Possible September Tournament

[jonah]

Coaches should

No sentence beginning that way in Illinois has ever been fulfilled. Especially not ones that continue

have enough sense

Sorry.

[Bonito]

I would be thrilled to get out to Arlington Heights to come read, if you need it.

[Dan-Don]

I would be thrilled to get out to Arlington Heights to come read, if you need it.

I was just going to ask you, actually. I will put you down for reading. Thank you so much!

[Stephen Colbert]

If you're short moderators, I'll drive up to read at this.

[Kanga-Rat Murder Society]

Black list Greg Ward and Sarah Peluse from us, Sarah played varsity all year and and Greg put up 15 at HSNCT and has picked up basically everything we've given him so far.

I don't know these two, are they really on the same level of all the people on the blacklist in that they'd make short work of a Novice set? If they are, I guess I'll add them.

Greg should without question be blacklisted. He was our leading scorer at New Trier last year and he had the widest knowledge base on our team. When we were reading through HAVOC packets, he was putting up 20-25 PPB on his own. He will be better by the start of next year.

As for Sarah, I do not think that she should be blacklisted. She was on our A Team last year, but she was there for her expertise in one area: Biology. Aside from Bio, she is a Novice by every definition.


Your list seemed all right. I do not know what year Prathyum is, but I would not say that he is good enough to be blacklisted.

Zahed´s System

My problem with this is that you are assuming that coaches understand the idea of a Novice Tournament. IMHO, this is wishful thinking. Most coaches in the NW Suburbs (the area right around Viator) have never played good quizbowl. I know that almost all of the MSL is content with Bryce Avery. These schools are often under the impression that they are very good because they went 7-3 in our conference. If you market this as a novice tournament, you may encourage these coaches to not bring their best players, when in actuality this is the perfect set to introduce these players to good quizbowl. It is true that the Greenes and Rileys of the world know who should be playing. However, the NW Suburbs are full of great schools without active teams. If you think that the coaches of these schools know who belongs in a novice tournament, you are sadly mistaken.

I was hoping that this tournament would go a long way toward the expansion of good quizbowl in the area. I expected it to draw teams like Hersey, Elk Grove, Schaumburg, etc. Apparently, the emphasis is not on these teams, but rather the Auburns and Loyolas of the world. If this is the case, I think that you are missing a great chance to introduce local teams to GREAT quizbowl that is not overly intimidating. I think that the best system would be the previously talked about blacklist and i hope that you choose to go with that.

[Stained Diviner]

I agree with Nicholas. Zahed's system seemed pretty confusing to me--I wasn't really sure who on my team it applied to. I think you want to list somewhere around 10-20 of the best returning players and add a note saying that if anybody on your team is one a similar level as these players, then they should not play.

As Glerum said earlier, there are not too many returning players in Illinois who would be bored by this tournament because they would be buzzing in real early on most of the tossups and sweeping most of the bonuses.

Also, keep in mind that the early date of this tournament will prevent it from attracting many of the teams it should attract. New tournaments with good questions have trouble attracting 20 teams on any date of the year, and putting it in September lowers that expectation. It's great that this tournament is happening, but let's not pretend that it is going to solve our largest problems.

[Dan-Don]

I think this is what I'll be writing in the invitation:

This tournament is, first and foremost, a novice tournament. This means that it is intended for frosh/soph players, players with moderate-to-no Varsity experience, and players without the potential to be named to the All-State team. Essentially this means that almost every player in Illinois can come to this tournament, just not any "superstars." We are trusting coaches to decide which of their players fit inside these parameters and which don’t. We reserve the right to blacklist any player that we do not feel is a true “novice.”

I can amend this statement, if you guys have any suggestions. I might take out the "frosh/players, players with moderate-to-no Varsity experience" part and just leave it at "players without the potential to be named to the All-State team."

What do you think?

[dtaylor4]

I agree with Nicholas. Zahed's system seemed pretty confusing to me--I wasn't really sure who on my team it applied to. I think you want to list somewhere around 10-20 of the best returning players and add a note saying that if anybody on your team is one a similar level as these players, then they should not play.

As Glerum said earlier, there are not too many returning players in Illinois who would be bored by this tournament because they would be buzzing in real early on most of the tossups and sweeping most of the bonuses.

Also, keep in mind that the early date of this tournament will prevent it from attracting many of the teams it should attract. New tournaments with good questions have trouble attracting 20 teams on any date of the year, and putting it in September lowers that expectation. It's great that this tournament is happening, but let's not pretend that it is going to solve our largest problems.

What's not to understand? If you're a freshman or sophomore, OK. If you're an upperclassman who has little (if any) experience, OK. This metric is miles better than the convoluted crap involving banning certain players.

There are a number of JV tournaments, and this should be seen in a similar light.

Dan: I would do exactly the opposite.

[Dan-Don]

Dan: I would do exactly the opposite.

It's really not a matter of that anymore...Christian Carter told me to go with Zahed's system. I'm just wondering if my invitation sounds good.

[dtaylor4]

Dan: I would do exactly the opposite.

It's really not a matter of that anymore...Christian Carter told me to go with Zahed's system. I'm just wondering if my invitation sounds good.

