2006 NAQT HSNCT

Dormant threads from the high school sections are preserved here.
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Post by Strongside »

I am Brendan Byrne from Mounds Park Academy in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Our team finished in tenth place and I won the individual scoring award. I have browsed these forums quite a bit lately but I don't post much.

This was my first time at a National Quiz Bowl Tournament and I had a lot of fun. I thought the questions were very well written and the logistics were great. That system with the exchanging of cards was pretty innovative and it worked well.

By luck of the draw we got paired with Richard Montgomery in the first round and they were excellent. I had five powers the round we played them and we still lost by 155.

I really liked how the playoffs were run and I liked how they were double elimination. You get to play more games and one loss doesn't ruin it for us. The playoffs were interesting for us. We went 6-4 in the prelims but we had more points per 20 tossups heard than all of the other 6-4 teams and 13 of the 15 7-3 teams. Our team also gave up more points per game than any other team which was very strange. Also in round 10 (the third to last round) I didn't get any credit for any points I got during that one round in the individual standings. I don't know if this was only an error made on our team or all teams. It's not like it matters that much and I still ended up in first place without those points but I was curious about it.

We got the 24 seed going into the playoffs and we played the 25 seed St. Thomas Academy from Minnesota. (We were the only two Minnesotan teams to make the playoffs). St. Thomas won our state championship and oddly it was only the second time we played them this season even though we had both gone to the same tournament several times. We beat St. Thomas 295-160 but then we lost to Shady Side 380-300. We beat TJ B 375-215 and edged out Dunbar 250-210. We lost to Maggie Walker A 345-255 but since there were six 3-2 teams at this time they had a mini-playoff to determine who would get the tenth place trophy. We beat Wilmington Charter A 320-240 and Dupont Manual 310-285. In the tenth place game we played Brookwood who was the 31 seed (Oddly enough were the only two teams in the top 15 with a seed lower than 15) We won that match 255-185.

I know I rambled on but there were a lot of very strange statistical superlatives that our team achieved including me somehow getting the individual scoring title among all these great players.

Kudos to NAQT for running a great tournament. They do not make much money yet they do a great job. Running this tournament took an immense amount of work and a lot could go wrong but everything went without a hitch. It was also cool to have Jeopardy tryouts and NAQT shoud be very proud about how the tournament went.
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Surprise o the day

Post by We_all_is...SSAQB »

What do y'all think the surprise of the day was? This might be a little bit of a favoritism thing...but I think that Shady Side (us) coming in 5th and nearly beating both State College and DCC in our last 2 rounds.
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Post by bsmith »

Seeing Lisgar reach the playoffs made my day. I was, honestly, expecting to console them after a triple-digit final ranking.
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Re: Surprise o the day

Post by Strongside »

We_all_is...SSAQB wrote:What do y'all think the surprise of the day was? This might be a little bit of a favoritism thing...but I think that Shady Side (us) coming in 5th and nearly beating both State College and DCC in our last 2 rounds.
I didn't feel there were too many surprises in the playoffs as 13 of the top 15 seeds made it to the round of 15. I was surprised that in the mini six team tournament for second place the two teams that ended up in the championship were the two lowest seeds in that tournament.
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Post by dtaylor4 »

For those who care, congratulations to Lisgar for winning the inaugural "International Cup" against Shanghai American School. It was a good match, which Lisgar won as time was running out.
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Post by Lapego1 »

To add on to the results, State College A beat Maggie Walker A 360-330 I think. State College would have had to then beat RichMo twice for the championship. They pulled off one win by 100+ points, then lost the second of the finals matches by 85 or so from what I hear. State College had a 70 point swing protest, but it didn't matter in the end.
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Re: Surprise o the day

Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

We_all_is...SSAQB wrote:What do y'all think the surprise of the day was? This might be a little bit of a favoritism thing...but I think that Shady Side (us) coming in 5th and nearly beating both State College and DCC in our last 2 rounds.
1. GPN, yea this weekend they were the great quizbowl phenomenon, I'm not even going to try to explain how they went 9-1, beat good teams, and yet finished below us (MLW B). I can't tell if they are/will be a Derrick Cope or a Jeff Gordon...

