seen if you've played in the Richmond area).
Yeah, Charlie and I went to Shady Side, which is private. As a frosh/soph: two trimesters of some sport, one trimester off. Juniors: one trimester of a sport, two trimesters of something arbitrarily designated not-quite-a-sport (this includes ultimate frisbee, for some reason, but also DDR. Supervised, mandatory DDR.). Seniors, three trimesters of not-quite-a-sport.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 5:04 pm
by Terrible Shorts Depot
I think that practice decreases in importance as you age/improve. As a new player, it is important to figure out what you know, learn how the questions work, and learn how to buzz. I think practice is most important when you use it as a place to work on recall, buzzing on clues you know, and as a place to show off your newfound knowledge. I will second Ben in saying that I get more from self study than practice. I also get more from playing at college practices than I do from high school questions (probably because of more difficult material that I don't necessarily know). While we do break out the packets on car trips, that is used almost more as a way to pass the time, even though stuff "from the car" comes up all the time during tournaments.

My absolute favorite part about the sports requirement are the sports for people who don't play sports. You've got DDR, ultimate frisbee (read: sit around in the grass), PE option (sign in, do whatever you want, sign out), and backpacking (walk around campus).

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 5:07 pm
by TheCzarMan
Once a week, 2:35-4:00. I'd like to get a 2nd day if possible, but this year the school said you can't stay after 4PM for meetings, so that took away like an extra 15-30 minutes.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 5:09 pm
by Jeremy Gibbs-Duhem Equation
We do twice a week from 3 to 4:30 usually. Sometimes we will get together on the weekend and just mess around and practice some. I'd be fine with practicing more. I have lots of fun at practice.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 7:06 pm
by BuzzerZen
everyday847 wrote:Yeah, Charlie and I went to Shady Side, which is private. As a frosh/soph: two trimesters of some sport, one trimester off. Juniors: one trimester of a sport, two trimesters of something arbitrarily designated not-quite-a-sport (this includes ultimate frisbee, for some reason, but also DDR. Supervised, mandatory DDR.). Seniors, three trimesters of not-quite-a-sport.
Two hours digging, two hours vaulting, two hours resting?

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 7:52 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
We go twice a week, T/Th, 3:10 til whenever, but usually at least 5 if not 5:30. We'd never be allowed to have it during the schoolday since we only have 6 periods during the day.

It's not enough, but i have so many kids with other commitments (TSA, FCCLA, sports, debate, Math League, History Club, DECA, Student Council, and actual jobs) that's it's just impossible to practice more than that.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 8:12 pm
by chemqueen2
Official practices are Tuesday/Thursday from 3:45-4:30... The week before a tournament we go to five. I bring packets and we have unofficial practices whenever we can though, since both of us seniors are used to an hour a day, four or five days a week (we used to have coaches that cared)...

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 9:06 pm
by JackGlerum
3-5 on Tuesdays and Thursdays for us. I think we'd practice more if people didn't have other things. I personally have lifting for lacrosse on M,W,F now and organized practice starts on the first day of March. One person plays golf on our team, and several do are in the marching band.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 10:02 pm
by Auroni
in high school, we practiced biweekly for 2-2.5 hours, but that was mostly just for our awful local format.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 11:57 pm
by Sonic the Hedgehog and the Fox
Twice per day. Before school, and during our lunch period, thirty minutes each.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 12:11 am
by Frater Taciturnus
In high school, we practiced on Tuesday afternoons from 4-4:40.

Now I practice for ~5 hours a week in the evening.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 4:32 am
by Eärendil
Twice a week for about an hour each at the start of the school year. After cross country season, that gradually grew to everyday practices. We also did early morning practices once a week and extra-long practices every Wednesday for our run up to HSNCT. Also, informal practices at peoples' homes over vacations.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 7:51 am
by David Riley
What Glerum said. I once tried early morning practices but attendance was so sporadic that we soon went back to afternoon practices. But several of my players do a lot of outside studying and research on their own.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 11:08 am
by theattachment
Eärendil wrote:Twice a week for about an hour each at the start of the school year. After cross country season, that gradually grew to everyday practices. We also did early morning practices once a week and extra-long practices every Wednesday for our run up to HSNCT. Also, informal practices at peoples' homes over vacations.
I forgot. If there was some major tournament coming up (i.e. HSNCT) we'd practice about every day as well as doing some spring break stuff. Additionally, we did Friday morning practices that were usually only good for one packet (start at 7, get kicked out by 7:35 for class, add announcements).

