How to Encourage Circuit Organization

[cchiego]

Organizing a series of quizbowl events on a given circuit each year by encouraging schools to host, working with hosts, coordinating staff and teams, and TDing is generally exhausting. Tournaments do not materialize out of thin air and organizing effective, well-run tournaments especially takes a significant amount of effort and planning.

Some circuits have resolved this problem through formal organizations at the state or regional level, with positions of various prestige and sometimes (but not always) some financial compensation. These organizations usually host at least one of two major tournaments or tournament series each season alongside a state championship. They usually have a website, some kind of membership guidelines and rules, and clear divisions of responsibilities (at least in theory, sometimes not so much in practice). These circuits also tend to have clear calendars of events and effective lines of communication with schools and coaches. The downside of this degree of formal organization can be absurd rules and onerous bureaucracies, but the upside is circuit stability, breadth of coverage (quizbowl teams at most schools in an area), and the sharing of the burdens of organization. See, e.g. modern Illinois or Alabama. There is also the need for more people to step up within these organizations to run for leadership positions and be effective leaders, which can be hit-or-miss, but strong organizations can help fill in temporary leadership gaps and leave the framework in place for new leaders to come in with a set of rules and procedures already in place.

Other circuits have more loosely organized "Alliances" or other informal organizations of current coaches, college students, and alumni to run events. This has the advantage of being more flexible than an official organization, but it can lead to a lack of clear lines of responsibility for organizing and upkeep of a circuit. It tends to fall to one or two people who are particularly dedicated to step up to make things happen and thus leads to high degrees of burnout for those who do step up. This is especially a problem for people who are no longer affiliated with a team; once one graduates and moves away from being part of a quizbowl team, it's much harder to justify a large commitment to logistics and organization when you don't directly benefit from it (as, say, a team might benefit from being able to host large tournaments as a fundraiser). This situation can also lead to a free-rider problem with many teams benefitting from the organizational efforts of a few people, but without shouldering the costs (formal organizations tend to at least require membership fees, though that may not go very far). Also, if a few people leave or stop participating, then these can quickly collapse.

Finally, many circuits rely on the ad-hoc method of basically no real organization, with events popping up as individual teams decide to host. While perhaps the ultimate in flexibility, this situation is not ideal for at least two main reasons. First, it often leads to a massive decline in institutional knowledge. High levels of turnover remove experienced and trusted leaders from the circuit before they can do more than host a handful of events. Lists of contacts of both teams and staffers, memories about specific schools' situations, and the art of how to run an effective tournament decay quickly or are non-existant. It can also lead to last-minute events, unbalanced calendars, and generally worse events on average (not always, but oftentimes) as well as higher costs for people who do want to step up and run more events. Second, this also, somewhat more subtly, makes quizbowl more amenable to "insiderism." New schools generally need a long timeframe to get permission, organization, and funding than already-established teams. A more chaotic circuit that barely advertises to new schools, has no coordination of the schedule, and has few readily available resources for locals is likely one that's going to be dominated by a few well-established teams.

There's a spectrum here too from most-organized to least-organized, with many gradations along the way. But in general, I'd like to see more circuits develop into some kind of better-established setups and move from the less-organized to more-organized. How can this be accomplished? Here are some potential ideas:

Aim for More Organization
Simply trying to organize more, especially during off-times in the yearly schedule or at events that bring lots of teams together like state or national championships, could have large dividends with just a smaller bit of effort. Host a pre-season meeting of all coaches, college teams, alumni, etc. in an area to talk about the upcoming season. Try to set up a general schedule and account for traditional events. See if it's possible to assign specific responsibilities, though actually upholding those might be challenging. Think about the unique needs of the area's circuit: is the problem travel distances? local regulations? lack of funding for ECs? What could be done in terms of when events could be held and when could events for more novice or more experienced teams be scheduled (and advertised)? What schools in the area without quizbowl teams or who currently play non-pyramidal could be invited and who might be willing to do some of the groundwork for outreach? Simply calling attention to these things might help result in more ideas and more motivation to get them accomplished, in contrast to simply hoping that someone else will do the things that you want eventually. Of course, there is the challenge of organizing the organizing events, but hopefully there could be opportunities like mentioned above at state/national competitions as well as in the burgeoning regional Discords or at state-specific conventions (like the recent South Carolina one, which is encouraging to see).

