Barrington INTERSTATE Tournament VII (3.13.10)

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Sat Mar 13, 2010 7:36 am

One question at a time. One round at a time.
It's game day.

Post by **Kouign Amann** » Sat Mar 13, 2010 8:05 pm

Former Fairfax County Public Schools students eagerly await the announcement of results.

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Sat Mar 13, 2010 8:50 pm

1st: Falls Church (VA) Longfellow 9-0
2nd: Lincolnshire Daniel Wright 8-1
3rd: Barrington Station 7-2
4th: New Lenox Liberty 5-4 (lost to Longfellow, Wright, and Station x2)

Consolation Champs: Normal Metcalf 6-3 (by points per controlled bonus over Crystal Lake Lundahl & Mundelein Carl Sandburg)

"Playoff Pool" Winners (that is, teams that didn't finish top half but won a pool with equally matched teams)
Deerfield Holy Cross
Millburn West
Buffalo Grove Twin Groves
Frankfort Summit Hill

Small Schools Champion (highest seed for the afternoon rounds of schools with <100 students per grade)
Palatine Quest

B-TOURNAMENT RESULTS
Rockford Washington B 8-0
Barrington Prairie B 7-1
Barrington Station B 5-3
Barrington Station C 4-4

Much more to come....

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 12:37 am

All right, so the attempt to have indiviual stats ready to hand out individual awards was an abyssmal failure that I take full blame for. Donald Taylor worked his tail off to get done what he could just to give me proper seedings for the post-lunch rounds. In the future, if I'm to use SQBS to determine points per controlled bonus for tiebreaking purposes, I either need a smaller tournament or a parallel stat keeper who enters "single-player" matches for the sole purpose of generating controlled bonus conversion rates. I think tracking individual stats (at least in such a fashion that awards can be handed out same day) are a non-starter with 400+ kids playing at the same time. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Anyway, I got some nice comments from the coaches regarding the moderator quality. The only real complaint I received was from a coach who felt a U of I moderator was inconsistent with accepting a "close enough" answer for one team but not accepting a butchered answer (a certain author's name with a misplaced S) from her team. I also got an earful from my assistant principal who didn't appreciate one of my collegiate workers dropping the f bomb for the room to hear during the halftime break during a conversation with the moderator.
A big snafu occurred when some of my A team players, bored with the LONG lunch, decided to go watch the B team play. Alas, they were on set 5; a set the 'A' team hadn't heard yet.

SO, Andy Wehrman came looking for me at the start of round 5 to advise me of the problem. I didn't have set 10 printed, but I DID have set 9 in a packet in hand, so I kicked the can down the road, and handed off set 9 (Wehrman didn't have a laptop, before you ask). This, of course, assured the fact my team would be playing in the final rounds, thus requiring another set change for round 9 (to set 10). So my team got their honesty tested twice in the same day when mods began to read previously heard sets. I guess it's a GOOD thing they passed, right?

Dan-Don · Post by **Dan-Don** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 12:53 am

I think the only problem with this tournament was the two rebrackets. Well that and some inexperienced moderators slowed the day down considerably. But overall, this tournament was extremely well-run and really made me happy for the future of quizbowl. These people were introduced to round robin playoffs, ACF format, and ppb tiebreakers at an early age which is important. These coaches and players griped about ACF format less than the coaches and players at Turnabout and the like. Although, I did overhear one coach saying "I don't like this new format. It requires the kids to pay attention." Longfellow's star player John (?) was ridiculous. Expect good things from TJ A in four years.

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 1:05 am

I was warned against the two re-brackets. But with 30+ teams and 10 packets, I couldn't formulate a better plan. Last year, with 32 A teams, I did the same kind of morning schedule of 8 heterogenous pools of 4, an early lunch (11 AM), then teams were into the bracketed games by 12:15. With these brackets, however, teams were eliminated by a round 5 loss if they were a 17-32 seed. The 8 rounds were done by 4 PM. This year, we had 9 rounds for the final teams, and 8 teams played all 9 rounds. But for the bottleneck at lunch, which had as much to do with trying to track everyone's individual stats as anything*, we would've been done slightly earlier, I believe. For the first time in a long time, I changed a LOT of things on my tourney and subsequently faced some real adversity today with managing it. I learned a lot.