2. TJ missing a ton of B and C people and still having their A and B teams finish Saturday with the same record.

3. The whole prelim card system somehow working (for the most part - only problem was the playing teams twice thing)

4. Kind of part of #3 - Our A team beating State College by (I think) 120 twice on Saturday then losing by 30 today, hats off to them really, I mean it didn't even look like A was playing badly or anything in that round.

5. "Resurrection" not selling very well. Perhaps some testimonials from Simha and Chris Ray (hopefully even the whole RM team) will improve this in the future, but I mean come on guys, 5 bucks for 15 quality tracks of that ill Cap City flavah. Then again, I wasn't really able to devote much time to pushing that ish, busy weekend...
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Post by solidarity »

[Edit] Sorry, didn't read the rest of the posts. :oops:
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Post by Wall of Ham »

I think we could have won if I only remembered the correct name of that Shakespeare character. Our thepians performed that play, and I must have misheard the name. I was only off by one letter, but that cost us our momentum and let RM gain theirs in the second half.

Hmm... Now I'm just complaining about the past and the woulda-shoulda-couldas and the what ifs...

But RM played pretty badly compared to what I've seen before, and made some bad negs, which we took advantage of in the first and second games. I think we are a slightly worse team than RM or Gov overall, but we played really well in the final couple of rounds. We came from a deficit of over a hundred points to winning in the end in at least 4 of our games Sunday.

gg, guys. Enjoy Japan.

gj, my team.

Solidarity Forever!


(edited: to not reveal NAQT answer)
Last edited by Wall of Ham on Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by jbarnes112358 »

Hopefully, NAQT will post full results soon. I may post more thoughts at that time.

We, Maggie Walker GS, are happy with our third place finish. Sure, we would have been happier had we gotten that last toss-up against State College to get our chance at RM in the finals. But, yes, it is indeed difficult to beat a team of the quality of State College three times in the same tournament. State College is a class act. I never heard them even mention the fact that they had some key personnel missing. I never heard them making excuses. They came tantalizingly close to pulling off the improbable, but really made RM work for their championship. If State College is back to full force, they should really be a force to be reckoned with at PACE. They are a very strong team even playing without some of their key regulars.

Congratulations to Richard Montgomery for surviving all the pressure and hype to pull out the championship. They have been an awesome team all year and are certainly deserving of their victory.
Last edited by jbarnes112358 on Mon Jun 05, 2006 10:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by nurgles_herald »

Melonman64 wrote:How did State College B do?
Yo, Chandragupta. We did alright in the pre-lims, finishing with 7-3. Ben totally crushed everyone else on the team for personal stats, ranking 51st in individual stats or something (after the prelims, I think), but I averaged about 20 ppg, I think. In the playoffs we straggled along and eliminated a couple of teams we probably shouldn't have but did anyways, and finished in the top 15. We didn't get a trophy, though. We lost the first game to get bling by 10 points.

And that's the history of State College B


And congratulations to RM for beating our A team! I was, naturally, rooting for us, but don't worry. We'll rebound. We were missing half of our A-team, so PACE should be mildly more interesting. Too bad the format is so... alien.
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Post by davinci »

The one thing I didn't like about the playoff formatting was how in the double elimination rounds they used the preliminary seeds in order to rank the pools of temas by record. Every other double elimination playoff bracketting I've ever done (KIPR Botball Challenge), makes the paths set so you know once you've won your game which team you will be playing. My team finished Saturday 6-4 with awful games against Loyola and Columbus Academy, so we ended up with the 29th seed. We started the playoffs by playing the 20 seed which we won and then we had to play Gov A, the 5th seed. It was a great game, and it came down to wire as we won 280-260. But then we ended up having to play State College A who had an amazing game even for a team of their caliber, they had something like 7 powers and it ended up not even close. We then went to the teams that went 2-0 and 2-1, so we had to play Santa Monica, and we just lost every buzzer-race imaginable and just fell apart. So we ended our playoff's by playing three teams that went 8-2 (I think so at least), which normally doesnt happen in double elim brackets.
Oh yeah, Kudos to RM for bringing the championship to DC for the fourth year in a row.
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Post by Trevkeeper »

Stats are up at the NAQT website.
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Post by shylar »

What an amazing finish to a great tournament.

Having lost to RM in the It's Academic championship a few weeks ago, I had a feeling they would show the rest of the country what they had been able to do all year.

