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Drats! Looks like I might be badgered into going to Russell anyway, just to play and probably lose on questions that don't resemble KAAC questions in any way, shape, or form. Period.

I mean, how can your coach force you to go to something?

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:I mean, how can your coach force you to go to something?

Very easily!

She has enormous power. And she's my AP Stats teacher. So I try to appease her.

If you are seriously concerned over whether or not you go to a crappy tournament because there is a threat that it could affect your grades, that means your teacher should be reported to an ethics committee.

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:If you are seriously concerned over whether or not you go to a crappy tournament because there is a threat that it could affect your grades, that means your teacher should be reported to an ethics committee.

Well, I think he just means that he'll see her regularly and doesn't want to be nagged about it or feel awkward, etc. I mean, sure, he should just make his own decision and not worry about what his teacher/coach thinks if he feels strongly enough about it, but it's not as dramatic as you put it.

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:If you are seriously concerned over whether or not you go to a crappy tournament because there is a threat that it could affect your grades, that means your teacher should be reported to an ethics committee.

Anyone who would play Chip is ethically challenged anyhow.

She's just very old and doesn't really know as much about quiz bowl as she should. And I could make up a reason, but I'd rather just tell her I'm not going (which I have, Charlie). Stop making insinuations.

And Matt is closer in the ballpark than you.

I didn't make a single insinuation that you didn't leave the discussion open to with your very open ended description.

Whatever.

akinney wrote:Whatever.

Dude, you did exactly what Charlie said you did.

Let me be blunt: I never asked Charlie what he thought about the relationship I have with my coach. Ergo, it's not his position to make insinuations. I merely stated that I'd rather not discuss going to Russell with her, since I think it's a pointless trip. But if Charlie thinks I should go, I guess I might have to reevaluate my priorities.

You made some post about you being badgered to go to some event you didn't want to go. Charlie expressed confusion about how your coach could "make you go." You said something about her being your stats teacher. Charlie thus made the logical assumption that perhaps she was using her power as a teacher to influence your decision to go. You then told Charlie to stop making insinuations, but I'm not sure what else we were supposed to do with your statement of:

"She has enormous power. And she's my AP stats teacher. So I try to appease her."

That sounds exactly like what Charlie is saying--your coach was using her power as a coach/teacher to make you go. Charlie's certainly done his share to antagonize various people on the boards, but I don't know why you're picking on him here.

I'm not trying to offend anyone, but this seems like a pointless argument to be having.

I feel like I've said this before in this thread, but as a reminder:
1) Don't bring things up that no one else could possibly know or want to talk about without you mentioning them, and then take offense when other people respond to the thing that you chose to begin discussing.
2) Don't tell other people how to post or what to post about if you are not a board staff member.

Dude, this tournament happens during the second semester of your senior year! I faced a similar situation with my high school coach, and I speak from experience when I assure you that you don't have to worry about her "enormous power" at that point. If you're really worried (that she'll fail you or something, not just shave a few points off your AP stats grade or something relatively minor), you should probably consider reporting her. Given that you attend a public school, you probably have more recourse than I did at my private high school. If you have any questions about dealing with a coach, e-mail me, I'll be happy to help.

Well, I'm sorry if I offended anyone, but I was flustered and, as a result, I said some things I shouldn't have. Charlie's post seemed antagonistic to me and I took offense. It was stupid.

My frustration first started with the assumption that my coach is somehow some sort of Satanistic person. This is not true.

Secondly, she is not going to fail me for disagreeing with her. It's more, like someone else said, that I deal with her for about 3 hours a day and it would be awkward if I did something I'd regret. However, it would not be inaccurate to say I want to stay on her good side so I can get the perks.

And I'm hoping I might be able to captain the team later this year. I already have the reputation of being an arrogant jerk. If I avoid conflict I might gain the reputation of a nice guy--both to my teammates and my coach.

PS. The "power" I was referring to was not in that sense, but rather in a more emotional sense. Our coach is like 65, and she's pretty persuasive. And if I argue too much with her, she'll call out our assistant coach, who yells a lot. Another reason why I don't bother.

Well, Hart County was interesting.
Here were the results:

1st Johnson Central
2nd Russell
3rd Madisonville
4th Grayson B
5th Grayson A

Good job to Johnson, they are a very knowledgeable team.
However, it doesn't make sense to me that we played Johnson the closest of any team (13 points) all day and were fifth.
Our B team played lost by around 30 and was 4th.

The competition was very good, but the format was honestly terrible.
We got put in a pool with Johnson and Madisonville and lost by reasonable amounts to both of these teams (Madisonville by 2.)
It just seems strange that the 3rd seed was not one of the top 5 teams there.