* Don't anyone take this is some sort of slam against Donald's efforts. It's the understatement of the year to say he had his hands full with doing stats for 56 teams that had some doing subs as though it were a hockey game.

Wackford Squeers · Post by **Wackford Squeers** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 1:37 am

I'm working my ass off to get Carbondale Middle School to next year's incarnation of this tournament/middle school nationals.

Geringer · Post by **Geringer** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 1:42 am

The situation with the U of I moderator went down like this (not in my room, so this is secondhand):

Team A answers a tossup by giving the first name of a literary character. The answer line clearly stated that either the first or last name of the character was okay. Team B answers a tossup later and identifies the correct last name of an author, but gives the wrong middle name. The U of I moderator rightly does not accept the part, as a partially wrong answer is all the way wrong. Anyways, Team B ended up losing by something like 10 points and the coach was really mad about how the moderator was "favoring one team" by accepting the first answer and penalizing his/her team for giving the wrong answer. The moderator expressed his uneasiness to rule Team B incorrect, but he sided with the rules.

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 1:56 am

KHAAAAN please wrote:The situation with the U of I moderator went down like this (not in my room, so this is secondhand):

Team A answers a tossup by giving the first name of a literary character. The answer line clearly stated that either the first or last name of the character was okay. Team B answers a tossup later and identifies the correct last name of an author, but gives the wrong middle name. The U of I moderator rightly does not accept the part, as a partially wrong answer is all the way wrong. Anyways, Team B ended up losing by something like 10 points and the coach was really mad about how the moderator was "favoring one team" by accepting the first answer and penalizing his/her team for giving the wrong answer. The moderator expressed his uneasiness to rule Team B incorrect, but he sided with the rules.

Fair enough. Again, that was the only complaint against this reader. If she comes at me again (I think the girl who gave the answer is a student of mine*), I may break out the set to show her what exactly the mod was looking at. That should pretty much explain it right there.

EDIT: *I teach in two buildings, so clearly I'm talking about the one I DON'T coach for (at least not since 2003).

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:03 am

I have a comment from the coach of Geringer's alma mater...
"The questions seemed good ~ but very heavy on History, Political Science and Literature. Our "A" team was surprised on how few Math, Sports, Pop Culture and Fine Arts questions there were. I don't recall hearing any Home Economics or Computer Science questions, but I had to step out a couple of times."

Mechanical Beasts · Post by **Mechanical Beasts** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:11 am

Yeah, we consciously decided that QG overweights fine a---what??

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:22 am

I thought it might be instructive to compare round by round scores of the lowest afternoon pool (Apl.De.Ap) with a playoff pool (Congress) containing seeds 2, 7, 10, 15... I figure this catches a broad sample...

Round 4(Apl.De.Ap):
Palatine St. Theresa 160, River Grove Rhodes 150
Deerfield Holy Cross 350, Winnetka SS Faith, Hope & Charity 60
(Congress):
Barrington Station 360, Rockford Washington 180
River Forest Roosevelt 310, Mundelein Sandburg 220

Round 5 (Apl.De.Ap):
Deerfield Holy Cross 470, Palatine St. Theresa 110 <<<<<<<<<<<<<< same point total, between seeds 31 & 29, as a playoff match between 7 & 15
River Grove Rhodes 200, Winnetka Faith, Hope & Charity 110
(Congress):
Rockford Washington 310, River Forest Roosevelt 270
(2nd result not on same question set)

Round 6 (Apl.De.Ap):
Palatine St. Theresa 220, Winnetka Faith, Hope & Charity 140
Deerfield Holy Cross 310, River Grove Rhodes 110
(Congress):
Mundelein Sandburg 340, Rockford Washington 210
Barrington Station 330, River Forest Roosevelt 260