What hasn't been said so far, I'll add that RM was behind most of the second game, but was able to come back and finish the last few questions while racking up serious bonus points.

Congratulations to the team, and to coach McKenna for your championship.

Hammond went 3-7 in the prelims -- disappointing for sure, but had a great time and showed that we belonged there. If nothing else, everybody loved our shirts. ;)

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exhausted but happy.

Post by Julie »

Our State High quiz bowl teams are so pleased to have performed well and are most appreciative of the kind words from those we are honored to call peers. When all the pressure was on both teams at full blast in the second half of the second game, RMA came through like champions for the well deserved title - and we are thrilled to have our very heavy and beautiful trophy -- many questions and congratulations accompanied our trip home through the airports and highway- we were sorry to have missed the bulk of the Farewells but needed to make our plane.. Congrats again to Richard Montgomery - we owe you a standing ovation! - wow to some outstanding buzzes throughout the tournament and to anyone who saw our THIRD game against Maggie Walker - where ALL the pressure was on them as they had already whupped us twice... that game was the stuff of greatness.. it seemed as though 8 top drawer players were all going flat out from start to finish -- and as bitter as it is to lose to a team you have proven you can beat - sorry Gov School - you guys were most sincere in your congratulations..

again - if anyone is still reading the ramblings of a now "veteran" dumb blonde lady coach.... all you kids - (Shadyside somes immediately to mind but so many other teams too) make this sport the most exciting game on the planet.. and DO be grateful to the former players who have established these organizations and venues to allow YOU to take the great game of quiz bowl to the next levels.
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Post by Chico the Rainmaker »

Maybe this is just me being bitter, but did anyone else notice that there seemed to be an usually high distribution of current events/politics and pop culture? I think that and the always high geography distribution did us in in the playoffs. Well, that and the fact that we played like crap. In any case, congrats to RM A on the win. We were lucky enough to beat them in the last prelim game on Saturday, but it was clear that they were among the top two or three teams there and that we, well, weren't.
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Post by nurgles_herald »

RandomScreenname wrote:Maybe this is just me being bitter, but did anyone else notice that there seemed to be an usually high distribution of current events/politics and pop culture? I think that and the always high geography distribution did us in in the playoffs. Well, that and the fact that we played like crap. In any case, congrats to RM A on the win. We were lucky enough to beat them in the last prelim game on Saturday, but it was clear that they were among the top two or three teams there and that we, well, weren't.
No, I think you're absolutely correct. I'm a big history buff, and I was rather disappointed by the selection of asian history in particular exhibited at the tournament: namely, basically none. African history came up as a sidenote to some things, which, while appeasing me, certainly did not satisfy. Psychology was, in my opinion, overemphasized, and meteorology and the advanced earth sciences underemphasized. The spread of questions at the tournament wasn't terrible, but it certainly wasn't what I had expected from a Championship.
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Post by davinci »

Yes, the distribution seemed to very little history of any kind and a lot of trashy-style questions. I mean, they were well written and all, and aren't necessarily real trash, but having answers be things like "NOUN," "NOUN," and "NOUN"?? makes it seem like they thought of a NOUN and then decided to VERB a NOUN on it. Overall the topic distribution just VERB a bit ADJECTIVE.


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Post by vandyhawk »

UTC will be running a mirror of the HSNCT in a few weeks, so I'd advise people not to discuss any question specifics until then.
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Post by etchdulac »

Congrats to two gracious, sporting teams in Richard Montgomery and State College. Frank and I had them both in our room very early on, and I think I eventually got to see RM play a total of 5 games.

I am from Texas, so I'm getting a first look at both of these teams, and I think the thing to stress to other outsiders who didn't see this tournament is that, even though Chris Ray's performance is what everyone will mention first, they weren't a one-player team. The Chris on the end was powering calculation stuff pretty regularly, but wasn't just a math guy. And the Jeff guy in the middle had some good quick answers too, most of which were lit and fine arts questions, if I remember correctly.

That said, I don't think I've seen anything quite like the Millburn-RM game. A playoff game involving two of the top 5 or 6 teams left, and Richard Montgomery put up 685 despite Ray negging three times. They got 19 tossups and converted at better than 25 points per bonus.

