TJIAT on 12/15/12

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TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by tribble »

We’re pleased to announce that the annual Thomas Jefferson Invitational Academic Tournament (TJIAT) will be held on Saturday, December 15. We’ll be using HSAPQ’s Tournament #32. The final field cap will depend on how many readers we end up with; we hope to get somewhere between 24 and 36 teams.

Logistics:
Our address is 6560 Braddock Road Alexandria, VA 22312. Registration will start at 8:00, with the opening meeting starting at 9:00. Breakfast will be provided. We’re unable to sell pizza to teams at lunchtime but will provide a list of local fast-food-style restaurants at registration.

Fees:
Registration fees are $70 per team coming from a school that regularly participates in pyramidal quizbowl and $40 per team coming from a school new to pyramidal quizbowl. $10 discounts are available for each of the following: bringing a moderator with experience reading for pyramidal quizbowl tournaments, bringing a fully functional buzzer set (with 8 or more working buzzers), or traveling over 200 miles.

A team is defined as being new to pyramidal quizbowl if no team from that school has played in any regular-difficulty pyramidal tournaments in the past two years. Examples of pyramidal tournaments include ones run on question sets written by NAQT or HSAPQ (with the exception of VHSL Scholastic Bowl events) or pyramidal-style housewrites (e.g. GSAC). Tournaments run on novice-level pyramidal sets, such as Fall Novice Tournament, or more subject-specific pyramidal tournaments, such as National History Bee and Bowl, are not counted for these purposes. If you have any question about whether your team counts as being new to pyramidal quizbowl, please don’t hesitate to email us. We’re also willing to make exceptions to this definition on a case-by-case basis.

We can accept registration fees in the form of cash or check. Checks should be made payable to “TJHSST-Quizbowl” with your school’s name and “Registration Fee” in the memo line. We would prefer that payment be brought on the day of the tournament, but mailing in advance is fine too. Anything sent via snail mail should be addressed to TJHSST Quizbowl c/o Jennifer Seavey.

Signup:
Sign up on our website. This is the link to the field update; I’ll also keep a field update running in this post. If you need to change your registration information at any time (e.g. register one additional or one fewer team), you can do so here.

There is no minimum team size, but in order to insure that all players get a good amount of playing time, rosters are limited to six players. If your school plans on bringing more than six players, you must register a second team.

Any questions can be directed to the TJ quizbowl officers at [email protected]. We hope to see you in December!
Sarah
TJHSST '13
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by tgaddy »

Unfortunately, Blair is going to have to miss this tournament because of our It's Academic taping that day.
Thomas Gaddy
Montgomery Blair High School '13
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by tribble »

Field (28):
C.D. Hylton
Centennial (3)
GDS
George Mason
Gonzaga
Howard
Langley (3)
Longfellow (2)
Maggie Walker
Marshall
New Kent (4)
Quince Orchard
RM (2)
Robinson
South County (2)
Wakefield
Walter Johnson
Woodgrove
Last edited by tribble on Wed Dec 12, 2012 6:29 pm, edited 13 times in total.
Sarah
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by QOHS »

Quince Orchard is interested. Will confirm after our long and arduous field-trip-approval process is complete.
Rev. Joshua M. Schuman
Quince Orchard High School
Gaithersburg, Maryland
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

If you guys need additional moderators, I'd like to volunteer; I should be available that day.
Will Alston
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by jonathanmarx »

tribble wrote:Field (17):
Marshall
Cool! It's great to see these guys at a tournament - it'll be interesting to see how good Jonathan (and his theoretical teammates) have gotten!
Jonathan Marx
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by tribble »

The field is now capped at 24; we might expand later if enough teams are interested and we have enough moderators.
Sarah
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by tribble »

Bumped because this tournament is now less than two weeks away. To clarify the previous post: the field will be capped when we have 24 teams registered; with 20 teams currently registered, we still have four spots open. Signups will likely be locked when we reach 24 teams or midway through next week, whichever comes first.
Sarah
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by Howard »

Upon attempting to enter, the website reports that the field has been filled. No waitlist option is given.

Unless things change, we're prepared to bring 1 team, 2 buzzers, and one moderator.
John Gilbert
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Ellicott City, MD

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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by Howard »

Howard wrote:Unless things change, we're prepared to bring 1 team, 2 buzzers, and one moderator.
Scratch this for now. I've just been notified my students seem to have difficulty separating December 8 and December 15 into separate time entities.

Sorry for any confusion.
John Gilbert
Coach, Howard High School Academic Team
Ellicott City, MD

"John Gilbert is a quiz bowl god" -- leftsaidfred
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by tribble »

Howard wrote:Upon attempting to enter, the website reports that the field has been filled. No waitlist option is given.
Sorry about that; apparently nobody's ever built that function into the website for some reason. I'll talk to our webmaster about it. For now, teams wishing to be added to the waitlist should email their registrations to [email protected] instead.
Sarah
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by tribble »

An email was sent out this morning to all registered teams with information on tournament logistics. If you didn't get it, let me know. With three teams on the waitlist now, we'll look into the possibility of expanding the field and keep everybody posted. Unfortunately, we're limited by moderators and room space (we lost several rooms to the beginning stages of our school's renovation this month), so I don't think we'll expand the field to any more than 30 teams.
Sarah
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by tribble »

The field has now been expanded to 30 teams, so all four teams on the wait list have been added and we still have two spots left. We're pretty much maxed out at 30 teams, however, so the field won't be expanding any more.
Sarah
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by harborseal »

Registration closes in two days and we still have room for one more team.
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by tribble »