EDIT: spelling

Stephen Colbert · Post by **Stephen Colbert** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:59 am

I had some pre-tournament jitters that this set might be a little too difficult, but teams consistently exceeded my expectations (and I didn’t even get to read for Longfellow). Apart from the aforementioned delay during the first re-bracket, things went pretty smoothly. I heard no complaints about the bonus format or distribution of the questions. A few teams mentioned the lack of more traditional IESA categories, but not negatively. Again, I was blown away by the quality of competition and some amazing individual (super-early buzzes) and team (lots of swept bonuses) performances. Slight panic set in when Station professed to previously hearing round nine and thought they had also heard parts of round ten (fortunately this wasn’t the case). This wasn’t a big deal, but I probably should’ve been made aware of the change before the match just in case all teams weren’t as honest as Station.

I’m not going to mention the actual answer, but the best neg of the day was definitely “areola”.

kayli · Post by **kayli** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 3:36 am

Stephen Colbert wrote:I’m not going to mention the actual answer, but the best neg of the day was definitely “areola”.

Oh God, I must know now! The suspense!

jonah · Post by **jonah** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 4:03 am

Chametz wrote:I'm working my ass off to get Carbondale Middle School to next year's incarnation of this tournament/middle school nationals.

May as well get the kids used to absurdly long stretches of I-57 as early as possible.

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 10:12 am

Stephen Colbert wrote:I had some pre-tournament jitters that this set might be a little too difficult, but teams consistently exceeded my expectations (and I didn’t even get to read for Longfellow). Apart from the aforementioned delay during the first re-bracket, things went pretty smoothly. I heard no complaints about the bonus format or distribution of the questions. A few teams mentioned the lack of more traditional IESA categories, but not negatively. Again, I was blown away by the quality of competition and some amazing individual (super-early buzzes) and team (lots of swept bonuses) performances. Slight panic set in when Station professed to previously hearing round nine and thought they had also heard parts of round ten (fortunately this wasn’t the case). This wasn’t a big deal, but I probably should’ve been made aware of the change before the match just in case all teams weren’t as honest as Station.

I’m not going to mention the actual answer, but the best neg of the day was definitely “areola”.

Yeah, two things, if things hadn't been quite so hectic (cleaning and straighten 24 other rooms), I'd have slotted Longfellow in Wright's championship round slot so Dan-Don didn't get to hog all the face time with the best team. Sorry, Nathan. And I was actually on my way down to A-5 to make you aware of the round 9 issue with Station. Alas, you are so efficient at getting things moving, you discovered it before I got there, though I was freaked that my kids were saying they heard round 10 as NO ONE had been given paper copies of that packet, nor had they been authorized to read it. If by some cosmic screw-up they had heard round 10 somewhere, I was prepared to forfeit the match and 3rd place to Liberty.

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 10:52 am

Commenta from the 'B' coach of Geringer's alma mater...
"A few remarks concerning this otherwise great format:
1) I think it would help if the moderators would always announce whether it is a bonus (e.g. Bonus part three) or a toss-up. A good amount of esp. the younger (6th grade) players kept on mixing them up.
2) Some moderators were chewing gum...
3) Maybe telling the moderators that if there is an easy to identify ELL [NOTE: That's Educator jargon for English Language Learner] student to ask the student to spell it if it might be a pronunciation issue. I have a student who is in his second year of learning English and did not get some of the points although he knew it because pronounced it incorrectly (e.g. [redacted round 3, TU 18 answer line]). He still spoke with a strong accent and was easy to identify as an ELL. I am not upset about the lost points, I just felt sorry for him.

Again: thanks you, thank you, thank you for organizing this tournament every year. We have a hard time finding schools who are willing to play us and are not too far away. This is always a great day to get playing practice - especially for my weaker players. "

Jane Fairfax · Post by **Jane Fairfax** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 11:22 am

Moving Day wrote: (Congress):
Rockford Washington 310, River Forest Roosevelt 270

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:18 pm

Next comment... from a coach in Laird's final room:
"What I liked most about the format was the quick pace of play. The moderators in our matches were great. It was great that the questions were challenging, but too many were on mythology and literature."

