RESULTS: VCU Season Finale Tournament (05/05/07)

Matt Weiner · Post by **Matt Weiner** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 7:22 pm

This is the general announcement for the VCU Season Finale Tournament, a high school academic quizbowl tournament to be held at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond on Saturday, May 5 from 8:30 AM to 3:30 PM.

This tournament will be affiliated with the Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence, a national quizbowl organization which will provide the questions. This will be the last opportunity to qualify for the National Scholastics Championship, which is run by PACE and will occur at the University of Michigan on June 9 & 10. The tournament is, however, open to everyone--teams who are not interested in attending nationals, and teams who have already qualified for nationals, are welcome to participate alongside those schools attempting to qualify. Questions will be of an appropriate difficulty level to provide an entertaining experience for all teams in attendance. All schools who participate in the tournament will receive a copy of the questions on CD, for no additional charge, after the event.

LOCATION, DIRECTIONS, PARKING: The entire tournament will take place in the Hibbs Building on our Monroe Park campus (aka "Academic Campus"). Please meet in room 303 of Hibbs no later than 8:30 in order to register. Games may begin anytime after 8:30 so please do not be late.
-The nominal address of the building is "900 Park Ave, Richmond VA" if you need to put something into your map software of choice, but be aware that Hibbs does not actually face the street, so you will have to park and then walk to the area where the building is in order to find it. I suggest printing out the appropriate campus maps and bringing them along--note that Hibbs is directly across from the Cabell Library, which will probably be easier for you to find if you have not been to the VCU campus before.
-On Saturdays, parking on the street is free and available in most places around the campus. Each of the various VCU decal lots may be closed, decal-only, or free to all on Saturday; check the sign for an individual lot before parking in it. If for some reason you cannot find parking on the street or in a free-on-weekends lot, then there are several parking decks around campus, many of which are open on Saturdays and will charge you somewhere between $0 and $5 to park all day.

FORMAT: The tournament format will most likely involve teams playing seven preliminary games, which will feed into a three to four-round playoff in either pooled or single-elimination format. All teams will be guaranteed the opportunity to play a minimum of seven games to produce their playoff ranking, and consolation playoffs for teams who do not qualify for the championship bracket after the prelims will also be made available. The specific format will be determined once the final field size is known. Rounds will proceed from shortly after 8:30 until the end of the tournament at about 3:30, and there will be a 60-minute lunch break midway through the day.

REGISTRATION AND FEES:
-The fee structure is as follows:
Base fee: $55 per team (i.e., $55 if you are bringing one team, $110 if you are bringing two teams, $165 if you are bringing three teams)
Early registration discount: $5 off school's total fee for registering before April 1
Buzzer discount: $5 off school's total fee for each fully functional system (control box and eight activators all work)--no limit to # of systems you can bring
Staff discount: $10 off school's total fee. This could be a coach, parent, student who is not playing, etc. Team-provided staffers will keep score for various games not involving the team with which they are affiliated. Volunteer staffers must stay through the seven preliminary games in order to receive credit for their school. There is no limit to the number of staffers you can bring.
Minimum fee: The minimum fee is $0 (you can bring enough buzzers and staffers to eliminate your entire fee via discounts, but you cannot have a "negative fee.")
-The registration deadline is May 1 or whenever the field cap is hit, whichever comes first.
-To register, post in this thread or mail me at weinerm @ vcu dot edu with the number of teams, buzzers, and staffers you want to bring, and an email address where you can be contacted with details. Feel free to forward this announcement to any schools that you think would be interested in attending. There will be a snail mail version of this announcement going out later this week, but follow-up communication will be via email only.

FIELD SIZE: The field is capped at 24 teams, so individual schools will only be allowed to register up to three teams right off the bat. If you want to bring four or more teams, let me know and I will place your additional teams on a waitlist in the order that I am informed of them. If the field does not fill up with A, B, and C teams, or if we are able to find sufficient rooms and staff to expand the tournament size, then D and further teams will be let in based on the order of the waitlist.