Charge More $$
This is controversial for a number of reasons. Texas Quiz Bowl, for instance, is somewhat notorious for charging $120-140 per team for its events. Yet this seems to allow the TQBA events to have sufficient trained staff and remain stable while organizations in other areas are much less formalized. The trade-off is that higher prices increase the barriers to entry for newer teams, though the exact amount that this matters compared to other factors is less clear (from what I have seen, the degree of organization matters just as much as the direct financial costs, if not more so, though keeping quizbowl lower-cost is a good distinguishing aspect for quizbowl to have compared to other ECs). But as the experience with online quizbowl seemed to demonstrate, competent readers are in short supply and likely deserve more than just gas money and a slice of pizza. With any price increase needs to come higher levels of professionalism and organization, of course, but I think that the current system of hoping for volunteers to materialize in sufficient numbers for each event and especially for tournament directors and coordinators to take up the burden of organizing would be allayed with thinking about giving higher levels of compensation. This could apply to either individual events in an area or to an organization interested in getting more organized, but the extra revenue could then be distributed to TDs and staff.

Sponsor Organizers
The financial barriers to sponsoring a competent full-time organizer would be very high. Even a large-scale part-timer organizer would probably ideally command at least a $20k a year salary--and that's if you can find someone willing to accept such a position and do a good job at it. If people like to complain about national championship costs now, they'd positively riot at the prospect of paying $800-1400 for participation in local events. Yet this is what the fees are for some local leagues and for some related competitions like Academic Decathlon (though many times the specific costs for AcaDec are covered by the local school districts directly), who then employ near-full-time staff to assist in organizing. The key here to me seems to be finding a way to convince schools and school districts to sponsor a "package" of quizbowl events each year rather than the tournament-by-tournament system that's currently the setup. This could potentially be combined with the league strategy (see below) or, perhaps, some kind of assistant position embedded in a school or district, though getting to that point from the outside (rather than, say, a staff member on the inside having their responsibility extended to cover quizbowl) would be a huge challenge.

Organize Leagues, Not Tournaments
Local leagues--after-school matches, combined, perhaps with a league pre-season tournament or post-season tournament--might be a better model to work towards rather than 5+ weekend events at a time. This league setup also has the advantage of being a familiar model to schools for other kinds of extracurriculars and this could make quizbowl more attractive to sponsorship from school districts, counties, cities, states, etc. Schools would play within established rivalries and against local teams, with hopefully more chances for each school to win some recognition and matches than against a self-selected field at weekend events. Organizers and staffers for leagues don't have to give up multiple full Saturdays, but they still keep quizbowl teams in-existence at schools and those teams can always then attend more weekend events. I personally like this setup and would prefer to do more 2-3 hour stints reading once each week rather than more 14-hour Saturdays; I suspect many other potential readers would be willing to do this compared to repeated all-day events (a few each year are fine, but more than that is asking a lot).

I would love to hear other ideas about ways to encourage more organization and support organizers, especially as quizbowl (hopefully) moves back into in-person events nationwide throughout the Spring and before the 2022-2023 season begins.

[osbornrj]

I wish I had some great advice I could share. I'm just thankful that Alabama has a well-organized quiz bowl organization run by a group of extremely dedicated and wonderful people. The only thing I can suggest, because it's based on personal experience, is in regions where it's possible, request the assistance and sponsorship of non-profit, professional organizations that have a strong commitment to educational outreach, or even more specifically, STEM outreach. These organizations might not be able to offer a lot of funding, but they likely have members who are happy to volunteer as moderators and scorekeepers for one or two tournaments a year.

[MahoningQuizBowler]

+1 to organizing leagues. It's worked well for me, and for Ohio more generally.