Well, I'm glad I didn't go watch that. Any tournament where our B team finishes above our A team is obviously ridiculous. And to put 3 of the best teams there in one pool seems very stupid. But I can't say that I expected better: Hart County has NO connection to the quizbowl community (and very little connection to the quick recall community around KY) and really have no clue what people think is good or bad, and even less clue as to what teams are good or bad.

That's definitely true.
However, they were very friendly and hospitable.
We will likely return if there is no conflict next year, seeing that it is close by, and has a handful of good teams.

Grayson County's tournament may get reborn this spring. Right now we're hoping to host a late spring tournament, and we'd like to gauge interest among teams in Kentucky. We are very heavily considering to bid to be the KY mirror of San Diego's Nationals Warmup/Season Ender tournament. But before we move ahead with anything, we'd like to see who would be interested, and see what date people think would be the best. Just about all of them have conflicts (which will be listed) so we'll have to decide on the least bad date:

May 1st- SAT Date, just before AP Exams, Derby Day
May 8th- In the middle of studying for AP exams
May 15th- Culver's season ender in Indiana sometimes draws KY teams and is on this date
May 22nd- Kinda late in the year, may conflict with a few graduations. Also, some teams may not want to travel a week before Nationals.

soaringeagle22 wrote: May 1st- SAT Date, just before AP Exams, Derby Day
May 8th- In the middle of studying for AP exams
May 15th- Culver's season ender in Indiana sometimes draws KY teams and is on this date
May 22nd- Kinda late in the year, may conflict with a few graduations. Also, some teams may not want to travel a week before Nationals.

May 15th sounds awesome

May 15th may actually work best for Grayson County in terms of hosting as well.

That date would be great, as long as teams are willing to go to Grayson as an alternative to Culver.
We would like to draw some Tennessee teams for our tournament as well; Hume-Fogg and MLK are relatively close.

Our B team played lost by around 30 and was 4th.

They actually lost by 42. The seeding for the bracket at the end was also awful. We were seeded 7th. Under our B team and teams we have beaten this year pretty handily. I'll never understand how that tournament was supposed to work.

Beastman wrote:

Our B team played lost by around 30 and was 4th.

They actually lost by 42. The seeding for the bracket at the end was also awful. We were seeded 7th. I'll never understand how that tournament was supposed to work.

It's just where the drawing was totally random, and the morning games were also pretty random. If all of the teams had the opportunity to play each other, then seeding for the tournament would have made more sense. But, with a field of 12+ teams, that is pretty hard to do in a set amount of time; so you guys were just really unlucky with the draw.

I'm sorry but I'm pretty sure no one wanted to play a 10+ team round robin. Johnson Central/Russell had a long drive, and Madisonville had a 2+ hour drive. The drawing was random and that was fair. The format was not the best, but it was the most efficient.

Madisonville drew Russell, Grayson A, and Owensboro in the morning. We weren't happy with our pool but we did the best we could. We somehow went 3-0, winning two VERY close games against Grayson and Russell. Russell beat us in the semifinals by a LOT, though.

Madisonville played very good games against us and Russell in the prelims.
It will be interesting to see how we fare against Madisonville tomorrow in our PAA match.
You guys will have Priscilla and we will have Julie (reason our b team beat Owensboro and Blazer), so it should be a good match.

The fact that it was random seems to be what made it unfair to me. Because rather than making sure the pools were balanced, they just threw everybody in a hat and pulled numbers. I guess the format was fine, but the way it was done definitely wasn't. A 3-1 record means nothing if you didn't really play anybody. And a lot of teams had 3-1 records and probably didn't lose to any of the better teams there. The thing that gets me the most is that the top four didn't reflect the top four teams at the tournament. I kind of think a 12 team straight up round robin all day would have put things where they should have been. As rididculous as that seems. Still though, it was an interesting day at least. I wish we had gotten to play Russell. Lol.

Actually, aside from Grayson A not being there, the top four teams were pretty accurate.

Beastman wrote:The thing that gets me the most is that the top four didn't reflect the top four teams at the tournament.

Speed questions tend to not determine the most knowledgeable teams

Random draws are usually not the most fair way to do things, as has been discussed in the quizbowl community on multiple occasions. If you're going to run a tournament, you should make an effort to provide balanced pools, or at least pools as balanced as possible. This might require people to put in a couple more hours effort than just inviting only teams with name recognition (disregarding potentially better teams most likely) and than drawing out of a hat to figure out who plays who. On top of that, seeding a playoff randomly with no thought given to performance (with good pools, comparisons would be fair enough for a seeding process) is also bad. Dunbar managed to run 10 rounds of balanced pools round robin (with a nice lunch break in between) and have finished in a reasonable time span in both the spring and fall.