I've invited him to look again at the distribution and make suggestions for what he'd like to see.

As for the rest, he said, "I appreciate your effort to pool teams of equal ability as they play through the day, but the lag time between pool play was too long. Some things must be sacrificed for others. We appreciate being able to play as many students and as many matches as we can. Our kids learned a lot and we are a stronger team today."

Indeed, I know things took far too long at lunch. If I were to use this format again, I must have a 2nd person dedicated to handling only the standings and bonus conversion rates. Live and learn. As he said, I think it's important for teams, especially the weaker ones, to get the chance to play those who are at their level.

EDIT: After reviewing the distro, he replied, "The distribution list and actual questions in each set did not match up. I would suggest less history and literature and mythology. More math, science, and language usage (foreign and English)."

dtaylor4 · Post by **dtaylor4** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 4:16 pm

Moving Day wrote:All right, so the attempt to have indiviual stats ready to hand out individual awards was an abyssmal failure that I take full blame for. Donald Taylor worked his tail off to get done what he could just to give me proper seedings for the post-lunch rounds. In the future, if I'm to use SQBS to determine points per controlled bonus for tiebreaking purposes, I either need a smaller tournament or a parallel stat keeper who enters "single-player" matches for the sole purpose of generating controlled bonus conversion rates. I think tracking individual stats (at least in such a fashion that awards can be handed out same day) are a non-starter with 400+ kids playing at the same time. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Stats went slowly because of wild inconsistencies in filling out the scoresheet. I can't name names, obviously, but among the anomalies i found:

1) No number for tossups heard, or where subs occurred
2) Individuals being given bonus points (again)
3) Bad math. As in, people cannot add numbers. In an area where comp math is normally a good part of the distribution, I would normally find this funny, were I not already seething.

If I had to guesstimate based on the number of scoresheets I entered (9 rounds' worth), I'd put the percentage with math errors at about 10-15%.

Jeff: Next year, if you do the same set-up, just have one person do B tournament stats, and another on the A side. I will never do a tournament of this size with bouncebacks by myself again.

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 4:35 pm

dtaylor4 wrote:
Moving Day wrote:All right, so the attempt to have indiviual stats ready to hand out individual awards was an abyssmal failure that I take full blame for. Donald Taylor worked his tail off to get done what he could just to give me proper seedings for the post-lunch rounds. In the future, if I'm to use SQBS to determine points per controlled bonus for tiebreaking purposes, I either need a smaller tournament or a parallel stat keeper who enters "single-player" matches for the sole purpose of generating controlled bonus conversion rates. I think tracking individual stats (at least in such a fashion that awards can be handed out same day) are a non-starter with 400+ kids playing at the same time. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Stats went slowly because of wild inconsistencies in filling out the scoresheet. I can't name names, obviously, but among the anomalies i found:

1) No number for tossups heard, or where subs occurred
2) Individuals being given bonus points (again)
3) Bad math. As in, people cannot add numbers. In an area where comp math is normally a good part of the distribution, I would normally find this funny, were I not already seething.

If I had to guesstimate based on the number of scoresheets I entered (9 rounds' worth), I'd put the percentage with math errors at about 10-15%.

Jeff: Next year, if you do the same set-up, just have one person do B tournament stats, and another on the A side. I will never do a tournament of this size with bouncebacks by myself again.

Nor will I ask you to. I definitely need more stats guys if I'm doing this next year.

