SuMO Trash at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (07/09/2023)

Everything related to trash tournaments, including announcements, results, and discussion, goes here.
Post Reply
TusculumPearson
Wakka
Posts: 125
Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2019 3:04 pm

SuMO Trash at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (07/09/2023)

Post by TusculumPearson »

This is the formal announcement of and invitation of registrations for SuMO Trash: ALL HAIL SUNSPHERE.

The stress of SuMO Academic can tax even the hardiest buzzer-presser, and we have taken great delight in breaking that stress with a playable trash tournament that rewards players of all levels. We hope you’ll join us for fun and games on the campus of Pellissippi State’s Hardin Valley campus in Knoxville, TN for a fast-paced mixed-partnerships trash competition on Sunday, July 9th. Again, we thank Natural and Behavioral Sciences for their partnership in making a Knoxville site for the tournament happen.

Details below, or you can just go ahead and bypass the details and sign your partnership up.
<https://forms.gle/k2xjK3X41gpmoYXd7>

FORMAT
You still register as a partnership of two, not as a team of four. On the morning of the tournament, you and your teammate will still be paired with another partnership, roughly based on your experience and skill level. You will still play the tournament with that other partnership, two partnerships paired as a four-player team. We still do this to try to build the most evenly-paired field possible; we want every game to be as competitive as possible.

We’ll establish a schedule when it’s clear how many partnerships will register; in the past, we’ve been able to guarantee nine games before playoffs.

SET
SuMO Trash once again is a mirror of Play Quiz Bowl’s ACRONYM set, this time the venerable ACRONYM 16. We know ACRONYM 16 has already been played extensively in person and online throughout the Southeast; unfortunately, the dearth of trash sets available limits our options. (If you’ve already played ACRONYM 16, please consider staffing!)

We extend our gratitude to Erik Nelson for the quality work he and his team at Play Quiz Bowl puts into the ACRONYM sets year in and year out .

FEE
The registration fee is $50 per partnership. If at all possible, we need the registration fee in cash, because…

PRIZES
…SuMO remains a cash game, and the prizes for the top teams are cash. There’s roughly a 50/30/20 split of the tournament prize pool among the top three teams. Again, the final prize pool will be established when we get picture of the field.

The initial field cap is 20 partnerships. Our recent past has seen the equivalent of 28 partnerships/14 teams in the tournament field, so we’re quite able to extend the cap with sufficient staffing support.

ACADEMIC
You know you want to prove your worth in the serious game before you goof off on Sunday. Find out more about SuMO VIII: Follow the Winding Waters here.

STAFF, BUZZERS
We benefit from the good quizbowl community in this region to help make this tournament work! We historically haven’t given a staff or buzzer discount for the tournament to keep the division of the funds clean, but we do want the best staff possible, and we have confidence in readers of the region to provide support.
We’ve got a short registration for staffers to make sure you’re placed where you need to be <https://forms.gle/DJYgbWrtQTuKQA7T7>.

CONTACT
This is an East Tennessee Quizbowl event, and all questions and concerns should be shuttled through the East Tennessee Quizbowl email address ([email protected]). The tournament direction team is Dren Rollins (lead reader, chief of the treasury, head of protest committee) and Chuck Pearson (logistics director, stats-book wrangler).

We’re running this event in a new partnership with Natural and Behavioral Sciences at Pellissippi State; our host contact is NBS’ dean, Kane Barker (email available?).

REGISTER NOW
<https://forms.gle/k2xjK3X41gpmoYXd7>

DISCLAIMERS
Some information is subject to change; if changes occur, they will be posted on this thread.

And, as always, in the words of the genial quizmaster, all decisions of the tournament director are arbitrary, capricious, and final.

Come join us at our new home at Pellissippi State on July 9th.
---
Chuck Pearson, Tusculum University, general purpose East TN/SWVA quiz flunky, [email protected].
TusculumPearson
Wakka
Posts: 125
Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2019 3:04 pm

Re: SuMO Trash at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (07/09/2023)

Post by TusculumPearson »

Field updates for this tournament are being kept on a Google Doc.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k1D ... sp=sharing
---
Chuck Pearson, Tusculum University, general purpose East TN/SWVA quiz flunky, [email protected].
TusculumPearson
Wakka
Posts: 125
Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2019 3:04 pm

Re: SuMO Trash at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (07/09/2023)

Post by TusculumPearson »

Despite my best efforts, I never seem to get this post assembled before Thursday of tournament week. Nonetheless, let’s get the information out for the world.

