The Quizbowl Resource Center

International Quiz Bowl Tournaments (IQBT) is pleased to announce the 2021 National All-Star Academic Tournament (NASAT). This will be the eleventh NASAT.

NASAT will be hosted on Saturday, June 19 and Sunday, June 20. It will be held online. The tournament will convene at 10:00 AM Eastern on Saturday and run until about 7 PM. On Sunday, it will run from 10 AM to about 5:00 PM. These times may be adjusted as necessary, but any adjustments will be announced well ahead of the tournament.

This tournament will once again be open to all-star teams representing all states, the District of Columbia, all US territories, and all Canadian provinces and equivalents (as well as state or province-equivalent divisions of any other countries). Each state or equivalent may enter multiple teams, with up to six players on its roster, up to four of whom may be playing at any one time. Any player who was enrolled in the 12th grade or below in a school physically located in that state during the 2020-2021 academic year is eligible to play on his or her state's team. Generally speaking, home school students are also eligible; any questions about eligibility will be answered by IQBT as needed.

This tournament is intended for states seeking an all-star event. We encourage single-school teams looking for national championships to investigate two such championships run by groups that are unaffiliated with IQBT: the National Scholastics Championship run by the Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence and the High School National Championship Tournament run by National Academic Quiz Tournaments.

As always, we will use a normal format comparable to regular-season events: games will consist of twenty tossups, with a thirty-point bonus being played after each correct tossup answer. Teams will play head-to-head, two at a time. "Performance-based," multimedia, calculation, and pop culture questions will not be used. Teams will play approximately twelve to sixteen games, in line with other national championship events, over the two days of the tournament. Because this event will be played by highly skilled all-star teams, the question difficulty will be higher than that used at existing national championships such as the NSC and HSNCT. The style and subject distribution of the questions will be quite similar to existing “modified ACF” sets.

Vishwa Shanmugam will be the NASAT set’s head editor.

The entry fee is $575 per team. Each state is welcome and encouraged to register additional (B and on) teams for NASAT. It is vastly preferred if you pay ahead of time if at all possible.

If 14 teams do not register and pay for this event by May 31, 2021, it will be canceled and rescheduled for 2022.

All teams must submit an application to IQBT for entry into the tournament. In the vast majority of these cases, applications will be accepted outright. However, if more than one contingent from a state seeks to enter this tournament, IQBT will evaluate applications from each potential team and determine who may represent their state at the National All-Star Academic Tournament. The only criterion that will be used in this decision is our assessment, based on a review of the players' achievements in the 2020-21 competition year, of which team is likely to perform the best at the tournament. Therefore, GPA, test scores, and non-academic extracurricular activities should not be included on any application; other academic extracurricular activities (e.g. Science Bowl) should only be included if there were limited opportunities for teams in the state to compete at quizbowl. IQBT plans to continue consulting with a regional network of advisors who will consult with IQBT on these decisions.

IQBT will once again use a rolling application procedure: teams who submit applications to IQBT on or before March 24 will be notified of IQBT's decision no later than March 31. We may also approve an application submitted from this point onward as soon as "immediately" if we find it unlikely that a stronger team from the state could be assembled. Teams who submit applications to IQBT between March 24 and June 1, inclusive, will be notified no later than one week after the application is received. In other words, March 24 is not a hard deadline, and you may still enter the tournament afterwards, though you are encouraged to start forming and fundraising as soon as possible so that a logistical problem does not cause an interested team to miss the tournament. Once a team from a state or state-equivalent has been approved by IQBT, IQBT will no longer accept alternate applications from that state, but will accept roster changes made by the official team contact (in most cases, the individual that submitted the application). Team applications and recruitment will be handled by Fred Morlan; you can email me at [email protected].

The tournament will be directed by Fred Morlan.

I’m very excited for this tournament and am looking forward to another wonderful competition!

This post is reserved for tracking the field.

Current # of registered teams: 32

Registered teams:

Asia (2 teams)
California (2 teams)
Connecticut (1 team)
Florida (1 team)
Georgia (1 team)
Illinois (2 teams)
Indiana (1 team)
Iowa (1 team)
Kentucky (3 teams)
Maryland (4 teams)
Minnesota (1 team)
Missouri (3 teams)
New Jersey (2 teams)
North Carolina (1 team)
Ohio (1 team)
Oklahoma (1 team)
Ontario (1 team)
Texas Kinkaid (1 team)
Texas TQBA (3 teams)

A brief note on the entry fee: I am aware that, comparatively, this is more costly than HSNCT and NSC this year. NSC frequently draws ~96 teams, and NAQT hit 352 teams in 2018. Comparatively, NASAT topped out at 29 teams in 2018. This is a reality of running an All-Star tournament - this kind of tournament will inherently attract fewer teams than a tournament set up for high school teams, and fewer teams means less money coming in.

As it is, our minimum field size is sufficient to allow us to almost break even off the main site; if mirrors approach past years, we will likely turn a small profit. We would be fortunate if that crosses into four figures.