Edward Elric · Post by **Edward Elric** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 5:50 pm

Moving Day wrote:
dtaylor4 wrote:
Moving Day wrote:All right, so the attempt to have indiviual stats ready to hand out individual awards was an abyssmal failure that I take full blame for. Donald Taylor worked his tail off to get done what he could just to give me proper seedings for the post-lunch rounds. In the future, if I'm to use SQBS to determine points per controlled bonus for tiebreaking purposes, I either need a smaller tournament or a parallel stat keeper who enters "single-player" matches for the sole purpose of generating controlled bonus conversion rates. I think tracking individual stats (at least in such a fashion that awards can be handed out same day) are a non-starter with 400+ kids playing at the same time. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Stats went slowly because of wild inconsistencies in filling out the scoresheet. I can't name names, obviously, but among the anomalies i found:

1) No number for tossups heard, or where subs occurred
2) Individuals being given bonus points (again)
3) Bad math. As in, people cannot add numbers. In an area where comp math is normally a good part of the distribution, I would normally find this funny, were I not already seething.

If I had to guesstimate based on the number of scoresheets I entered (9 rounds' worth), I'd put the percentage with math errors at about 10-15%.

Jeff: Next year, if you do the same set-up, just have one person do B tournament stats, and another on the A side. I will never do a tournament of this size with bouncebacks by myself again.
Nor will I ask you to. I definitely need more stats guys if I'm doing this next year.

Once I get a crash course in doing stats, I will definitely be willing to help out next year.

Geringer · Post by **Geringer** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 8:56 pm

Moving Day wrote:Geringer's Alma Mater

Considering on how eclectic their curriculum is, how much advanced lit they read, and that art and music are basically daily classes, I'm pretty surprised that they were complaining about questions that played to their strengths.

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 9:54 pm

Donald's stats will eventually be up, but I thought I'd share a couple of highlights from the huge pile of scoresheets... Jonathan Leidenheimer of Longfellow routinely scored over 100 points per game, including a clean sweep of the entire 2nd half of round 6.

In that match (vs. Bloomington) they had >23 PPCB, which included a pair of 0's, though BJHS managed a rebounded part on one of them. In Longfellow's opening round 640-20 pasting of Deerfield Holy Cross, only a pair of negs in the first half prevented Longfellow from a clean sweep of every toss-up.
Jonathon Mishori of Daniel Wright appears to have inherited the mantle of "The Next One" for Stevenson as he routinely scored over 60 points per match, including a 110 point round against Willowbrook Westview Hills in round 6.

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:17 am

Next comment from a new coach to the activity...
-----------------
General feedback on the tournament:

1.) There was some content overlap between rounds...([redacted] comes
to mind).

2.) We were in a tiebreaker situation and the first question didn't resolve
the tie. We were forced to go back to the tiebreaker question from a
previous round--it wasn't a problem because neither team had a tie in the
earlier round, but I could see this becoming a problem in either the first
round of the day or if one team had already been in a tie. You might want
more than one tiebreaker per round.

3.) Format was great; I just wish I could have been more helpful to you.

4.)**Most importantly: There were many many pronunciation issues from the
moderators we saw (countries, names, titles,etc.); I would hate for students
to answer incorrectly/not get a question because of a mispronounced word.
Some of that is unavoidable, but questions may need pronunciation keys, or
moderators may need some advance prep.
---------------------------
Now I'm curious where these pronunciation issues occurred and with which mods.... Given this coach's relative inexperience, though, she may not have a good grip on how bad things could've been!

t-bar · Post by **t-bar** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:28 am

Moving Day wrote: 1.) There was some content overlap between rounds...([REDACTED SPECIFIC ANSWER/TOPIC] comes
to mind).

Isn't this tournament going to be mirrored later at other locations?

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:31 am

Yes. My mistake. Thank you.

Awehrman · Post by **Awehrman** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:40 am

While it is still fresh in my mind, I wanted to make a few comments about the tournament, list some comments I heard from coaches and players, and say some general things about the questions.

With such a large field glitches and delays are to be expected, but some of the problems could have been avoided with some more advanced preparation. When I ran the Junior Wildcat tournament last year, we also had problems and delays keeping individual stats. We had no idea that teams would bring so many players and substitute players so many times during rounds. Even though we had a dedicated scorekeeper in each room, it was too much to handle, and our scoresheets were not adequate to keep track of all the players and substitutions. We ultimately gave up and just awarded individual prizes to the players who answered the most tossups total.