This tournament has now been certified platinum by PACE, so the top 25% of the field will qualify for the NSC. On another note, with 29 teams registered, we have only one spot left in the field! Registration will be closed once we reach 30 teams or at 4:00 on Friday afternoon, whichever comes first.
Sarah
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by tribble »

Prelim stats! There were two circles of death in the prelims. The first one, between Woodgrove, RM B, and GDS in the "Ding Dongs" bracket was played off on half-packets. GDS and Woodgrove, which had the two lower ppbs, played each other; GDS, the winner, went on to lose to RM B on another half-packet. The other circle of death, between New Kent C, Longfellow A, and Robinson in the "Ho-Hos" bracket was broken based on PPB because it didn't determine who would progress to the playoffs (and possibly qualify for nationals). Robinson was 4th, Longfellow A was 5th, and New Kent C was 6th.
Sarah
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by harborseal »

After doing round robins in 7 brackets of 4 after lunch we intended to run cross-bracket games for placement among all the teams but were cut short by time. As a result, only two final games were played between the top four teams - Maggie Walker played George Mason for first, RM A played New Kent A for third. Congratulations to Maggie Walker for placing first. RM A came in third, New Kent A fourth. Full stats will be posted within the next few days.

Thank you to all the teams who came out today, we hope you enjoyed the tournament. I know several coaches were wondering if they could get a copy of the set, we've emailed HSAPQ and will see about whether or not this will be possible. I'd also like to especially thank all the coaches, parents, and students who helped moderate and scorekeep the games for their patience and cooperation. Enormous thanks to everybody for bearing with us while we dealt with the circles of death and the time crunch at the end. We apologize to anybody who was inconvenienced by waiting for their buzzers, we didn't expect to be short on time. It was great to see so many teams from Fairfax County, we hope to host you guys again at our housewrite in March.
Nadège Aoki
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by Matt Weiner »

harborseal wrote:I know several coaches were wondering if they could get a copy of the set, we've emailed HSAPQ and will see about whether or not this will be possible.
Hosts are free to sell or give away paper copies of the sets. Digital copies will be posted at the end of the competition year at http://hsapq.com/samples.
Matt Weiner
Advisor to Quizbowl at Virginia Commonwealth University / Founder of hsquizbowl.org
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by Off To See The Lizard »

Just a question, how come New Kent A got to play off against RM A for third place, even though Walter Johnson beat New Kent A in the playoff bracket? Either way thanks for running a very smooth tournament.
Sameen Belal
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by tribble »

Stats!
Off To See The Lizard wrote:Just a question, how come New Kent A got to play off against RM A for third place, even though Walter Johnson beat New Kent A in the playoff bracket? Either way thanks for running a very smooth tournament.
Looks like that was an error on our part. Both Walter Johnson and New Kent A were 7-2 for the day at the end of playoffs but, as you said, Walter Johnson beat New Kent (and, looking at playoffs alone, WJ was 2-1 and New Kent was 1-2). The issue was that by the end of the day we were trying very hard to get the finals started so we could clear out of the building. The scoresheet for the WJ vs New Kent A game was very late in reaching the war room and we were not aware of this situation at the time we made the decision to start finals. Apologies are due to Walter Johnson, we did not properly evaluate and play out this tie situation. Ideally the final playoff matches would have been organized better, but I hope that otherwise the tournament was to the teams' satisfaction. Walter Johnson still remains in the top 25% of the field and they qualify for PACE NSC, if that is any consolation.
Sarah
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by Off To See The Lizard »

tribble wrote:Stats!
Off To See The Lizard wrote:Just a question, how come New Kent A got to play off against RM A for third place, even though Walter Johnson beat New Kent A in the playoff bracket? Either way thanks for running a very smooth tournament.
Looks like that was an error on our part. Both Walter Johnson and New Kent A were 7-2 for the day at the end of playoffs but, as you said, Walter Johnson beat New Kent (and, looking at playoffs alone, WJ was 2-1 and New Kent was 1-2). The issue was that by the end of the day we were trying very hard to get the finals started so we could clear out of the building. The scoresheet for the WJ vs New Kent A game was very late in reaching the war room and we were not aware of this situation at the time we made the decision to start finals. Apologies are due to Walter Johnson, we did not properly evaluate and play out this tie situation. Ideally the final playoff matches would have been organized better, but I hope that otherwise the tournament was to the teams' satisfaction. Walter Johnson still remains in the top 25% of the field and they qualify for PACE NSC, if that is any consolation.
It's completely fine, i understand that you guys were pressed on time especially considering the angry custodial dude's attitude. I'd still like to reiterate that the tournament was very well run and that we are perfectly happy with finally qualifying for PACE. Thanks!
Sameen Belal
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by Aishvar »

Oh my god, that custodian. Literally yelling like a madman. Thought there was a fire or something for some time.
Aishvar Radhakrishnan, Langley HS '13
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

Well, I certainly had a blast reading at this tournament. The questions had a lot of issues with the lead-ins in my opinion, but I guess this wasn't supposed to be the hardest question set ever.

Also, WJ has gotten a million percent better since I last saw them play. Kudos to them.
Last edited by naan/steak-holding toll on Sun Dec 16, 2012 12:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by Lawrence Simon »

I'm sorry Quince Orchard could not attend, both of our captains were pre-occupied by a school production and two of our four team members for the tournament dropped out at the last minute. But it looks like this was a good tournament and congratulations to the winners on qualifying for NSC.
Lawrence Simon
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Re: TJIAT on 12/15/12

Post by NKBoughner »

This tournament was run very well by TJ, thanks to them. My only gripe is that the fiery janitor didn't qualify for PACE
Nathaniel Boughner
New Kent HS 2013
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