If our field ends up being larger than the 2018 one, or even comes close, we will re-evaluate the entry fee and hopefully lower it.

Due to concerns with COPPA, no one under the age of 13 will be allowed to compete in this year's NASAT.

Hey all - I'm behind on NASAT applications. I had two family deaths within a week recently and I'm still trying to get caught up on work. I'm hoping to start emailing people back soon.

Sorry for the delay.

By my count, we're currently at a minimum of eight teams that have expressed interest in NASAT.

We're currently with a minimum of 12 teams that have expressed interest in NASAT to this point.

We have 22 teams that have expressed interest as of right now, so I believe we will have NASAT this year! I'll be spending today sending out invoices and/or following up for solid team counts to those that have expressed interest.

I'm a bit behind on email this week due to my cat being diagnosed with cancer today. I'll be trying to get caught up in the next day or two.

We have received payment from ten teams so far!

We have 12 paid teams with 15-18 more that are interested. The tournament is on for 2021!

We are tentatively planning on having our schedule be as follows:

"The tournament will convene at 10:00 AM Eastern on Saturday and run until about 7 PM. On Sunday, it will run from 10 AM to about 5:00 PM."

This plan can be adjusted as people get their payments in and become officially registered.

What online platform will this use?

Discord.

We are now up to 16 teams that have paid their entry fee!

Could we get confirmation on the distribution of the set?

CometsCoach wrote: ↑Tue Jun 08, 2021 2:46 pm Could we get confirmation on the distribution of the set?

Yep! Notable changes from previous iterations include the reduction of chemistry and math in favor of more biochemistry and a more robust other science distribution, and the increase in world literature (and corresponding reduction in American and British literature)

Literature: 4/4
1/1 American
1/1 British
1/1 Euro
1/1 World + Classical + Misc.

History: 4/4
1.5/1.5 American
1.5/1.5 European
1/1 World

Science: 4/4
1/1 Biology
.8/.8 Chemistry
.2/.2 biochemistry, such that any packet with no chemistry has one biochemistry
1/1 Physics
1/1 other science , distributed roughly evenly between ES/Astro/CS/Math

Fine Arts: 3/3
1/1 painting
1/1 auditory
1/1 other, split evenly between auditory and visual

RMPSS: 4/4
1/1 Religion
1/1 Myth
1/1 Philosophy
1/1 SS

Other: 1/1
.33/.33 Geography
.33/.33 CE/"Modern World"
.33/.33 Other Ac

I'm putting a soft cap on on registration as of tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern.

We will be using Buzzin.live as our buzzer system.

Registration is currently "closed."

I'm using "closed" in quote marks there because we have 31 teams, which is amazing! But we can also easily fit one more team into our schedule, so if you're interested, please reach out to me ASAP.

We will not be expanding beyond 32 teams.

With Minnesota entering the field, we are now at a final number of 32 teams!

I have attached the general schedule for NASAT to this post.

Edit: updated June 18, 9:37 a.m. Eastern

If you'd like a 2021 NASAT shirt or hoodie, you can get them here: https://www.customink.com/fundraising/2021nasat

If it is fine, can I ask why Stage 1 is in the form of a Swiss Pair format? Looking at the schedule, it appears that each round in Stage 1 is allocated 45 minutes, but a Swiss Pair format would require a gap between rounds to recalculate rooms, which would add on to the delay that has already been seen in the two recent national tournaments. PACE averaged about 45 to 50 minutes per round in the games I played, and NASAT is of a much harder difficulty, so I'm unsure how feasible it is to expect all the rounds to finish and rooms to be calculated within the given 45 minutes. Personally, I would advocate for a simpler bracketing system like 4 brackets of 8 rebracketed into 4 brackets of 8.

On a separate topic, is it correct that this year's NASAT will remain unpowermarked just like previous years? Thank you!

This year’s set is not power marked.

NASAT is a very hard tournament to seed. A pure rebracketing system risks eliminating teams due to seeding rather than performance. Additionally, for the Swiss pairs portion, teams will be made aware of which room they should go to next for their games. It is possible that there will be a protest that hangs things up a little bit but we’re preparing our protest resolution procedures so we can resolve them as quickly as possible. I believe this trade off will result in a fairer competition.

AKKOLADE wrote: ↑Thu Jun 17, 2021 8:18 pm I have attached the general schedule for NASAT to this post.

Edit: updated June 18, 9:37 a.m. Eastern

I've updated this post to correct two issues:

1) We're technically doing power matching and not Swiss pairs.

2) The second description of tiebreaker for Phase III was erroneous - it should have only read "three-way tie for first."

AKKOLADE wrote: ↑Fri Jun 18, 2021 1:21 am This year’s set is not power marked.