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:31 pm
by Diet Chuck
Last year, TJ "practiced" for two or three days a week from 4-6 after school, but we would routinely quit after 45 minutes or so and go play basketball instead. In fact, for the one or two months before the national tournaments, we pretty much completely stopped practicing and balled all day. That actually worked out pretty well, too.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:36 pm
by quizbowllee
Diet Chuck wrote:Last year, TJ "practiced" for two or three days a week from 4-6 after school, but we would routinely quit after 45 minutes or so and go play basketball instead. In fact, for the one or two months before the national tournaments, we pretty much completely stopped practicing and balled all day. That actually worked out pretty well, too.
And you guys won the HSNCT... I hate you guys. :wink:

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 5:10 pm
by azngod1992
4 hours a week

1 hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and 2 hours on Fridays.

Practice isn't really effective at our school, we just goof around and do speed packets.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 7:24 pm
by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
Practice isn't really effective at our school, we just goof around and do speed packets.
I can't figure out why that would be ineffective!

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 9:19 pm
by Whiter Hydra
Diet Chuck wrote:Last year, TJ "practiced" for two or three days a week from 4-6 after school, but we would routinely quit after 45 minutes or so and go play basketball instead. In fact, for the one or two months before the national tournaments, we pretty much completely stopped practicing and balled all day. That actually worked out pretty well, too.
We also have a period during school reserved for clubs and whatnot, where we have practices twice a week for 45 minutes. However, I think only one person from A-team routinely attended any.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 10:07 pm
by closesesame
Diet Chuck wrote:Last year, TJ "practiced" for two or three days a week from 4-6 after school, but we would routinely quit after 45 minutes or so and go play basketball instead. In fact, for the one or two months before the national tournaments, we pretty much completely stopped practicing and balled all day. That actually worked out pretty well, too.
Keshav never wore deodorant (he should have been Right Guard, not point guard), so the balling (even if balling = playing foosball in senior lounge) was a formidable test, harder than the hardest question packets in existence.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 12:40 pm
by Paul_Sausville69
My team practices everyday at lunch at school, and also after school on Fridays. We really only do Quizmaster and Its Ac format, though, which makes us terrible at NAQT and HSAPQ, since we are never absolutely used to them.

for the Record, I am indeed a player for Blake High School in Maryland.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 2:12 pm
by Sir Thopas
Paul_Sausville69 wrote:My team practices everyday at lunch at school, and also after school on Fridays. We really only do Quizmaster and Its Ac format, though, which makes us terrible at NAQT and HSAPQ, since we are never absolutely used to them
So practice on those instead.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 6:36 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
Simply stated, and yet, Guy, i have a feeling that few changes will be made.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:21 pm
by Sir Thopas
Caesar Rodney HS wrote:Simply stated, and yet, Guy, i have a feeling that few changes will be made.
Yep. :(

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:30 pm
by at your pleasure
Paul_Sausville69 -wait, what school do you play for? It would seem common courtesy to provide information that everyone else on the board presents, and I feel obligated to warn you to do this( state you name and school in a signature) before the wrath of scorice presents itself,as it shurley will.
And yeah, what Judge William said. Pratcing exclusivley on NAQT(and all manner of other pyramidal question) and go to every good tournament you can physically attend.
By the way, I'm intrigued by the idea of daily short practices.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:36 pm
by Paul_Sausville69
Anti-Climacus wrote:Paul_Sausville69 -wait, what school do you play for? It would seem common courtesy to provide information that everyone else on the board presents, and I feel obligated to warn you to do this( state you name and school in a signature) before the wrath of scorice presents itself,as it shurley will.
And yeah, what Judge William said. Pratcing exclusivley on NAQT(and all manner of other pyramidal question) and go to every good tournament you can physically attend.
By the way, I'm intrigued by the idea of daily short practices.

