The Quizbowl Resource Center

Vanderbilt Quizbowl Team would like to invite all interested teams to the 39th Academic Bowl Contest to be hosted on March 20th, 2010. This tournament will use questions from (EDIT) the Cooper Memorial Tournament set, written by members of Georgetown Day School (DC), Brown University, and Vanderbilt University. This is the same set that will be used by GDS and other mirror sites. We anticipate that the questions will be roughly equal in difficulty but slightly longer compared to the questions used in the past few iterations of ABC. We will have two separate divisions: Varsity for all high school players and JV for players with fewer than two years of experience in quizbowl. It is possible that we use two different question sets for the Varsity and JV divisions.

Format: 5 to 7 preliminary rounds followed by 16 or 32 team single-elimination playoff. Depending on the size of the field, the format may change.

Fees:
$70 per team
-$5 per working buzzer system
-$15 per competent reader
$0 minimum fee

Varsity Field:
Dunbar
Owensboro
Santa Fe
Apollo
Daviess County
Lincoln County
MLK
USN

JV Field:
Dunbar
Brentwood (2)
Hendersonville (2)
MLK

*We request that teams bring readers, if at all possible. We had some difficulty in coming up with enough competent readers for our fall tournament last semester, and I would hate to limit the number of teams because of lack of moderators.
*Please help us by spreading the word about our tournament to teams/coaches that may not have heard from us yet! Although we try to contact as many teams as possible, we still do not always reach everyone who would be interested.

To register for the tournament, please send an e-mail to [email protected], indicating the number of teams, buzzer systems, and readers that you plan to bring, as well as a phone number that we can call if your team does not show up on the morning of the tournament. More info on location, schedule, and emergency contact coming soon.

Grayson will have two teams here.

Paul Laurence Dunbar would like to bring JV and Varsity teams.
Susan @ PLD

aestheteboy wrote:This tournament will use questions from the NNT set

To clarify, this is the Ben Cooper Memorial Tournament set, also to be used at GDS a week earlier. NNT was a set that GDS used about eighteen months ago.

aestheteboy wrote: We will have two separate divisions: Varsity for all high school players and JV for players with fewer than two years of experience in quizbowl.

Just to make sure I understand this correctly--the eligibility for JV is based on years of experience in Quiz Bowl--NOT current grade in high school? So that say, for example, a 12th grader in his first tournament would be eligible for JV?

JProffitt wrote:

aestheteboy wrote: We will have two separate divisions: Varsity for all high school players and JV for players with fewer than two years of experience in quizbowl.

Just to make sure I understand this correctly--the eligibility for JV is based on years of experience in Quiz Bowl--NOT current grade in high school? So that say, for example, a 12th grader in his first tournament would be eligible for JV?

Wow, I am sorry for the late response. And yes, you are correct; a 12th grader in his first or second year of competition would be eligible to play in the JV division.

Hoover High School will be bringing a Varsity and a JV squad to this event.

1. Thanks for changing the date from February 27 to March 20.
2. Could you please provide a registration form similar to the one you had for ABC XXXVIII, so that it can be used an invoice for our bookkeeper?
3. When did the rule for JV teams for Vandy ABCs change? For all previous Vandy tournaments that included JV teams, at least through ABC XXXVII, JV was limited to 9th & 10th graders, which is a fairly universal requirement for JV.

Hi. We will send you an electronic registration form right away.

We decided to change the JV requirement for this tournament because we believe that quizbowl experience has a much more direct influence on playing ability than the number of years in high school. This change is in no way permanent, so we may change it again for next year, depending on how people feel. If you have opinions about this or any other issue about our tournament, please let us know.

Hey y'all. The tournament is coming up pretty soon, so get your registration asap!

Another important news: we will most likely be using Four Quarter set 2 for the JV division, in order to provide the most difficulty-appropriate questions to our audience. This set has only been used in West Virginia and Virginia, so it should not be a problem for any of the potential participants.

Apologies to all concerned, but Hoover will have to withdraw from this event.

I am sorry to say that Grayson will not be able to attend either.

Brentwood can send one JV team. I am sending you a registration form.

Are results and/or stats available from this tournament?

This tournament took place, with 9 teams in varsity and 6 teams in JV. In the varsity division, Dunbar won, beating Hume-Fogg twice in an advantaged final. Dunbar also won JV; MLK got second.
Stats and tournament wrap-up forthcoming.

