How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

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How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Madoc »

I was sitting around today, and I started wondering how often other teams around the U.S. practiced. So I ask you. Does your quizbowl season practice year-round, or only for a few months at a time? HHS usually practices twice a week from the months of September until early March. :neutral:
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

I would practice with my team from the first day of school until the last day before nationals for 2 to 3 hours a pop, almost every day. I know many other high school teams practice for the entire summer as well. If you want to be nationally competitive, tell your coach to extend your practicing season and go to some national events like the PACE NSC. Twice a week is enough to practice assuming its for a couple hours each time to make a team good if you use that time well and supplement it with personal reading, writing, or research, but cutting it off in March seems like a bad idea because February to May are probably some of the most important months of the quizbowl year.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by AKKOLADE »

On top of what Charlie said, you can always organize practices with other players if your coach doesn't/can't hold practices. Just go to one of your houses instead.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by quizbowllee »

Right now, we have the following practice schedule:

Monday: 6:15 am - 7:15 am
Tuesday: 2:45 pm - 4:00 pm
Wednesday: 6:15 am - 7:15 am
Thursday: 2:45 pm - 4:00 pm

We no longer have a class period to practice. This is significantly less practice than in years past, but I think we get more accomplished this way. It's a good balance without overkill.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Terrible Shorts Depot »

Damn, you all are lucky. Due to mandatory athletics and MANGA CLUB(which I am thankfully not a member of), we have literally 45 minutes of practice a week. Our better players have worked considerably outside of school, which is arguably more valuable. I'm going to try to insititute occasional weekend practices sometime soon.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Andrew from jc »

Everyday, except, when one of our coach's is not here to conduct it.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by at your pleasure »

twice a week, 2:15 to 3:30 /4-ish, if coach can stay that long, all year until after NSC/HSNCT.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by The Laughing Man »

I don't really understand the emphasis that many people put on practice. Certainly, it is important to practice some to keep yourself from getting rusty; when I played for the first time after 5 weeks at a summer program my recall was really slow. It seems to me, however, that practicing every day is really excessive; this time would be put to better use through individual study. Although I love going to practice, I don't think I retain that much knowledge from it. The questions go by too quickly for me to take detailed notes. I learn a much larger portion of my knowledge by reading questions on my own, when I can take copius notes, and I would have suspected that this would be true for most players. I am curious about which method others prefer.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by theattachment »

EP did daily lunch practices as well as 3-5 (or whenever speech kicked us out) pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Most of the good practices were the after school ones, since people were usually staying for more than 20 minutes/cared enough to come in the first place.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by theMoMA »

The Laughing Man wrote:I don't really understand the emphasis that many people put on practice. Certainly, it is important to practice some to keep yourself from getting rusty; when I played for the first time after 5 weeks at a summer program my recall was really slow. It seems to me, however, that practicing every day is really excessive; this time would be put to better use through individual study. Although I love going to practice, I don't think I retain that much knowledge from it. The questions go by too quickly for me to take detailed notes. I learn a much larger portion of my knowledge by reading questions on my own, when I can take copius notes, and I would have suspected that this would be true for most players. I am curious about which method others prefer.
I think most people just enjoy the competition/camaraderie of playing questions. I'm of the mind that you can't practice enough. Every time our team goes on a car trip, we break out the packets for at least 90% of the time, and it's helped all of us gain a much better understanding of the canon. For high schoolers, I think it's even more important. I'd say that it's possible to become a dominant high school player just through packet osmosis.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Blackboard Monitor Vimes »

Our school is small enough to have one lunch period, so we practice every day at lunch all year and Mon/Wed/Fri from about 3:30-5:00 until usually the Monday of the last week of school (as that Wednesday and Friday are half days for exam schedule). We bring packets on long trips and usually read questions online whenever a trip mandates a stay at a hotel (we actually played a 5 round doubles tournament at our hotel the night before Cave Spring last year). Several of us went to the VCU open practices this summer. I'm not really qualified to comment on how much practicing a lot actually helps you/how much is necessary, but we enjoy it, so we do it.

Also, to whoever mentioned mandatory athletics: are you in public or private school? I've only ever heard of one school that makes you play a sport (St. Christopher's; they have a qb team some people here may have seen if you've played in the Richmond area).
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

MLWGS-Gir wrote:Our school is small enough to have one lunch period, so we practice every day at lunch all year and Mon/Wed/Fri from about 3:30-5:00 until usually the Monday of the last week of school (as that Wednesday and Friday are half days for exam schedule). We bring packets on long trips and usually read questions online whenever a trip mandates a stay at a hotel (we actually played a 5 round doubles tournament at our hotel the night before Cave Spring last year). Several of us went to the VCU open practices this summer. I'm not really qualified to comment on how much practicing a lot actually helps you/how much is necessary, but we enjoy it, so we do it.