My disclaimer here is that I did not see the TJ teams of the past 3 years. The opinions expressed to me by other volunteers indicated that last year's TJ team would probably have been favored against RM, but TJ may not have had as good a single player on it as Chris Ray. I'd be interested to hear more opinions on that one.

As for our Texas teams, I am pleased about Cistercian's Sunday charge into the Top 10. I missed their last few rounds, but they competed very well against TJ A (losing by 20, I understand) after being eliminated by State College. They eliminated a Santa Monica team that looked very strong when I saw them.

Bellaire was our only other playoff team, so congrats to them on that. Never got to see them unfortunately. St. John's was clearly disappointed with missing out in 49th at 5-5, and the one game I saw them during Saturday play, they were just not having a good day it seemed. Every Texas team got at least four wins, and finished above the top 30%, which was encouraging to see.

Congrats also to my fellow, more experienced NAQT members and volunteers on running a show that, by all accounts I've heard, went as smoothly as could've been asked for.
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Post by nurgles_herald »

Judging by the championship round, you're absolutely correct. RM was certainly not a one-player team in the two games against State College, and, indeed, poor Chris seemed to be stumbling around a bit for the first game before dominating the last half of the 2nd game, sealing the deal against State College.

However, the final two rounds were apparently not at all like Saturday, as Chris far outpaced his fellow RMers. Just looking at personal stats gives you an idea of what the games must've been like. Chris Ray (#2) led the pack, but left Chris Higgins (#127), Jeffrey Siegel (#224) and Keith Jameison (#382) in the dust. Now, this is probably the "crazy captain" effect. The other players on RM are probably a lot better than their stats reflect, simply because Chris Ray is so dang good that nobody else on the team got many chances to shine. But I will certainly defend Chris Ray: without him, I cannot be sure of the national-power we now see in Richard Montgomery.
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Post by etchdulac »

I have to admit that is was kinda hard watching those final two games, because I didn't want to pull against either your team or Montgomery. Then Chris negs either 5 or 6 times in the first game and you guys run away with it, and I was hoping for him to recover from that. Then you guys get up by about 95 or so in the second game, and everybody just seemed to freeze there for 2 or 3 questions... crazy tension level.

I saw the earlier post by your teammate and hope you guys can focus on the two-day accomplishment and not the last 10 minutes of the event. You had a very well-rounded team (that I understand was missing two starters? That's scary too) and finished 2nd in the largest national championship field in NAQT's history (and largest ever, I believe; I don't think Chip's multi-site field was ever 128, though I could be wrong). I know it's the nature of the competitive player to wonder about the possibilities -- I was one, many moons ago -- but what happened by itself was outstanding, I think.
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Post by davinci »

nurgles_herald wrote:Chris Ray (#2) led the pack, but left Chris Higgins (#127), Jeffrey Siegel (#224) and Keith Jameison (#382) in the dust.
A better measure of the team is the number of powers Chris Ray's teammates got, I know that Higgins got 17 and Jeffrey got 7, which are extremely good for a supporting cast.
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Post by DumbJaques »

Anyone who notes the fact that Chris Higgins placed 127th is completely overlooking the fact that he also had 17 powers, which I believe was about the 5th most (and 2 off the 2nd-most). Having a second player on a team put up that kind of power stat is ridiculous. And while I'm not sure when Jeffrey was getting lit or art questions, he was consistently powering current events, history, and general knowledge all day Sunday. He actually averaged way more ppg than he did in the prelims, although I would guess that all of us did. As for Keith, the mere fact that he's a freshman and is still on our A team is more than enough evidence that he's an outstanding player. He, too, performed very well in the playoffs and had that *ridiculous* power in the finals that swung the momentum for our comeback.

I hope no one believes we were anything close to a one-man team. The degree to which I could trust and rely on my teammates was unparalleled by any other team I've played on. When it comes right down to it, you can't win a national title with one player, and I wouldn't have picked any other team to go into the tournament with (although, as mentioned in the pregame buzzercheck of one of the podcasts, Nostradamus might have been handy).