Single elimination playoffs are an even worse feature, and have no place in modern quizbowl. Tournaments can always rebracket into pool play to determine final placement. Even double-elimination would be better than single, although there are flaws with DE as well. For some reason tournaments tend to cling to the archaic single elimination, I guess because Kentuckians keep trying to make quizbowl look like basketball out of some weird desire to have it become a spectator sport.

akinney wrote:I'm sorry but I'm pretty sure no one wanted to play a 10+ team round robin.

Haha, I agree. I was just saying that would be the most fair way; yet, utterly impossible.

I wasn't addressing that at you, Faiyad. I was agreeing that it would be the best bet, but very impractical.

Faiyad wrote:

akinney wrote:I'm sorry but I'm pretty sure no one wanted to play a 10+ team round robin.

Haha, I agree. I was just saying that would be the most fair way; yet, utterly impossible.

Regardless of fairness of distribution, speed check tournaments never tell you the best teams.

I wasn't saying the best teams. I was going purely on fairness. Regardless of whether or not it's speed-based, certain teams will still be better than others.

There is little doubt that Johnson, Russell, Madisonville, and Grayson were the best teams there.
The same four would have been the best quizbowl teams, however the order may have very well been different.

This is just to clear some things up concerning the Chip Beall/Questions Unlimitted competition in Kentucky:

The QU tournament in question is being hosted by Russell Middle School. Originally, it was intended to be a middle school and JV tournament. I received the same email-flier as everyone else, indicating that there was also a high school division. Russell High School will not be participating. We have other committments that weekend.

Kirk Barnett
Head Coach,
Russell Academic Team

This is a quick shout out to Sandy and all others at Dunbar---a belated congratulations for the fine performance of both your A & B Teams at Harvard. It was fun meeting you and playing you, and Dunbar's depth is QUITE impressive.

Additionally, say hello to your Coach---could you remind me of her name?---for it was a great pleasure to meet her, but in the hectic times that tournaments sometimes engender I've sadly forgotten her name. And would you please tell her that we hope to see her and you again at Hunter's Prison Bowl in February. Hopefully by then we'll be able to give you a better challenge than we did last week at the HFT.

One more thing---I suppose I am up to my old loquacious tricks---so given your humorous comments about this to me I thought you might like to check out the QuAC site at U Penn concerning the issue of a 6 or 12 team bracket for the Championship Playoffs. Is this the type of writing of mine that you joked with me about? Given the issue involved, should I have been less loquacious???? Or was my writing "just right'? Or, perhaps, a little too "laconic"? :)

And, where would you stand on the bracketing issue?

And, last thoughts---we will be competing in your Dunbar Mirror at Bergen Academies on December 5th---any secrets you can give us??? Just kidding. And---best of luck in Kentucky until we see you again at Hunter.

Edward Powers wrote: One more thing---I suppose I am up to my old loquacious tricks---so given your humorous comments about this to me I thought you might like to check out the QuAC site at U Penn concerning the issue of a 6 or 12 team bracket for the Championship Playoffs. Is this the type of writing of mine that you joked with me about? Given the issue involved, should I have been less loquacious???? Or was my writing "just right'? Or, perhaps, a little too "laconic"? :)

They're fun to read when I have Merriam-Webster's website open

Then thank goodness for Merriam-Webster's!

And, BTW---what is you Coach's name? I'm embarrassed I forgot, so I would like to relearn it with your help. Thanks.

Susan Magedanz is the coach at Dunbar.
She is a good coach and has been helpful to Grayson with making travel plans.

Also,
Would any of Dunbar's players want to do an informal scrimmage with us at the hotel the night before Wright State?

Thank you, Scott.

Hey, Centre College will be hosting a mirror of T-Party (I'm sure Joe will get an announcement up pretty soon and everything). While the bonuses will be substantially harder than most high school tournaments, it'd be great practice for a lot of the top teams in Kentucky, and the tossups will be on generally pretty accessible answer lines. I know that Sandy plans on writing a packet, and it'd be lovely if other teams wanted to write a packet or to play!

Grayson will definitely be there.

Happy Turkey Day all!!!

I'd like to point out that, as of now, we have more NSC qualifiers than any other state.
Good job Kentucky teams.

I just wanted to mention this tournament in this specific thread. Parkersburg would be very happy to host any of you all.

I really hope Grayson can make it to Parkersburg.
We are planning on going to the T-Party mirror at Centre, if it takes place.

Would anyone be interested in participating in a KY Quiz Bowl Mid-Season poll?
If so, please let me know, so that I can get it organized.

Edit: to remove the extremely unintelligent announcement I made.

That sounds like a tournament announcement from last year.