The Quizbowl Resource Center

Parkersburg High School’s Quiz Bowl Team in Parkersburg, West Virginia, will be hosting their first ever Parkersburg Academic Tournament on January 23, 2009. The PAT is an academic quiz bowl tournament open to any high school or middle school that wishes to compete. This tournament will start at 9 a.m. and will run until 5 p.m.

The tournament director will be Fred Morlan. Wayne Clark will be the assistant tournament director.

The PAT will be affiliated with the Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence and will be a qualifying event for the 2010 PACE National Scholastics Championship. The 2010 NSC will be held at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia on June 5 and 6, 2010. At least the top two teams at the PAT will qualify for the 2010 NSC, with more possible depending on the size of the field and PACE’s certification results.

The PAT will be using HSAPQ’s Four Quarter Set #2.

While the final number of games guaranteed for teams will vary depending on staff available and the number of teams registered, every effort will be made to guarantee each team at least eight games of play.

We plan on grouping teams in brackets in the morning and having teams play a round robin against that group. Teams will then be rebracketed into groups of similar performance based on the results of the morning and play another round robin against the new group of teams.

Please note that for this tournament, only 18 spots are initially available in the field.

The entry fee will start at $60 per team. The minimum entry fee is $20 per team.

Teams get $5 off their entry fee for each working buzzer system they bring to the tournament. Buzzer systems must have at least eight individual buzzers. There is no limit to the number of these discounts you can claim.

Teams get $15 off their entry fee for each experienced, competent moderator they can bring to the tournament. There is no limit to the number of these discounts you can claim. The moderator must be able to assist for the entire day, and must be able to efficiently finish rounds. Please contact the tournament director ahead of time if you plan on claiming this discount.

Teams get $5 off their entry fee for being a school based in West Virginia.

Teams get $5 off their entry fee for traveling over 200 miles. Further travel discounts may be available.

Teams that have not played quiz bowl prior to September 2008, or teams that have previously played quiz bowl but had a recent period where they were not active, will pay the minimum entry fee.

To register for this tournament, please contact Fred Morlan at [email protected]. Please include the number of teams you would like to register, the number of buzzer systems and moderator discounts you are claiming, any other discounts your school may claim, the best email address to reach you at and an emergency phone number to use in case you need to be urgently contacted near the date of the tournament.

Payment can be made as either a check or in cash. All payment is due the day of the tournament.

Teams may be made up of up to six players. Four players may play at a time for a team. Once a player is assigned to a team’s roster at the start of the tournament, those players cannot be moved between teams.

Unfortunately, no teams from Virginia can play on this set.

Current field (max 18):

Belpre (OH)
Cabell Midland
Charleston Catholic A
Charleston Catholic B
Hurricane
Magnolia A
Magnolia B
Parkersburg A
Parkersburg B
Parkersburg Catholic A
Parkersburg Catholic B
Parkersburg South A
Parkersburg South B
Spring Valley A
St. Marys
University
Williamstown A
Williamstown B

Interested teams:

George Washington
Ripley
Spring Valley B

You can find the old posts about trying to find a working date here.

Parkersburg High School is announcing that they will be helping Greg Bossick in funding a scholarship he is creating in memorial of a former student of his.

Greg spent a year as a teacher at an Ohio high school (Brookfield), where he had a student named Tyler Neral. Neral committed suicide earlier this month.

With Tyler’s mother, Greg is setting up a scholarship in Tyler’s memory, which will be awarded to students at Brookfield, starting next year.

You can read more about what Greg is doing at http://www.createphpbb.com/phpbb/viewto ... mforum=oac

The part of that post that is most pertinent to this email is the portion regarding the “donate a penny per point scored” fundraiser, which we are going to also do at Parkersburg High School’s tournament.

This is a fee that is completely separate from the entry fee for the tournament, and is completely optional. If you wish to participate in this and help raise funds for the scholarship, let us know. If you’d like to do terms different than a penny per point, let us know and we’ll work it out. All of the money raised through such pledges will be donated to the scholarship fund.

The "block" on B teams has been removed. As such, Dunbar B has entered the field.

We would like to attend, but cannot commit just yet.

Belpre High School has entered the field, taking us to five definite teams.

grayson77 wrote:We would like to attend, but cannot commit just yet.

Glad to hear it! I'll add you to the interested list.

I hope we get to go to this, it's on my birthday.

I know that it is not likely,
but is there any chance we could see some type of singles tournament sometime that weekend?

We don't have such a thing planned at this time, but never say never.

Two new teams registered.

Williamstown is now registered.

Olmsted Falls unfortunately had to withdraw from the tournament, but Parkersburg Catholic has registered two teams.

Charleston Catholic has registered one team.

Grayson County, do you know any better if you'll be able to attend yet?

I don't think we are going to be able to go.
We have had bad weather around here lately, and our coaches don't really want to risk trudging to West Virginia in the snow.
A local tournament is scheduled for that day, so we will probably go to that.

We will definitely consider going next year, though.

grayson77 wrote: our coaches don't really want to risk trudging to West Virginia in the snow.

I just want to note that I was all for sending a team to West Virginia regardless of weather, but I don't make scheduling decisions.

That's okay. These things happen.

The field's been updated.

This tournament happened.

Prelim games consisted of three periods: 10 TUs, two team rounds and 10 TUs with bonuses. In response to the wishes of the coaches present, we dropped the team rounds for the playoff rounds (as they were taking about 20 minutes per round).

We did three preliminary brackets of 6 teams, with the top two of each going to the top playoff bracket and playing the teams they had not already played. This gave us a championship bracket of Parkersburg's A and B teams, University, Parkersburg Catholic A, Charleston Catholic A and Parkersburg South A. Final standings were:

#1 Parkersburg A, 9-0 (with an average margin of victory of 303.3 ppg)
#2 Parkersburg South A, 8-1
#3 (tie) University, Parkersburg Catholic A and Charleston Catholic A, 6-3
#6 Parkersburg B, 4-5

17 of 18 teams stayed for all 9 rounds, which was really cool.

I'll post stats/more info later.

Final standings for this tournament:

1 Parkersburg A
2 Parkersburg South A
3 University
3 Parkersburg Catholic A
3 Charleston Catholic A
6 Parkersburg B

7 Parkersburg South B
8 Magnolia A
9 Williamstown A
10 Parkersburg Catholic B
11 Charleston Catholic B
12 Hurricane

13 Spring Valley
14 St. Marys
15. Williamstown B
16. "Cabell Midland"
17. "Magnolia B'
17. Belpre

I managed to accidentally destroy the stats file by saving over it with an empty file, so I won't be able to manipulate it any more. But here are the combined stats with the teams sorted by preliminary brackets.

FYI: PPB is inaccurate, as it gave credit to the teams for points earned on bouncebacks without giving any way to separate those bounceback points from the points earned on the first shot at a bonus. And this inaccuracy is not going to go away with my dumb mistake.

Also note that team rounds were only used in the first 5 rounds due to time constraints, so the across the board score deflation in the last four rounds was due to that.