NASAT is a very hard tournament to seed. A pure rebracketing system risks eliminating teams due to seeding rather than performance. Additionally, for the Swiss pairs portion, teams will be made aware of which room they should go to next for their games. It is possible that there will be a protest that hangs things up a little bit but we’re preparing our protest resolution procedures so we can resolve them as quickly as possible. I believe this trade off will result in a fairer competition.

I see. Thanks for the explanation!

You’re welcome!

Here's the list of match ups for this weekend. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... Fg/pubhtml

Stats after round one are available at https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6 ... _matching/

This link will continue to be updated for the power matching phase as appropriate.

Every team needs to return and be ready to play in their announced game rooms at 4:10 p.m. Eastern.

We making two adjustments to the schedule:

1) We are moving the play of round 11 to tomorrow morning.
2) We are moving the start time of Sunday play to 9:30 a.m. Eastern.

The schedule for Phase II is now available under the "rounds 6-12" tab on the following link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... Fg/pubhtml#

AKKOLADE wrote: ↑Sat Jun 19, 2021 3:42 pm We are moving the start time of Sunday play to 9:30 a.m. Eastern.

For teams such as my own, which play on Pacific time, starting tournaments at 10:00 AM Eastern is already a major disadvantage due to how early we are forced to wake up. I understand the need to keep the tournament running on time due to delays today that no one expected, but having to wake up at 6:00 AM Pacific feels like a bit too much. On behalf of both of the California teams, I would like to request that the start time of Sunday play not be moved back to 9:30 AM Eastern.

nickdai wrote: ↑Sat Jun 19, 2021 4:14 pm

AKKOLADE wrote: ↑Sat Jun 19, 2021 3:42 pm We are moving the start time of Sunday play to 9:30 a.m. Eastern.

For teams such as my own, which play on Pacific time, starting tournaments at 10:00 AM Eastern is already a major disadvantage due to how early we are forced to wake up. I understand the need to keep the tournament running on time due to delays today that no one expected, but having to wake up at 6:00 AM Pacific feels like a bit too much. On behalf of both of the California teams, I would like to request that the start time of Sunday play not be moved back to 9:30 AM Eastern.

Your request is declined. Starting the tournament that early is necessary to preserve a reasonable end time for the event.

Phase II standings can be found here: https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6 ... bin_pools/

I've attached an updated schedule here. Round nine will be the last of Saturday. We will start with round ten tomorrow.

We are also going to start tomorrow at 10 a.m. Eastern.

Finally, I've swapped the order of lunch and the tiebreakers. Lunch will be first, followed by the tiebreakers.

Edit: I've added a 30 minute delay to the stream to prevent cheating, as well as pushing this back to round 15. I'll post in here again when we're launching that.

Complete stats through round 12 here.

Please note that round 13 stats will not be added to the HSQB stat listing until after the completion of the tournament.

The tiebreakers are:

A one game tiebreaker for fourth place in Alomar for North Carolina & California B. This will be in game room one.

A one game tiebreaker for Maryland Gold & Missouri B for fourth in Casey. This will be in game room two.

A one game tiebreaker for Texas Egg Shell & Kentucky B for sixth in Casey. This will be in game room three.

A three-way tiebreaker for third place in Belle. There will be two half-game tiebreakers. Maryland Black vs Texas Kinkaid will play first, and then winner of that game gets Florida. The loser of the first game will be in fifth place. The winner of the second game will be in third place, the loser of the second game will be in fourth. These half-game tiebreakers will be in game room four.

After the tiebreakers, we will be placing teams into the schedule found here. "Placement1-8" will show the schedule for the top eight; "Placement9-32" will show the schedule for the rest of the teams.

A more visually impressive bracket for the top 8 will be below. I will do my best to update it in a timely manner over the next few rounds.

Updated bracket:

Updated brackets:

Congratulations to Illinois Blue - Rohan Ganeshan, Arjun Nageswaran, Charles Young, and Geoffrey Wu - on winning the 2021 NASAT! They defeated Georgia in the final. Ohio finished third. The top eight was rounded out by:

Fourth: Texas Vermillion
Fifth: Minnesota
Sixth: New Jersey A
Seventh: California A
Eighth: Missouri A

Our All-Stars, the top ten individual scorers in the first 12 rounds, are:

Aadi Karthik - Georgia
Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford - North Carolina
Tegan Kapadia - Ohio
Aaron Dantzler - Florida
Ayog Prasad - Kentucky A
Cooper Roh - Connecticut
Amogh Kulkarni - Minnesota
Connor Blake - Texas (Kinkaid)
Aiden Dartley - New Jersey B
Amogh Kulkarni - California A

Full stats are here.

Thank you to all of our players, staffers, writers, and editors!

The final version of the championship bracket.

There is now a discussion forum for this set - you can join by going to your profile and joining the "NASAT 2021" usergroup.

The issue with missing stats from round 16 should be corrected in the all stats report. Thanks to everyone for their patience.

Today is also the last day to purchase a shirt. If you'd like a 2021 NASAT shirt or hoodie, you can get them here: https://www.customink.com/fundraising/2021nasat

lol wrong thread