There was some excellent competition this weekend. Congrats to everyone who placed, and to State College for giving us a real run. for the title. It sure wasn't an easy comeback.
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Post by etchdulac »

Has anyone told any of you Montgomery guys about the logistics of the Japan competition? Several of us were trying to wrap our brains around how to have a level playing field in a bilingual situation and never came up with anything at all satisfactory.
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Post by DumbJaques »

Has anyone told any of you Montgomery guys about the logistics of the Japan competition? Several of us were trying to wrap our brains around how to have a level playing field in a bilingual situation and never came up with anything at all satisfactory.
Nope.
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Post by aestheteboy »

etchdulac wrote:Has anyone told any of you Montgomery guys about the logistics of the Japan competition? Several of us were trying to wrap our brains around how to have a level playing field in a bilingual situation and never came up with anything at all satisfactory.
I talked some with the Japanese TV people. At this point, a lot of things are still left unanswered, they said, but it seemed that they understand the difficulty of doing pyramidal questions in three different languages (and quizbowl in Japan is usually short questions anyways).
They said they'll use a lot of visual questions (probably not a picture but a movie/video, since it's a TV show). They might also make the teams read the questions, instead of making them listen.

At least, I can say it's going to be nothing serious, but merely a game. So I hope RM team goes there to enjoy, not to compete.
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Post by Chico the Rainmaker »

etchdulac, just out of curiosity, do you remember what team you saw us (santa monica) play? Or, failing that, what room(s) were you moderating in? Thanks for the compliment, by the way, though Cistercian did tear us apart in that game.
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Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

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Post by etchdulac »

I barely remember. Honestly, there's even a chance I have you confused with some other team. 21 rounds, 128 teams... head still spinning.

I was in 502. I don't think you were ever up there, now that I look at the games list... oh, ok, I think I figured it out. I talked to another volunteer who did either your Brookwood round or your Montgomery round, something late Saturday.

Most of the other Texas people were at your team's game with Cistercian, and they seemed to indicate that was the best they had seen Cistercian play and that they were pretty surprised by the spread (I don't think I ever actually heard a score from them though, oddly enough). When you get down to the last 12 or so teams, a lot can ride on which questions you get. Obviously, the distribution of subjects is set, but within each, you know... like the State College coach said: It's really hard to beat the same good team 3 straight times, and that's what Maggie Walker got thrown into in that 2nd-3rd game.
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Post by nurgles_herald »

I'm going to go completely off-topic here for a second, but I think this needs to be asked:

What happened to Grosse Pointe North High School? They beat RM and Gov, and were presumably a very powerful team as a result. Where did they go in the elimination rounds?
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Post by Strongside »

nurgles_herald wrote:I'm going to go completely off-topic here for a second, but I think this needs to be asked:

What happened to Grosse Pointe North High School? They beat RM and Gov, and were presumably a very powerful team as a result. Where did they go in the elimination rounds?
I am not sure but I believe they beat #48 Parkview in the first round of the playoffs but then lost to #37 Bentley in the second round and then #31 Brookwood in the third round. We, #24 Mounds Park Academy defeated Brookwood in the 10th place game. I believe that going into that game we had pulled off 4 upsets in the playoffs and they had pulled off 5 upsets in the playoffs.
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Post by jbarnes112358 »

etchdulac wrote: My disclaimer here is that I did not see the TJ teams of the past 3 years. The opinions expressed to me by other volunteers indicated that last year's TJ team would probably have been favored against RM, but TJ may not have had as good a single player on it as Chris Ray. I'd be interested to hear more opinions on that one.
Whether TJ A had a player last year as good as Chris Ray is this year is a matter for speculation, I suppose. But, imagine having four players of this caliber and you get a sense of how good TJ A was last year.

RM A has cetainly proven themselves as the top team this year so far. (We still have PACE, though.) But, if you are trying to see how they would stack up against TJ A last year, I suggest you look at the following two links. Your question will no doubt be answered:

http://naqt.com/hsnct/2005/results/detail.tja.html

and

http://naqt.com/hsnct/2005/results/playoff-results.html


"Two-time defending champion Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (Alexandria, VA) became the first school to claim three NAQT High School National Championships by defeating Lakeside School (Seattle, WA) in a wildly entertaining final by the score of 415-325 (an audio file of the final is available). Thomas Jefferson was clearly the class of the field of 96, averaging over 630 points per game and, until being pushed to the final tossup in the final, scoring at least 545 points and winning by at least 280 points in every game."