I'm the alternate (TV) and the fourth man (tournaments) for James Hubert Blake High School, SIlver Spring MD.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 10:15 pm
by at your pleasure
Ah. Now I'll repeat myself
PRACTICE ON PRYIMIDAL QUESTIONS. Not just NAQT, but old PACE packets, tournament packets you haven't heard(including college packets), packets from the stanford archives if you run out of the aforementioned ones(and if no-one on your team has already read them. ),anything pyramidal. If you get booed and can't get your teammates to listen to pyramidal in practice, than at least read the(really,really good) packets available online. Try picking a topic, going to the Vinkurov database ,and reading all the tossups and bonuses that come up. Yes ,they are college questions, but the givaway clues you learn there will come earlier in the HS questions and be harder bonuses. That and learing as much as you can about a variety of things will get you quite a ways,at least(that and question writing, but that is very time-consuming). Yes, it takes more effort to do this, but imagine the payoff when you start converting more bonus parts and getting tossups earlier beause you've either learned more eraly clues or, better yet, been inspired by a interesting tossup to really get to know about the subject of the answer better than anyone else in the room.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 5:34 pm
by naturalistic phallacy
If there's a college active on the circuit near you, try and go to some of their practices. We're always welcoming to new players. You'll hear more questions, and you'll meet (mostly) awesome people who are willing to help you learn about the game.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 11:10 pm
by Self-incompatibility in plants
It's interesting seeing how much other teams practice for both regular and special occasions, but what I am also interested in is how teams spend their time in practice. What we typically do at the two two hour practices at Caesar Rodney is at least one packet of pyramidal style questions (NAQT or ACE usually), which with the typical interruptions and the time given in between questions for the people taking notes, will take about 45min-1hour. After that we either do another pyramidal packet of questions, which always ends up being somewhat of a joke, as attentions spans begin to wane, or we will do some simple questions out of trivia book of some sorts... which needless to say isn't that effective, however fun it may be. Also, by that time we get to that situation, people begin to leave and/or begin getting tired after a long day of school, which makes conducting the later parts of our practices in a prolific manner difficult. Making me interested in how other teams combat a lessening of productivity in the later portions of their practices if they experience that issue. So... how do other teams spend their time in practice?

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 5:50 pm
by Blackboard Monitor Vimes
We finish 2-3 packets a day in the 3 after-school practices we run, which are about 1.5 hours long. At lunch practice, we just read a packet straight through without teams. Since we don't play formal games, I really have no idea how much we get through in a typical day. I've also never seen an occasion where stopping the game to take notes has been necessary...it doesn't take much time to write something down that you need to go look up later.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 6:04 pm
by Marble-faced Bristle Tyrant
Anti-Climacus wrote:Ah. Now I'll repeat myself
PRACTICE ON PRYIMIDAL QUESTIONS. Not just NAQT, but old PACE packets, tournament packets you haven't heard(including college packets), packets from the stanford archives if you run out of the aforementioned ones(and if no-one on your team has already read them. ),anything pyramidal.
Really, the Stanford Archive is amazing. Back in high school, our coach read assorted printed packets, including NAQT. That was nice, but he had so many packets (among lots of other stuff) that it was hard to keep track of what had already been read recently. Question question question-- "We've already heard that!" many times in a row. Although I do prefer reading something off a paper in my hand to off a screen in front of me, he archive keeps you from using all that paper and getting disorganized. Oh, and it's free! Thank you, Stanford quizbowl people, for putting together the archive.

And if they think that playing college questions will be too hard, then don't tell them what you're reading.

fsb

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 11:38 am
by Auroni
this week, we had two practices: Monday and Wednesday. I had the room booked for 2.5 hours for each, but in each instance we ended up leaving early. Hopefully, next week in a better location, people can stick through till the end.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 12:07 pm
by AndyShootsAndyScores
UA practices 3 times a week (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday) from 6-8. Anyone's welcome to come to any, but Mondays are usually for A team members, Tuesdays for newer people, and Thursday for everyone.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2008 10:09 pm
by TBrowning09
Tuesdays/Wensdays/Fridays = Quick Recall from 3 to 5 (Most of the A team stays till 5:30 or even 6 though)
Monday/Thursday = Indepth Study 3 to 4 JV// 4 to 5 Varisty

The system works pretty well, it allows for individual study at school where the coaches can watch you and make sure you're not goofing around on the computers abdit allows you to get used to your team/the questions (You are there with them for nearly 2 hours every day). Since we started using this system I (and others) have improved astronomically.

Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 7:02 pm
by howlin
That was nice, but he had so many packets (among lots of other stuff) that it was hard to keep track of what had already been read recently. Question question question-- "We've already heard that!" many times in a row.
I put the date on the packet when I read and then dump it in a file to pull out the the next year or so. Sometimes, I can also excavate questions from the previous years' tournaments by the same host. Of course the current events get stale, but most stuff survives nicely.
MLK will practice about 2 times a week for an hour or so...sometimes more if we are in pre tournament mode. Of course the players do a lot of review on their own.