Also, to whoever mentioned mandatory athletics: are you in public or private school? I've only ever heard of one school that makes you play a sport (St. Christopher's; they have a qb team some people here may have seen if you've played in the Richmond area).
Yeah, Charlie and I went to Shady Side, which is private. As a frosh/soph: two trimesters of some sport, one trimester off. Juniors: one trimester of a sport, two trimesters of something arbitrarily designated not-quite-a-sport (this includes ultimate frisbee, for some reason, but also DDR. Supervised, mandatory DDR.). Seniors, three trimesters of not-quite-a-sport.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Terrible Shorts Depot »

I think that practice decreases in importance as you age/improve. As a new player, it is important to figure out what you know, learn how the questions work, and learn how to buzz. I think practice is most important when you use it as a place to work on recall, buzzing on clues you know, and as a place to show off your newfound knowledge. I will second Ben in saying that I get more from self study than practice. I also get more from playing at college practices than I do from high school questions (probably because of more difficult material that I don't necessarily know). While we do break out the packets on car trips, that is used almost more as a way to pass the time, even though stuff "from the car" comes up all the time during tournaments.

My absolute favorite part about the sports requirement are the sports for people who don't play sports. You've got DDR, ultimate frisbee (read: sit around in the grass), PE option (sign in, do whatever you want, sign out), and backpacking (walk around campus).
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by TheCzarMan »

Once a week, 2:35-4:00. I'd like to get a 2nd day if possible, but this year the school said you can't stay after 4PM for meetings, so that took away like an extra 15-30 minutes.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Jeremy Gibbs-Duhem Equation »

We do twice a week from 3 to 4:30 usually. Sometimes we will get together on the weekend and just mess around and practice some. I'd be fine with practicing more. I have lots of fun at practice.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

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everyday847 wrote:Yeah, Charlie and I went to Shady Side, which is private. As a frosh/soph: two trimesters of some sport, one trimester off. Juniors: one trimester of a sport, two trimesters of something arbitrarily designated not-quite-a-sport (this includes ultimate frisbee, for some reason, but also DDR. Supervised, mandatory DDR.). Seniors, three trimesters of not-quite-a-sport.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

We go twice a week, T/Th, 3:10 til whenever, but usually at least 5 if not 5:30. We'd never be allowed to have it during the schoolday since we only have 6 periods during the day.

It's not enough, but i have so many kids with other commitments (TSA, FCCLA, sports, debate, Math League, History Club, DECA, Student Council, and actual jobs) that's it's just impossible to practice more than that.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by chemqueen2 »

Official practices are Tuesday/Thursday from 3:45-4:30... The week before a tournament we go to five. I bring packets and we have unofficial practices whenever we can though, since both of us seniors are used to an hour a day, four or five days a week (we used to have coaches that cared)...
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by JackGlerum »

3-5 on Tuesdays and Thursdays for us. I think we'd practice more if people didn't have other things. I personally have lifting for lacrosse on M,W,F now and organized practice starts on the first day of March. One person plays golf on our team, and several do are in the marching band.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Auroni »

in high school, we practiced biweekly for 2-2.5 hours, but that was mostly just for our awful local format.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Sonic the Hedgehog and the Fox »

Twice per day. Before school, and during our lunch period, thirty minutes each.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Frater Taciturnus »

In high school, we practiced on Tuesday afternoons from 4-4:40.

Now I practice for ~5 hours a week in the evening.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Eärendil »

Twice a week for about an hour each at the start of the school year. After cross country season, that gradually grew to everyday practices. We also did early morning practices once a week and extra-long practices every Wednesday for our run up to HSNCT. Also, informal practices at peoples' homes over vacations.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by David Riley »

What Glerum said. I once tried early morning practices but attendance was so sporadic that we soon went back to afternoon practices. But several of my players do a lot of outside studying and research on their own.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

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Eärendil wrote:Twice a week for about an hour each at the start of the school year. After cross country season, that gradually grew to everyday practices. We also did early morning practices once a week and extra-long practices every Wednesday for our run up to HSNCT. Also, informal practices at peoples' homes over vacations.
I forgot. If there was some major tournament coming up (i.e. HSNCT) we'd practice about every day as well as doing some spring break stuff. Additionally, we did Friday morning practices that were usually only good for one packet (start at 7, get kicked out by 7:35 for class, add announcements).
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Diet Chuck »