(Did I just straight copy and paste this from the post for SuMO Academic? Mind your own business.)

PARKING
On both tournament days, we expect the building to be open and available for us from 800 AM. Our mass meeting space is the main lobby of the Haslam Center on the Hardin Valley campus of Pellissippi State Community College (10915 Hardin Valley Road mapping). When you enter into the campus, you want to locate the large parking lot across from the Haslam Center, and walk from that lot to the steps up to the building’s main entrance.


Our friends at Pellissippi State have provided us a map for the purpose, which you can access behind this link. The parking lot we’re asked to use is "O9" ("where you can see the pond"); the main entrance is the north side of “HC” on the map.

SCHEDULE AND REGISTRATION
On Saturday we will be registering teams between 815 and 900 AM, and we will plan for our general meeting and draft of teams at 900 AM, with first games at 930 AM. Please plan to be present by 900 AM. Please remember to bring cash to register; SuMO is a cash game, and prize money is more easily divided when we have funds in cash.

We’re building a 12-team schedule for SuMO Academic; plan on five rounds before lunch with lunch break roughly at 1200-1230 PM and eight rounds (not counting group tiebreakers if necessary) of gameplay overall. We have sufficient packets for a full advantaged final if one team doesn’t manage to clear the field by two games.

We still have flux on participants and on the seeding structure; we’ll post the schedule and seedings as soon as the field settles.

Sunday is a bit more touch-and-go right now, as you might expect for a trash tournament to help the populace recover from a hard academic day. We’ve gotten enough registrants to put us over 10 full teams, but nobody is enthusiastic about the prospect of a full 11-team round robin. We may yet engage in some juggling there. Stay tuned.

MUSIC :(
With thanks to our friend William Barnes for the question: we don’t have any side events scheduled this year. If somebody wanted to whip some music foolishness up for Sunday midday or evening, we wouldn’t turn down the game. I have aged out of doing such things credibly, sadly.

THANK YOU
Once more, we offer all gratitude and thanks to Kane Barker, the dean of Behavioral and Natural Sciences at Pellissippi State. He’s helped us get oriented to what’s available to us on campus, and he’ll be our resource to help things get done over the weekend.

We look forward to seeing you this weekend for SuMO VIII.
---
Chuck Pearson, Tusculum University, general purpose East TN/SWVA quiz flunky, [email protected].
User avatar
Yeah, that's a thing
Lulu
Posts: 87
Joined: Thu Jun 23, 2011 3:03 am

Re: SuMO Trash at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (07/09/2023)

Post by Yeah, that's a thing »

TusculumPearson wrote: Thu Jul 06, 2023 11:33 am We’ve gotten enough registrants to put us over 10 full teams, but nobody is enthusiastic about the prospect of a full 11-team round robin.
Some of us might be :grin: But seriously looking forward to everything regardless of format!
Connor Teevens
Detroit Catholic Central '11
Michigan State University '15
TusculumPearson
Wakka
Posts: 125
Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2019 3:04 pm

Re: SuMO Trash at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (07/09/2023)

Post by TusculumPearson »

Seeds, just in the nick of time, except not really all together yet:

Full URL: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
Shortened URL: https://is.gd/SuMOVIIITrash

These seeds are TENTATIVE based on the pairing of free agents, which will happen immediately on those free agents' arrival. We will finalize the seeds at the start of the general meeting; some pairings in Pool 3 may move to Pool 2, or vice-versa.

We're putting together the tournament on the basis of 10 teams, because even one player dropping makes this a perfect setup. We have a contingency plan if everybody shows up.