I meant in terms of the wording in the invitation.

[Dan-Don]

I meant in terms of the wording in the invitation.

You mean with respect to that change in phrasing I was discussing? In other words you feel it should read:

This means that it is intended for frosh/soph players and players with moderate-to-no Varsity A-Team experience.

[dtaylor4]

I meant in terms of the wording in the invitation.

You mean with respect to that change in phrasing I was discussing? In other words you feel it should read:

This means that it is intended for frosh/soph players and players with moderate-to-no Varsity A-Team experience.

This means that it is intended for frosh/soph players and players with no Varsity A-Team experience.

[Dan-Don]

This means that it is intended for frosh/soph players and players with no Varsity A-Team experience.

Hmm..I'm a little nervous about qualifying it with "no Varsity A-Team experience." Since we don't usually field B and C teams (and the same is true for other "bad" local teams that might be interested), every one of our players has played a few questions on Varsity A.

[cvdwightw]

Perhaps you should word this to mean "players who have competed on the varsity A team at one or fewer tournaments using pyramidal questions. If you are unsure whether your team participated in a tournament using pyramidal questions last year, please send us a list of tournaments you played in and we will tell you which, if any, used pyramidal questions."*

Blacklisting players by name is not a good idea. Neither is blacklisting varsity programs based on what they did last year. A blanket eligibility rule is a good idea. You are guaranteed not to have superstar players slip through your net. You are also guaranteed not to eliminate new varsity players. Using the above language, you are also guaranteed that you are not arbitrarily excluding teams that could be introduced to the new format, and you're also not going to blacklist the junior that played 3 games with the A team at a single tournament. What you do want to blacklist are the people who have been playing pyramidal tournaments for a little while; regardless of whether or not they're actually good, they'll have inflated numbers at this tournament.

*This assumes, of course, that you are familiar with all area tournaments, or at least all area tournaments that used pyramidal questions.

[Dan-Don]

Donald Taylor, one of the authors of the set, suggested this wording:

This tournament is, first and foremost, a novice, or “Junior Varsity,” tournament. This means that it is intended for frosh/soph players and players with no meaningful Varsity A-Team experience. We are trusting coaches to decide which of their players fit these parameters and which don’t. The Tournament Director has the right to eject any individual player whose presence is deemed to violate the spirit of these eligibility rules. Such decisions are to be made solely by the tournament director and are not protestable.

Now that makes sense, but I'm afraid it might scare away potential tournament-goers. Now Dwight, I like your wording a lot and here's why: We have a lot of neighboring public schools who I'm sure would be interested in this tournament only because of its proximity. Take Hersey High School, for example. This is a local public school, and I happen to know that one of their players might coax their coach intro bringing them. Now, they played a freshman named Georg on their Varsity A-Team all year long because, to them, he was a superstar. Having played him, I can safely say there is no reason for Georg to be blacklisted. But, with the wording of Dwight's invitation, he wouldn't be blacklisted because Hersey (and the rest of our local public schools) really only plays the MSL (Bryce Avery questions), Fremd Varsity (Question Bank), and IHSA. So, Dwight's wording works because these tourneys don't use pyramidal questions.

As always, I'm not sure what to do and I need everyone's advice. Once I'm sure I have the set, I'll try and work more closely with the people in charge of the Fall Novice Set to work on the wording.

[cvdwightw]

Now that makes sense, but I'm afraid it might scare away potential tournament-goers. Now Dwight, I like your wording a lot and here's why: We have a lot of neighboring public schools who I'm sure would be interested in this tournament only because of its proximity...Hersey (and the rest of our local public schools) really only plays the MSL (Bryce Avery questions), Fremd Varsity (Question Bank), and IHSA. Now...technically, all those tournaments are pyramidal questions, just not good ones. So I'd probably have to include a list of "good tournaments."

That is true: perhaps you could say something like, "players who competed on the varsity A team at two or more of the following tournaments are ineligible:

• . All other players that meet [Illinois eligibility rules] are eligible. Coaches are responsible for determining which of their players are eligible."
  
  What this also does is advertises a bunch of other tournaments that may or may not be local, that teams may or may not have known about before. Half the battle is getting teams to realize that there's more quizbowl out there than whatever they've been playing forever.
  
  One thing that I like about Donald's eligibility announcement is that it leaves final eligibility decisions in the hands of the TD. When I advised on our announcement for Baby Anteater (our novice tournament last year), we took the opposite approach for the same purpose. First, we said clearly what the eligibility rules were. Then, we added the following clause: "however, if you would like to play more experienced players, please contact [the TD] and the club will make a decision on a case-by-case basis." Realistically, you should choose one of the two options: "coaches decide who's eligible; we reserve the right to kick out players whose presence violates the spirit of the eligibility rules" or "we decide who's eligible; we reserve the right to include players based on coaches' appeal if their presence does not violate the spirit of the eligibility rules."

[Dan-Don]

Mmhmm. Since the Fall Novice People told me they were comfortable with the system we've been discussing, I'm just going to leave it like that for now. After the 4th, if I get the set, I'll try to work more closely with the Fall Novice people in determining the exact wording and limitations.