TEAM & ROSTER SIZE: There may be a maximum of six players on one team's roster, though only four may play at one time. There are two substitution opportunities in each game.
-Each player may appear on only one team's roster throughout the day--no switching from the B team to the A team, etc.
-Teams may also play shorthanded with only three players. Teams consisting of one or two players may not play without my express prior permission.

FOOD: Neither breakfast nor lunch will be provided by the tournament. There are several eateries within walking distance of Hibbs and a vast cornucopia within a ten minutes' drive; maps and suggestions will be provided at the tournament.

Post here or mail me if you have any further questions. I'm looking forward to seeing a wide variety of teams from Virginia and surrounding states on May 5.

Matt Weiner · Post by **Matt Weiner** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 4:07 pm

This post will maintain a field list and be edited for updates.

Current through 5/1:

Cave Spring (VA)
Clover Hill A (VA)
Clover Hill B (VA)
Detroit Catholic Central A (MI)
Detroit Catholic Central B (MI)
Dorman (SC)
Douglas Freeman A (VA)
Douglas Freeman B (VA)
Gonzaga (DC)
JR Tucker (VA)
Maggie Walker A (VA)
Maggie Walker B (VA)
Maggie Walker C (VA)
Maggie Walker D (VA)
Thomas Jefferson A (VA)
Thomas Jefferson B (VA)

Frater Taciturnus · Post by **Frater Taciturnus** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 9:12 pm

Is there any chance of that field limit increasing or being removed?

Matt Weiner · Post by **Matt Weiner** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 10:09 pm

It's possible the field size cap will increase. If we hit 24 teams before April I will get a few more rooms (easy) and then try to find some more skilled moderators (not as easy).

Matt Weiner · Post by **Matt Weiner** » Tue May 01, 2007 3:02 am

Registration for this tournament closes Wednesday 5/2 at 3 PM.

jbarnes112358 · Post by **jbarnes112358** » Tue May 01, 2007 3:03 pm

Matt, I believe I have a D team now if you can handle it.

Matt Weiner · Post by **Matt Weiner** » Tue May 01, 2007 4:25 pm

Cave Spring went from two teams to one and Cosby and Harnett pulled out, so that fourth Maggie Walker team will keep the field size at an even number of 16, which is much better for the formats I had in mind than 18 was anyway.

Teams received an email this morning explaning the 18-team swiss pair format. With 16, we could either do straight swiss pair, or two brackets of eight with the top two from each going to single-elim playoffs. Anyone with a preference should post here, but be aware it will be a Friday morning decision and may not be announced until you get the schedule on Saturday, since the format can't be set for certain until I finish getting adds and drops from various schools.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu May 03, 2007 6:03 pm

If only four teams were to make the playoffs perhaps those four teams could all play each other and then their places would be decided from their performance within the pool. I would assume(although we know what that does) that most teams would like the benefit of playing more games. Just a suggestion; whatever works best for the people at VCU!

Frater Taciturnus · Post by **Frater Taciturnus** » Thu May 03, 2007 9:30 pm

My personal philosphy is the more games guarenteed the better (within reason.)

Lapego1 · Post by **Lapego1** » Thu May 03, 2007 9:42 pm

Yes, but keep in mind these are PACE games, which tend to draw out a little longer than NAQT or other 20 tu/b. That's not to say I don't like more games, but 9 PACE games will definitely take longer than any 9 NAQT games, even with the best of readers.

Zip Zap Rap Pants · Post by **Zip Zap Rap Pants** » Sat May 05, 2007 2:46 am

Lapego1 wrote:Yes, but keep in mind these are PACE games, which tend to draw out a little longer than NAQT or other 20 tu/b. That's not to say I don't like more games, but 9 PACE games will definitely take longer than any 9 NAQT games, even with the best of readers.

These are 22 tossup PACE games though I believe, and given the short bonuses in the first two rounds it shouldn't be that different from NAQT length.

