Help Improving Small HS Team

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tksaleija
Wakka
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Joined: Fri Jun 30, 2017 8:27 pm

Help Improving Small HS Team

Post by tksaleija »

I'm an incoming senior at Monroe County Middle College, a Michigan early college program that puts us in high school for 5 years but with significant dual enrollment with the goal to have an associate's by end of year 5 (for free). The problem with this is there's huge turnover with my team because of conflicting college schedules which makes participation and turnout low for all but underclassmen and apathy pretty high. This sucks because I love qb with a really unnatural passion.
Basically, I've got a few questions:
A) What resources are there for team members to practice together outside of school that can be monitored (or even what advice can I give to help supplement the few in team practices we can)? This is important since at-home practices are so​ hard to coordinate.
B) What local tournaments are there in MI (preferably weekends)? We've only done county and Questions Unlimited (made it to Nationals last year) but our school has yet to dive into NAQT or HSAPQ unfortunately.
C) What're some good ways to drum up initial support in a small (less than 350 ppl) school but also MAINTAIN that interest and drive for the eventual team?

I know this is huge, but quiz bowl is the only competitive "sport" I do and I really want to see my school succeed and expand intellectually and competitively.
Aleija Rodriguez
University of Michigan 202x
MCMC/MCCC 2019
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Ciorwrong
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Re: Gotta make team git gud

Post by Ciorwrong »

Hey Aleija,

I'll edit this post to give you a more detailed response later, but your first step should to be get your team going to tournaments. Thankfully, there quite a few high quality tournaments hosted by my club the Michigan State Academic Competition Club, University of Michigan's club, Detroit Catholic Central, etc. Look on this website and NAQT's site for pyramidal tournaments your team can go to. There are also several novice tournaments usually run in the fall that would be a good place for your team to start.

In terms of getting people to join and stay committed, that will come over time. You should try to find a group of maybe at most a dozen people who are excited to learn new things and are willing to take a few weekends a semester to drive to East Lansing, Ann Arbor, etc. Once they find if pyramidal quizbowl is worth committing to, then you can go in depth into practice regiments using quinterest.org, old packets on the hsquizbowl.org archive, study lists, etc. Focus on building excitement around the team especially for the younger students.

If you have any more questions, feel free to PM or email me. I ran I think three high school tournaments last year in Michigan and staffed four others so I know the circuit well. You should be able to drive to both East Lansing and Ann Arbor from Monroe County which is fortunate because those two areas have historically drawn the best and biggest fields in Michigan.

Good luck!
Harris Bunker
Grosse Pointe North High School '15
Michigan State University '19
UC San Diego Economics 2019 -

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jonah
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Re: Help Improving Small HS Team

Post by jonah »

Here's a list of NAQT high school tournaments in 2016–2017 within 100 miles of Monroe County. It is likely, though not certain, that next year will have a similar slate of tournaments and hosts. Next year's schedule will start going up over the next month or so at this URL. I see you've already subscribed to notifications about NAQT tournaments according to the same criteria, which is great.
Jonah Greenthal
National Academic Quiz Tournaments
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tksaleija
Wakka
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Joined: Fri Jun 30, 2017 8:27 pm

Re: Gotta make team git gud

Post by tksaleija »

Progcon wrote:Hey Aleija,

I'll edit this post to give you a more detailed response later, but your first step should to be get your team going to tournaments. Thankfully, there quite a few high quality tournaments hosted by my club the Michigan State Academic Competition Club, University of Michigan's club, Detroit Catholic Central, etc. Look on this website and NAQT's site for pyramidal tournaments your team can go to. There are also several novice tournaments usually run in the fall that would be a good place for your team to start.

In terms of getting people to join and stay committed, that will come over time. You should try to find a group of maybe at most a dozen people who are excited to learn new things and are willing to take a few weekends a semester to drive to East Lansing, Ann Arbor, etc. Once they find if pyramidal quizbowl is worth committing to, then you can go in depth into practice regiments using quinterest.org, old packets on the hsquizbowl.org archive, study lists, etc. Focus on building excitement around the team especially for the younger students.

If you have any more questions, feel free to PM or email me. I ran I think three high school tournaments last year in Michigan and staffed four others so I know the circuit well. You should be able to drive to both East Lansing and Ann Arbor from Monroe County which is fortunate because those two areas have historically drawn the best and biggest fields in Michigan.

Good luck!
Thank you so much for this (Thank you too @jonah, I really appreciate the list). Should I just invite anyone who comes to the first meeting to the early tournaments and let the team start to form itself?
Aleija Rodriguez
University of Michigan 202x
MCMC/MCCC 2019
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