RM A had 58 powers in prelims this year. TJ A had 82 powers in prelims last year. Of course, this stat needs to be taken with a grain of salt since the question sets are different.
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Post by etchdulac »

Is that 885 against Walton correct? I know it's mathematically possible, but damn. I wish this wasn't my first year at that tournament. Though other years might not have had the championship drama (even though Lakeside obviously had a great final game last year), I'd like to have seen that behemoth. Unreal.
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Post by Lapego1 »

They had a similar run at PACE last year with only three players on the A team (with the fourth flying in for the playoffs). An undefeated three man team with no close games and several broken records in terms of scoring. I can't think of any teams this year that could have pulled that off.
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Post by jbarnes112358 »

etchdulac wrote:Though other years might not have had the championship drama (even though Lakeside obviously had a great final game last year), I'd like to have seen that behemoth. Unreal.
Lakeside's final game was not quite as impressive as the score might indicate. They were making a living off TJ's negs.

"During the final match, Thomas Jefferson overcame 10 neg5 penalties and deficits of 145-0, 165-(-5), 205-30, and 245-95 to pull out the victory. Both sides answered 12 tossups, but Thomas Jefferson's 88.9% bonus conversion was the difference."

Pretty dramatic, huh? Like this year, when the adrenaline starts pumpimg sometimes the negs start flowing.
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Post by jrbarry »

Grosse Pointe North was eliminated by Brookwood in the 4th round on Sunday morning. The score was Bwood 290 GPNorth 235. Brookwood was eliminated by State College-A in the very next match.
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Post by brownboy79 »

I get the adrenaline thing. I had, as far as I can tell, the most negs at the HSNCT, but they were more based on impatience and nerves than not knowing the subject. After I calmed down, the rounds became easier. Regardless of the neg count, any team that can overcome 10 negs in one game against a team as good as Lakeside was last year, deserves to be canonized.
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Post by Byko »

bjb87 wrote:I am not sure but I believe they beat #48 Parkview in the first round of the playoffs but then lost to #37 Bentley in the second round and then #31 Brookwood in the third round. We, #24 Mounds Park Academy defeated Brookwood in the 10th place game. I believe that going into that game we had pulled off 4 upsets in the playoffs and they had pulled off 5 upsets in the playoffs.
Pretty close. GPN beat #48 Parkview, lost to #37 Bentley, beat #41 Stuyvesant, then lost to #31 Brookwood to head home at 11-3 (2-2 in playoffs).

Admittedly, by losing their first game, GPN had a much easier path through much of the prelims. They defeated MLK Magnet for their 6th straight prelim win, then managed to beat Richard Montgomery A, Dunbar A, and Governor's A to get to 9-1.

What bothers me is how the top 8 teams after the first 7 games get spread out so much in terms of seeding. After these rounds, 1 team (Richard Montgomery A) is 7-0 and 7 teams are 7-1. So, for three rounds, they Swiss pair among themselves. At the end, you have Brookwood at 6-4 and ending up as the #31 seed despite having an EXTREMELY more difficult schedule than most of the other 6-4 teams. It's almost as if what they had already done didn't count for anything. The same pretty much counts for Dunbar A (#12 seed) and Cistercian (#15 seed). Perhaps NAQT may want to rethink their algorithm.
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Post by lordthees »

GPN player here.

really the whole day caught us off guard. last year, we went 6-4, barely made the playoffs and were out in 3 games. This year, at both state tournaments, we lost two (relatively in one game, extremely in the other) close games to DCC to finish second in both. We really buckled down in the last half though and came to nationals. slow start, dropped the first game by 10 points, but pulled through. first shock was all of a sudden playing RM, and then beating them. what really did it though was finding out our seed at the end of the day. we're not sure what happened for sure, but I think that we were not used to the feeling of being that high up and just couldn't handle it very well. or maybe it was just different question distro, who knows.

4 of us are graduating this year (one each to Harvard, Stanford, Chicago and Florida) but Jamie, who was just behind us on almost every buzz, will be back for 3 more years, and our recruiting class looks quite good.
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Post by NotjustoldWASPs »

Matt Morrison wrote:lol @ TJ A's stat page:
http://www.naqt.com/hsnct/2006/results/112.html
I think that's because one moderator "was just following his directions" by not accepting our pseudonyms, which we had been using the entire day, thereby screwing up the system...o well.