As TD of ABC XXXIX, I'd like to thank the teams who came out to play, the moderators who read for the tournament, and Matt Jackson et al. and HSAPQ, who provided the question set for varsity and JV, respectively. At this tournament, we tried to introduce some good elements of modern quizbowl, such as paperless moderating, individual stats, and non-single elimination playoffs, for the first time in our school's history. I personally felt that it was moderately successful, and that teams received the changes fairly positively. As always, we encourage comments, observations, and criticisms, so that we can improve your experience for our next tournament. We hope you guys enjoyed the tournament as much as we enjoyed hosting!

Stats are here: http://results.scobo.net/aestheteboy

Final Rankings for varsity:
1. Dunbar
2. Hume-Fogg
3. Santa Fe
4. MLK
5. Owensboro
6. Lincoln
7. Daviess
8. Apollo
9. USN

for JV:
1. Dunbar
2. MLK
3t. Brentwood A
3t. Hendersonville A
5t. Brentwood B
5t. Hendersonville B

This was a really enjoyable tournament. Even more enjoyable than past ABCs. I liked that Daichi allowed us to play with powers and negs for the first game of the advantaged final. Maybe this can be implemented for the whole tournament at the next ABC iteration?

aestheteboy wrote:As TD of ABC XXXIX, I'd like to thank the teams who came out to play, the moderators who read for the tournament, and Matt Jackson et al. and HSAPQ, who provided the question set for varsity and JV, respectively. At this tournament, we tried to introduce some good elements of modern quizbowl, such as paperless moderating, individual stats, and non-single elimination playoffs, for the first time in our school's history.

Not quite true. Back in 2004 (before Daichi was probably even in high school), ABC XXVII did individual stats and did the standard collegiate style playoffs with re-bracketing and subsequent playoff round robin. I don't think the southeastern circuit was ready for that at the time, other than some of the top teams; some of them were pretty upset with the format change though too, if memory serves me right. One coach in particular just sat in the headquarters room giving me dirty looks for the last few rounds of playoffs. Because of the size of the field, too many inexperienced moderators trying to read and do individual stats really slowed things down more than I had anticipated (though not nearly as bad as some early 2000's editions I helped with as not the person in charge), and I think there was a debate about morning records carrying over that we didn't specify at the start of the tournament. Of course, I don't think it helps put things in a positive light that that tournament happened a few days after I chipped my two front teeth and had to get lots of stitches after running into a goal post playing intramural ultimate frisbee, and I also had laryngitis that day...

I would have loved to run all the ABC's more like a college tournament, but the demand and practical ability to do so weren't there. It'd be great if the demand is now there, especially for the smaller tournaments.

vandyhawk wrote:

aestheteboy wrote:As TD of ABC XXXIX, I'd like to thank the teams who came out to play, the moderators who read for the tournament, and Matt Jackson et al. and HSAPQ, who provided the question set for varsity and JV, respectively. At this tournament, we tried to introduce some good elements of modern quizbowl, such as paperless moderating, individual stats, and non-single elimination playoffs, for the first time in our school's history.

Not quite true. Back in 2004 (before Daichi was probably even in high school), ABC XXVII did individual stats and did the standard collegiate style playoffs with re-bracketing and subsequent playoff round robin. I don't think the southeastern circuit was ready for that at the time, other than some of the top teams; some of them were pretty upset with the format change though too, if memory serves me right. One coach in particular just sat in the headquarters room giving me dirty looks for the last few rounds of playoffs. Because of the size of the field, too many inexperienced moderators trying to read and do individual stats really slowed things down more than I had anticipated (though not nearly as bad as some early 2000's editions I helped with as not the person in charge), and I think there was a debate about morning records carrying over that we didn't specify at the start of the tournament. Of course, I don't think it helps put things in a positive light that that tournament happened a few days after I chipped my two front teeth and had to get lots of stitches after running into a goal post playing intramural ultimate frisbee, and I also had laryngitis that day...

I would have loved to run all the ABC's more like a college tournament, but the demand and practical ability to do so weren't there. It'd be great if the demand is now there, especially for the smaller tournaments.

Thanks for correcting me. I had a vague feeling that something like that might have happened before, so I should have put the word "recent" somewhere in the previous post.

Why were there only 8 powers total in this tournament? Maybe I'm just reading something wrong, but that seems wrong.

Sandy's post makes it sound like that only one game for the tourney had powers & negs.

The Granny wrote:Sandy's post makes it sound like that only one game for the tourney had powers & negs.

That is correct: the first game of the advantaged finals had powers and negs at the request of both participating team.

One more thing: although Dunbar and Hume-Fogg were quite good last Saturday, ppb is somewhat inflated by bouncebacks.

The Granny wrote:Sandy's post makes it sound like that only one game for the tourney had powers & negs.

Oh my bad, I didn't read very closely, did I. I was really surprised by the high bonus conversions and thought missing powers might be the reason or something. Turns out to be bouncebacks.