Last year, TJ "practiced" for two or three days a week from 4-6 after school, but we would routinely quit after 45 minutes or so and go play basketball instead. In fact, for the one or two months before the national tournaments, we pretty much completely stopped practicing and balled all day. That actually worked out pretty well, too.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by quizbowllee »

Diet Chuck wrote:Last year, TJ "practiced" for two or three days a week from 4-6 after school, but we would routinely quit after 45 minutes or so and go play basketball instead. In fact, for the one or two months before the national tournaments, we pretty much completely stopped practicing and balled all day. That actually worked out pretty well, too.
And you guys won the HSNCT... I hate you guys. :wink:
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by azngod1992 »

4 hours a week

1 hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and 2 hours on Fridays.

Practice isn't really effective at our school, we just goof around and do speed packets.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Practice isn't really effective at our school, we just goof around and do speed packets.
I can't figure out why that would be ineffective!
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

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Diet Chuck wrote:Last year, TJ "practiced" for two or three days a week from 4-6 after school, but we would routinely quit after 45 minutes or so and go play basketball instead. In fact, for the one or two months before the national tournaments, we pretty much completely stopped practicing and balled all day. That actually worked out pretty well, too.
We also have a period during school reserved for clubs and whatnot, where we have practices twice a week for 45 minutes. However, I think only one person from A-team routinely attended any.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by closesesame »

Diet Chuck wrote:Last year, TJ "practiced" for two or three days a week from 4-6 after school, but we would routinely quit after 45 minutes or so and go play basketball instead. In fact, for the one or two months before the national tournaments, we pretty much completely stopped practicing and balled all day. That actually worked out pretty well, too.
Keshav never wore deodorant (he should have been Right Guard, not point guard), so the balling (even if balling = playing foosball in senior lounge) was a formidable test, harder than the hardest question packets in existence.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Paul_Sausville69 »

My team practices everyday at lunch at school, and also after school on Fridays. We really only do Quizmaster and Its Ac format, though, which makes us terrible at NAQT and HSAPQ, since we are never absolutely used to them.

for the Record, I am indeed a player for Blake High School in Maryland.
Last edited by Paul_Sausville69 on Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Sir Thopas »

Paul_Sausville69 wrote:My team practices everyday at lunch at school, and also after school on Fridays. We really only do Quizmaster and Its Ac format, though, which makes us terrible at NAQT and HSAPQ, since we are never absolutely used to them
So practice on those instead.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

Simply stated, and yet, Guy, i have a feeling that few changes will be made.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Sir Thopas »

Caesar Rodney HS wrote:Simply stated, and yet, Guy, i have a feeling that few changes will be made.
Yep. :(
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by at your pleasure »

Paul_Sausville69 -wait, what school do you play for? It would seem common courtesy to provide information that everyone else on the board presents, and I feel obligated to warn you to do this( state you name and school in a signature) before the wrath of scorice presents itself,as it shurley will.
And yeah, what Judge William said. Pratcing exclusivley on NAQT(and all manner of other pyramidal question) and go to every good tournament you can physically attend.
By the way, I'm intrigued by the idea of daily short practices.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Paul_Sausville69 »

Anti-Climacus wrote:Paul_Sausville69 -wait, what school do you play for? It would seem common courtesy to provide information that everyone else on the board presents, and I feel obligated to warn you to do this( state you name and school in a signature) before the wrath of scorice presents itself,as it shurley will.
And yeah, what Judge William said. Pratcing exclusivley on NAQT(and all manner of other pyramidal question) and go to every good tournament you can physically attend.
By the way, I'm intrigued by the idea of daily short practices.

I'm the alternate (TV) and the fourth man (tournaments) for James Hubert Blake High School, SIlver Spring MD.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by at your pleasure »

Ah. Now I'll repeat myself
PRACTICE ON PRYIMIDAL QUESTIONS. Not just NAQT, but old PACE packets, tournament packets you haven't heard(including college packets), packets from the stanford archives if you run out of the aforementioned ones(and if no-one on your team has already read them. ),anything pyramidal. If you get booed and can't get your teammates to listen to pyramidal in practice, than at least read the(really,really good) packets available online. Try picking a topic, going to the Vinkurov database ,and reading all the tossups and bonuses that come up. Yes ,they are college questions, but the givaway clues you learn there will come earlier in the HS questions and be harder bonuses. That and learing as much as you can about a variety of things will get you quite a ways,at least(that and question writing, but that is very time-consuming). Yes, it takes more effort to do this, but imagine the payoff when you start converting more bonus parts and getting tossups earlier beause you've either learned more eraly clues or, better yet, been inspired by a interesting tossup to really get to know about the subject of the answer better than anyone else in the room.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by naturalistic phallacy »