Also it's too bad CS had hotel problems, quizbowl and racing don't mix apparently. But I mean, this problem had to be foreseen as it's only one of the two biggest sporting events in the state, the other being the fall race weekend. One week difference and this might have drawn more teams, but I guess all the PACE late season tournaments have to happen the same weekend.

First Chairman · Post by **First Chairman** » Sat May 05, 2007 5:52 am

There is also the graduation/finals problem if you went much later.

cvdwightw · Post by **cvdwightw** » Sat May 05, 2007 2:35 pm

Wall of Shawarma wrote:but I guess all the PACE late season tournaments have to happen the same weekend.

Not true. We were initially given our choice of three dates, and we had to postpone ours beyond even this date to hope to get a decent field (so sorry, don't talk about the questions yet). Also, Southern California schools tend to graduate later than lots of schools elsewhere, so we may have had a little buffer there.

Lapego1 · Post by **Lapego1** » Sat May 05, 2007 5:53 pm

Brief results:
1. Maggie Walker A
2. Dorman
3t. DCC A and Gonzaga

Overall, the questions weren't bad, with the exception that there were a lot of repeats (probably a result of the set being packet submission style), though I won't mention specifics in case this set isn't cleared. That was really the only problem I saw--good questions, good staffing, good logistics, good competition.

However, I thought that the MW A-Dorman-TJ A bracket was a little much to balance out the other one, as can be seen by both finalists being from that bracket. Perhaps a different playoff setup would've been more suitable. TJ A deserves some recognition because they went 5-2, losing to both MW A and Dorman by 40 points or so. They easily could've made the finals if given another chance.

The Goffman Prophecies · Sat May 05, 2007 6:11 pm

Yes, this set is being used at two more tournaments in the next two weeks. Please do not discuss specifics. I know Matt is taking steps to ensure that the repeats do not appear in the sets used at UCLA and Culver.

Gonzagapuma1 · Post by **Gonzagapuma1** » Sat May 05, 2007 6:45 pm

I agree with you about the brackets being a little unfair but our game against Dorman could have gone either way so i think the finals being from the other bracket was not indicative of our bracket's strength.

Matt Weiner · Post by **Matt Weiner** » Sat May 05, 2007 9:28 pm

Stats for the prelims are up at http://www.hsquizbowl.org/sft/sft_standings.html . Bonus stats are percentages, not points out of 30, so multiply those numbers by 30 to get something comparable to an ACF or NAQT format tournament.

In the semis, Dorman and Maggie Walker A defeated Gonzaga and Detroit Catholic Central A respectively. Walker defeated Dorman in the final. I'll have playoff scores up tomorrow.

I apologize for the repeat issue, but I think otherwise the tournament went well and I hope to see all these teams again in the fall for the next VCU high school event.

Oh, as far as the seeding goes--it's difficult, especially with TJ's rosters always in flux, and I wish we could have done swiss pair. However, given the delays that occurred due to the building being locked in the morning, I think it would have been inviting disaster to build any more downtime into the schedule. Perhaps next year we'll try a card-pass system or some other kind of modified swiss that doesn't require waiting for stats to be inputted after each round to start the next round.

Gonzagapuma1 · Post by **Gonzagapuma1** » Sat May 05, 2007 11:08 pm

post edited out

I'll look into the issue you brought up, but please don't post about specific questions until the last tournament is done using this set on May 19 -mlw

Gonzagapuma1 · Post by **Gonzagapuma1** » Sat May 05, 2007 11:13 pm

OH MY FAULT

First Chairman · Post by **First Chairman** » Sun May 06, 2007 7:40 am

For this tournament, the standard PACE tournament survey is available at http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB226FV3CC8W3 for any of the attendees (students and advisors). Please fill out this form to let us know how to improve this program.

Matt Weiner · Post by **Matt Weiner** » Wed May 09, 2007 3:16 am

Results from the three playoff games have been posted at http://www.hsquizbowl.org/sft/sft-playo ... dings.html .