Those of you playing Trash, see you shortly.
---
Chuck Pearson, Tusculum University, general purpose East TN/SWVA quiz flunky, [email protected].
TusculumPearson
Wakka
Posts: 125
Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2019 3:04 pm

Re: SuMO Trash at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (07/09/2023)

Post by TusculumPearson »

Your honors and gratitude for the SuMO VIII weekend:

Congratulations to Team 1 (Champagne Poetry; Jack Lewis, Matt Lewis, Sean Higgins and Jon Vaysman), who won a one-match playoff over Team 7 (the unnamed partnership of Tracy Mirkin, Graham Cope, John Riddle and Jason Russell) to claim first prize in SuMO VIII on Saturday. Team 11 (Shanghai Sharks; Eric Mukherjee, Frederick Rudolph, Bryce Taylor, and Jonce Culbertson) finished 3rd in the championship pool.

All-stars for SuMO Academic were Eric Mukherjee, Tracy Mirkin, Jack Lewis, Cade Reinberger, Eric Douglass, Andrew Swallom, Billy Beyer, Ramapriya Rangaraju, Chris Borglum, Seth Kendall, Connor Teevens, and Dargan Ware. The neg prize went to Ramapriya Rangaraju with an impressive 16 negs in his five preliminary matches.

Congratulations to Team 9 (ASS-L, who were, in order, Andrew Swallom, Sam Matson, Spencer Brown, and Luke Quesenberry), for playing the lobbied-for (and ultimately ill-fated) 11-team round robin perfectly and claiming the SuMO Trash crown on 10-0. Team 2 (who played under a name that was never Eric Douglass’ idea; the naming teammates were Billy Beyer, Bryce Taylor, and Jonce Culbertson) was second on 9-1; Team 11 (Fabulous Free Birds In Space; Connor Teevens, Joe Nutter, Erskine Thompson, and a total novice by the name of Brian Henegar) finished 3rd on 8-2.

All-stars for SuMO Trash were Dargan Ware, Billy Beyer, Ramapriya Rangaraju, Seth Kendall, Brian Henegar, Andrew Swallom, Eric Douglass, Spencer Brown, Caleb Bales, and Andrew Helton. Beyer left before the awarding of individuals so Jason Russell swiped the extra DVD for landing 11th in the table. The neg prize went to Griffin Elder, but again, because he left before individuals, we gave the DVD to Dargan Ware (over Rama’s objections; I believe my exact words were “You already got a neg prize!”).

The Title IX prize for outstanding women’s accomplishment both days went to Stacy Brand, which was the least we could give her for quality service on Saturday and a difficult draw on Sunday.

SuMO is reliant on its staff unlike any other tournament, and our staff put in incredible work on the weekend. The SuMO Prime staff on Saturday helped with a smooth logistical operation; that group was readers Dren Rollins, Robin Richards, Sarah Whisenhunt, Sam Amos, Sarah Mauldin, Erskine Thompson, and Chris Hale, with Caleb Bales providing scorekeeping assists and Mikey Alday, Stacy Brand, Jonathan Page, and Lee Hall serving as playing staff on the house team (“Team USA”).

And when everything started breaking on Sunday, I asked a ton of a much more limited crew of staffers, and Rollins, Richards, Whisenhunt, Mauldin, and Clete Reinberger landed the plane in one piece. Special thanks to Chris Borglum for lending is reading expertise to the early rounds before Allegiant stole him away from us. Special thanks to Sam Amos for being willing to be flexible and turning into a last-minute addition to the SuMO Trash playing field.

Thanks so much to those who have become consistent competitors in this tournament and have provided counsel, criticism and ultimately support; you know who you are, and I appreciate you more than you know.

Mitch Alday is the Father of SuMO, and Dren Rollins and I have merely inherited his tournament format and given it what we hope is going to be a permanent home. Thanks so much to Mitch and Dren for their consistent and constant counsel.

And if we do have a permanent home, it’s my old colleague and friend in academic administration, Kane Barker of Pellissippi State, who has made this home possible. Kane was a constant presence throughout the tournament weekend, far more than you’d expect of a mere faculty host, and he made sure the rooms were right sometimes before we could. I’m so grateful to him for all the support he’s provided.

Thanks to everybody who makes SuMO what it is. Until we see you again…
---
Chuck Pearson, Tusculum University, general purpose East TN/SWVA quiz flunky, [email protected].
Post Reply