In the moderators' meeting on Saturday, no one talked about how to keep score or mentioned that we were expected to keep track of individual tossups heard, so I am not surprised that many of the moderators (especially those unfamiliar with quizbowl in general) did not include this information. Most of the readers on Saturday did not have scorekeepers, so keeping track of player movement while reading was an arduous task. Becuase the schedule did not give the suggested start times for preliminary rounds or lunch, I never knew whether I was ahead or behind and felt rushed to get my scoresheets turned in as quickly as possible even if they were not always fully tabulated. Many of the teams that I read for did not substitute during rounds at all. The players who were subbed in and out constantly rarely answered much and seemed frustrated by their coaches' actions. I'm not convinced that complete individual stats are even necessary at this level, but something needs to change if they are going to be kept. Perhaps in the future you could only allow subs at the half? Or perhaps someone could design a more middle-school friendly scoresheet?

On the whole, I thought the questions were outstanding. They did a great job separating teams. The questions, while challenging, rarely went unanswered in the matches I read. For the 6 or 7 rounds I read, I had only one or two bageled bonuses. The questions were generally well edited, but there were a number of small typographical and grammatical errors (lots of dangling participles, for instance). I noticed a couple of factual errors as well (in the text of the questions themselves, not in the answer lines). While the questions played well, I found many of them over-wrought. This was likely from having so many writers and editors. Some of the tossups were overly technical, needlessly conforming to current ACF style guidelines rather than simply being written for the middle school audience. I noticed this the most on literature tossups. Many literature questions described the plots of several works by a common author and then, in the final line, revealed the titles for the giveaway. In my rooms, these almost always became a buzzer race at the end. I understand why the questions were written this way--to reward players who had read the works, but so few middle schoolers actually read classic literature, that these questions became tedious. Art and music were similarly technical, which is why I think you have received complaints about them. It wasn't that there were too many, but because these questions often went to the end, it felt like more time was devoted to them.

I heard players and coaches complain about the lack of computational math. At least one team had to bench their math computation specialist because there were not enough questions for him/her to answer. This was surprising to me, since I think Jeff was clear with the coaches that there would be very little if any computation. I also heard complaints that there were too many myth questions and not enough American history. I heard no complaints about the length of the questions or their difficulty nor about the format itself, which is great news.

On a more nitpicky level, the questions often misused and overused the word "entity". Entity could stand for anything from an organism, to a place, to an object, to a work of art. When I think of the word "entity," I usually think of it in the legal sense of a person or group that has legal rights (a corporation for instance). In the context of these questions, "entity" usually just meant "thing," and probably should have been replaced with that or a better, more descriptive noun or pronoun. The word "it" was similarly underused.

I think the Barrington tournament once again proved that middle schoolers can play and thrive on good pyramidal quizbowl questions. I think any other teams who will play on this set in the coming weeks should expect a terrific experience, one that will leave them wondering why they tolerated bad questions for so long.

Awehrman · Post by **Awehrman** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 12:08 pm

Also, I heard a number of players talk about the lack of pop culture or trash questions, especially sports. One particular music bonus about a group that many of these kids' parents may have been too young for, was met with blank stares in my room. If teams read my Junior Wildcat tournament they may have expected more pop culture in general, but what was there probably should have been written more to the tastes and interests of 11-13 year-olds. In a similar vein, I thought the juvenile literature was very well written and executed, and it seemed to be appreciated by the teams.

dtaylor4 · Post by **dtaylor4** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 12:23 pm

There was 1/1 myth in each round. Some questions in other categories utilized cross-categorical clues, which may have given the appearance of more myth. I (and probably others here) can expound on how easy it is for "myth" to cross over into history or literature, so I won't go further there.