If there's a college active on the circuit near you, try and go to some of their practices. We're always welcoming to new players. You'll hear more questions, and you'll meet (mostly) awesome people who are willing to help you learn about the game.
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Self-incompatibility in plants »

It's interesting seeing how much other teams practice for both regular and special occasions, but what I am also interested in is how teams spend their time in practice. What we typically do at the two two hour practices at Caesar Rodney is at least one packet of pyramidal style questions (NAQT or ACE usually), which with the typical interruptions and the time given in between questions for the people taking notes, will take about 45min-1hour. After that we either do another pyramidal packet of questions, which always ends up being somewhat of a joke, as attentions spans begin to wane, or we will do some simple questions out of trivia book of some sorts... which needless to say isn't that effective, however fun it may be. Also, by that time we get to that situation, people begin to leave and/or begin getting tired after a long day of school, which makes conducting the later parts of our practices in a prolific manner difficult. Making me interested in how other teams combat a lessening of productivity in the later portions of their practices if they experience that issue. So... how do other teams spend their time in practice?
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Blackboard Monitor Vimes »

We finish 2-3 packets a day in the 3 after-school practices we run, which are about 1.5 hours long. At lunch practice, we just read a packet straight through without teams. Since we don't play formal games, I really have no idea how much we get through in a typical day. I've also never seen an occasion where stopping the game to take notes has been necessary...it doesn't take much time to write something down that you need to go look up later.
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Marble-faced Bristle Tyrant
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Marble-faced Bristle Tyrant »

Anti-Climacus wrote:Ah. Now I'll repeat myself
PRACTICE ON PRYIMIDAL QUESTIONS. Not just NAQT, but old PACE packets, tournament packets you haven't heard(including college packets), packets from the stanford archives if you run out of the aforementioned ones(and if no-one on your team has already read them. ),anything pyramidal.
Really, the Stanford Archive is amazing. Back in high school, our coach read assorted printed packets, including NAQT. That was nice, but he had so many packets (among lots of other stuff) that it was hard to keep track of what had already been read recently. Question question question-- "We've already heard that!" many times in a row. Although I do prefer reading something off a paper in my hand to off a screen in front of me, he archive keeps you from using all that paper and getting disorganized. Oh, and it's free! Thank you, Stanford quizbowl people, for putting together the archive.

And if they think that playing college questions will be too hard, then don't tell them what you're reading.

fsb
Farrah Bilimoria
Formerly of Georgia Tech and Central High School (Macon)
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Auroni
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by Auroni »

this week, we had two practices: Monday and Wednesday. I had the room booked for 2.5 hours for each, but in each instance we ended up leaving early. Hopefully, next week in a better location, people can stick through till the end.
Auroni Gupta (she/her)
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AndyShootsAndyScores
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by AndyShootsAndyScores »

UA practices 3 times a week (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday) from 6-8. Anyone's welcome to come to any, but Mondays are usually for A team members, Tuesdays for newer people, and Thursday for everyone.
Andy Knowles
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TBrowning09
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by TBrowning09 »

Tuesdays/Wensdays/Fridays = Quick Recall from 3 to 5 (Most of the A team stays till 5:30 or even 6 though)
Monday/Thursday = Indepth Study 3 to 4 JV// 4 to 5 Varisty

The system works pretty well, it allows for individual study at school where the coaches can watch you and make sure you're not goofing around on the computers abdit allows you to get used to your team/the questions (You are there with them for nearly 2 hours every day). Since we started using this system I (and others) have improved astronomically.
-Thomas Browning, Pikeville High School (2005-2009)
- University of Louisville (2009-?)
howlin
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Re: How Often/When Does Your Team Practice?

Post by howlin »

That was nice, but he had so many packets (among lots of other stuff) that it was hard to keep track of what had already been read recently. Question question question-- "We've already heard that!" many times in a row.
I put the date on the packet when I read and then dump it in a file to pull out the the next year or so. Sometimes, I can also excavate questions from the previous years' tournaments by the same host. Of course the current events get stale, but most stuff survives nicely.
MLK will practice about 2 times a week for an hour or so...sometimes more if we are in pre tournament mode. Of course the players do a lot of review on their own.
Coach Howell
MLK
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