Aside from that I have not much to complain about. This was a very well-run tournament, as per usual in my NAQT experience, and I, along with probably the majority of the players, was extremely impressed with the success of the ten rounds of card-swapping...thar system was almost schaferesque in its mathematical near-flawlessness (the exceptions being certain teams playing twice, like our B team losing to eventual Fifth-place Shady Side both times).

I had a few small issues with some distributions (like the majority of our first half against Gov being history & geo...just a bit bitter, but don't worry Mark & Xun, I'll be over it by saturday) and some questions that were just outlandish in their obscurity or just stupid. In response to the comment on the increase in politics, current events, and "trash," I did notice that as well, but having thought about it, isn't cultural literacy important in the REAL WORLD? I know quizbowl is far from that, but when you talk with people in the office, or at a cocktail party, which will be more valuable--knowing all the specifics visually and symbolicly of the Arnolfini Wedding, or the past policy of a local legislator? I think having this shift in distribution will make the average quizbowler focus more on the world around them(yes, even on things like sports and pop culture), instead of just knowing random esoteric things from ancient history or dead white guy books(if you haven't guessed it already, I'm not a humanities person).

Thank you NAQT--making the quizbowler more socially aware.

I hope the overall quality of tournament stays in the future, because, even though I am no longer eligible for HSNCT, I fully plan to be involved in college quizbowl and would like to see a good tournament next year as a moderator/scorekeeper.
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Post by Chico the Rainmaker »

In response to the comment on the increase in politics, current events, and "trash," I did notice that as well, but having thought about it, isn't cultural literacy important in the REAL WORLD?
If NAQT wants to change their general distribution, that's fine by me, it's their right to do that. What I have a mild problem with is that they sort of sprung it on us at a national tournament. It seems to me that these changes should've been seen in the invitational packets to at least give us a chance to prepare. If I'd known that we'd see this kind of distribution, I would've spent a lot more time getting up on my current events and world leaders and a lot less studying art and music.
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Post by wd4gdz »

You're surprised an NAQT tournament had a dearth of art and music questions?!
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Post by Chico the Rainmaker »

You're surprised an NAQT tournament had a dearth of art and music questions?!
Perhaps I should be more specific. All the tournaments I have ever played in were played on NAQT questions. All our practices have been on NAQT questions (excepting three on questions I wrote myself that I, obviously, did not play in). While I am vaguely aware of the differences between ACF and NAQT distribution at the college level, NAQT distribution is the norm to me. So, even being used to the "dearth" of fine arts in NAQT, I noticed the relative lack of those types of questions at the HSNCT.
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Post by First Chairman »

Notjustolddeadwhiteguys wrote:In response to the comment on the increase in politics, current events, and "trash," I did notice that as well, but having thought about it, isn't cultural literacy important in the REAL WORLD? I know quizbowl is far from that, but when you talk with people in the office, or at a cocktail party, which will be more valuable--knowing all the specifics visually and symbolicly of the Arnolfini Wedding, or the past policy of a local legislator? I think having this shift in distribution will make the average quizbowler focus more on the world around them(yes, even on things like sports and pop culture), instead of just knowing random esoteric things from ancient history or dead white guy books(if you haven't guessed it already, I'm not a humanities person).

Thank you NAQT--making the quizbowler more socially aware.
Of course, I wasn't there... I'm not sure whether I should read this comment with some tongue-in-cheekiness or not... but ...

I think cultural awareness includes noticing items of the Arnolfini Wedding or other musical trends (and I'm sure you're not saying that it isn't important). If there were any way to seriously ask high school quiz bowlers about Chinese art and music, I'm sure I could argue how important it is too. For that reason, I think that there should be some element of current events and popular culture in each packet... so long as it does not truly skew the emphasis away from fundamental academic subjects.

Honestly though, people would talk more about who won "Idol" or what happened on a recent episode of "Sopranos" than current policies over watershed protection or the latest Supreme Court ruling. That does not necessarily justify us writing more questions on those topics.

Again, there are many people who adamantly oppose inclusion of ANY popular culture or sports into packets, including lead-ins of a current event/pop culture nature.
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Post by chaska »

Hey all.