Because of the tiebreaker used (points per bonus controlled), it was necessary to try to track individual stats. I can't out specific rooms/readers, because I had no clue who was where. I created a template for a sub-friendly scoresheet, and asked Jeff to include it in team and moderator packets, and should have taken the time before the tournament to expound on it. That falls on me. Also, if it were up to me, I'd do two things: subs only at half (or not at all), and a hard cap on players per team.

Given my background, I've tried to think of controls to get coaches to go along with this, whether they like it or not. The one I'd like to see given a dry run is a per-player fee, with a sliding scale for B/C teams to encourage teams to enter them. In practice, my major concern is that teams will be forced to bring chaperones, which isn't entirely workable.

I'm glad the Juvenile Lit went over well. Going in, it was the category I worried about the most.

As for trash: this is primarily an academic tournament. We tried to write accessible pop culture, but could not exactly solicit the opinions of people in the target age group.

David Riley · Post by **David Riley** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 12:32 pm

At my middle school tournament, I always tell coaches that they can only sub at the half. "Subapalooza" (the practice of bringing 10 + students on a team and expecting them all to play at some point during a match) has long been one of the great banes of middle school quiz bowl. There are still a few high school coaches who try to get away with this practice as well, and when it happnes, it really adds a lot of unnecessary time to the match. I'll take havebouncebacks (gasp!) over subapalooza any day.

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 2:02 pm

Next comment from a coach...
"Thank you for a great tournament, Jeff! Our students were challenged and
we have a better handle on our strengths and weaknesses. My team really
liked the bonus format but they did not feel that 15 seconds was
sufficient for the few computation questions (and this came from my
players who are in Honors Geometry at Stevenson).

Overall, I thought the questions were fair but slightly skewed. My
impression from one of your emails was that each question set would have
one of 20 different categories but this did not seem to be the case. Some
rounds seemed very heavy on mythology, music or English. I look forward
to having the print-out for future reference."

Papa's in the House · Post by **Papa's in the House** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 7:17 pm

I apologize for not telling mods how to keep score. By the time I found out that Mr Price was talking to the kids about the rules, I had just enough time to get the QB mods to start answering questions about the rules that some of the non-QB mods had.

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 9:34 pm

And again, it seems I simply may be guilty of trying too many new things all at once; Individual stats and awards, asking coaches to keep score AND diligent track of statistics within their rooms, giving them a new scoresheet, doing round-robin playoff pools, breaking ties by points per bonus controlled, a format where the games finish more quickly... Am I missing anything?
Mirroring this set demanded the keeping of stats to be published; something I hadn't done before with a tourney this big. Last year, I kept no stats and had cards prepared to tell teams where they had to go during the playoffs, or if they had been eliminated, and things ran like clockwork.
As Donald said, I definitely can't expect to do it this way again next year without some big changes.

Stained Diviner · Post by **Stained Diviner** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:34 pm

You got noticed downstate.

Wackford Squeers · Post by **Wackford Squeers** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:16 pm

The mention of bad quizbowl as "progressiveness" in that article is both bothersome and disconcerting.

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:48 pm

My team, champions for 5 of the past 6 years, was mysteriously not invited this year.

kayli · Post by **kayli** » Tue Mar 16, 2010 12:06 am

They also don't seem to understand the concept of home room.

Stephen Colbert · Post by **Stephen Colbert** » Tue Mar 16, 2010 12:18 am

Sebby drove to Streator from his Naperville home and slept on the Riss' couch Friday night.

Really? Naperville is like 90 minutes away from Streator. What's the shower situation like on Saturday morning? I'm guessing a high likelihood of quizbowl funk.

the return of AHAN · Post by **the return of AHAN** » Sat Mar 27, 2010 10:45 am

Received the preliminary round stats file from Donald. The preliminary round standings (that is, rounds 1-6 in the 'A' tournament, and rounds 1-5 in the 'B' tournament) are up. The "A" tournament was rebracketed after 3 rounds; the pools named after streets in the Chicago St. Patrick's Day Parade are the top 16 teams, while the bottom 16 played in pools named for the Black Eyed Peas.

EDIT: Fixing my idiocy