The Quizbowl Resource Center

I'm moving to Chile for a few years starting in February. While there I plan to study and perhaps represent my school in quiz bowl play. My main question is to anyone who knows anything about international quizbowl. I know that there are teams in Canada and I think that the British have similar competitions so maybe they can help. Some initial questions:

What is it like being an international teams that plays in the U.S.? Financial assistance? Can they compete in ACF Regionals and Nationals?? If so, automatic bids to national tournaments??

How is quiz bowl in foreign countries? What is the style of play and how are the questions?

This one can be for anyone who has done this: What would be a good way to start a league in a foreign country? What are good incentives to have schools start teams?

Thank you.

International teams are certainly welcome to compete in pretty much any tournament that doesn't require qualifications, which means pretty much everything but the ICT. And even then if you get in contact with NAQT they'll probably grant you a spot. They used to grant a British team a spot every year, although that has ended lately due to lack of interest I think.

Besides that, I have no idea what the international quizbowl scene is like. You could probably run an intramural tournament without that much of a problem, but finding other schools in the area interested in quizbowl would be though (although not impossible). Maybe try hosting a tournament and contacting, say, a bunch of honors deans in the area and tell them to recruit teams to come.

ericblair wrote:I'm moving to Chile for a few years starting in February. While there I plan to study and perhaps represent my school in quiz bowl play. My main question is to anyone who knows anything about international quizbowl. I know that there are teams in Canada and I think that the British have similar competitions so maybe they can help. Some initial questions:

What is it like being an international teams that plays in the U.S.? Financial assistance? Can they compete in ACF Regionals and Nationals?? If so, automatic bids to national tournaments??

How is quiz bowl in foreign countries? What is the style of play and how are the questions?

This one can be for anyone who has done this: What would be a good way to start a league in a foreign country? What are good incentives to have schools start teams?

Thank you.

I tried explaining the concept of quiz bowl to friends in France and Spain; they all thought I was insane. I don't know about Chile, but the idea that quiz bowl even exists outside of the communities you mention explicitly is a doubtful prospect.

There have been tournaments held before for English-speaking academies aimed at American expatriates in Israel and in Saudi Arabia (not for both of those at the same time, of course). If you have enough of those, you could import the methods for starting a new circuit wholesale, including American questions. If you're trying to do something in Spanish, that may require a lot more ground-up planning. I don't know if the way we write tossups translates to other languages--certainly, languages with gendered nouns or less flexible demonstrative adjectives will make pyramidal tossups more challenging to construct.

As far as qualification goes, you should get in touch with NAQT about their tournaments. For ACF, any tournament is open to any team who wants to participate, so you could certainly show up at any ACF Regionals you felt like, as well as ACF Nationals, if you could get the funding arranged for such a trip. If you get enough schools active to make it viable (which as far as I'm concerned means 2) then you can have the ACF sets to host stuff locally as well.

Self-edited with intention of deletion upon soberness.

KGeee wrote:Ride the Pullman on the long trip North to the Atacama. The combination of the clear sky, steam coming off of the Pacific, and dryness of the desert is amazing. Copiapo is a great starting spot, although you can't spend too long there without jumping off to another town or getting bored. Check out the mile long fruit stands in San Fernando, which is just like an hour and a half south of Santiago on the train or bus.

Enjoy the hell out of the pisco and late harvest concha y toro wine, because it's nearly impossible, and expensive when possible to find it up here-but amazing.

As for quizbowl, I don't know-but it will be hard to run out of things to do in Chile.

Oh and if you're rich, go to Club Platinum. 45 dollars to get in, 37 dollars for tap water, but it's nice assuming that you have an appreciation for the female body...and the museums are grand as well.

This goes for anyone who wants to discuss anything, but specifically for the guy with the rather off-topic post about how awesome Chile is (which it is).
Windows Live messenger: eblair0 [at] hotmail [dot] com

I've lived in Chile temporarily, perhaps a total of five months, and yes there are fine things to do there. But this quiz bowl thing..jeez, I hope I can get a little something going. Maybe I can do test it with an intramural competition at the high school I'll be assisting at. No idea really.

Thanks to everyone though for the suggestions thus far.

I don't know what the situation is for college teams, but Shanghai American played at HSNCT.

I tried explaining the concept of quiz bowl to friends in France and Spain; they all thought I was insane. I don't know about Chile, but the idea that quiz bowl even exists outside of the communities you mention explicitly is a doubtful prospect.

I think most Americans would have trouble following a accurate explanation of quizbowl, paticuarly the bit about pyrimidality.