I'm Andrew Hart from Chaska HS (Minnesota). Due to a coach having a baby, we decided not to go to NAQT this year and instead play the mirror tourney at the U of Minnesota later this month as sort of a last hurrah for our team (we are all seniors). Sounds like the tournament was a blast and that Rip Montgomery and State College capped it with an amazing final game. We saw State's impressive Science Bowl win this year, so I know it must have been a great matchup. I'm looking forward to hearing the podcasts after we play our mirror tournament.

Also, it sounds like Brendan and Mounds Park had a hell of a tournament. And St. Thomas Academy did quite well in addition. Nice job representing Minnesota quiz bowl, and congrats to Brendan for his scoring title (although we still did beat you at Burnsville, NAQT state, and Faceoff :P).
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Post by Stained Diviner »

Byko's right about the algorithm. In some ways, teams were better off losing an early match or two because it led to easier matches the rest of the day. Power matching does that naturally, but the NAQT algorithm did that more than necessary. Basically, if you lose your first match and win your second, you should then play a team that won its first match and lost its second, which is not what they did. It was still impressive for GPN to get the #1 seed because of who they had to beat the last few games, but losing the first match almost worked to their advantage.

As to the distribution, there was a ton of trash at last year's tournament. I remember having a close match against MW thanks to my team's superior knowledge of Madonna, Ryan Seacrest, and one or two others. There was also plenty of current events last year and throughout NAQT packets generally.

I don't want to be whiny--it was a great tournament with lots of great questions. My team had a lot of close matches, every moderator we had was great, and it ran remarkably close to on schedule.

My team is very good at trash, but we are not an elite team because we are not strong at world history. There was enough world history to keep us down, which is as it should be.
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Post by Byko »

ReinsteinD wrote:Byko's right about the algorithm. In some ways, teams were better off losing an early match or two because it led to easier matches the rest of the day. Power matching does that naturally, but the NAQT algorithm did that more than necessary. Basically, if you lose your first match and win your second, you should then play a team that won its first match and lost its second, which is not what they did. It was still impressive for GPN to get the #1 seed because of who they had to beat the last few games, but losing the first match almost worked to their advantage.
David, maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but I think that's exactly what they did do. After round 1, 64 teams were 1-0 and faced each other, and 64 teams were 0-1 and faced each other. After round 2, there were 32 WW teams (cards 1-32), 32 WL teams (cards 33-64), 32 LW teams (cards 65-96), and 32 LL teams (97-128).

It worked especially well for GPN because every one of the teams who ended up at the very top of the rankings at the end (RM, State College A, DCC, Governor's A, etc.) won their first game. By losing their first game, GPN essentially had a much easier road to 6-1 than did anyone else. Now, they did at least justify it by winning their last three games against the teams that they did, but had they not done that, it would have been a much weaker schedule that they faced as opposed to the other high seeds.

Out of fairness, if NAQT is going to continue to use a system like this (which I feel has several advantages to it), some form of strength of schedule needs to be considered when making the playoff seedings. Otherwise, every year, you will have a very good team going 6-1 in its first 7 rounds, losing its last three games (because someone out of the 8 teams will HAVE to go 0-3 in those final rounds), and ending up as a low seed with a 6-4 record despite having played the best teams in the tournament. Does it make for more difficulty in explaining to teams why the seeds are a certain way? Yes, somewhat. But I think with the amount of experience and knowledge among the NAQT staff, they can find a way to make it work.
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Post by First Chairman »

Just wondering but how was the next match determined during the Saturday period? As we had done this for NCOAST a few years ago (Andrew Feist has his certification through chess competitions), to be fair, the match-ups would be set up as follows:

Of the 32 (1-0) teams:
1 plays 17
2 plays 18
... 16 plays 32
(instead of 1 plays 32, 2 plays 31...) according to points.

The card should include each team's name or a code so that the scheduler did not repeat an opponent. It's easy to swap places and avoid that. That said, with the slow step being final data input, it should be relatively easy to have some strength of schedule (SOS) adjustment...
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Post by rchschem »

etchdulac wrote:Has anyone told any of you Montgomery guys about the logistics of the Japan competition?
All of the questions will be asked at 50 Hz, not 60. And team A sits on the left, not the right.

Good luck, guys. It sounds like RM played the way I would have expected them to. We look forward to seeing you, if not playing you, at PACE. Maybe we've gained some ground on you since October.

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