ANNOUNCEMENT: 2012 VCU Fall Tournament 10/13 (Richmond, VA)

[Frater Taciturnus]

This is the general announcement for the 2012-13 edition of the VCU Fall High School Tournament. This is a high school academic quizbowl tournament, to be operated by the quizbowl team at Virginia Commonwealth University, and held at a local high school in Richmond, on Saturday, October 13th from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM. The tournament is open to any high school team that wishes to attend.

LOCATION, DIRECTIONS, PARKING: The tournament will take place at the campus of Collegiate School. We will be meeting in the Memorial Hall Cafeteria, and the tournament itself will be held in the building on this map labeled as "I. Flippen Hall- Upper School." Registration will begin at 8:30, and the first round will begin as soon as possible after that. Please arrive by 8:30 to guarantee that you do not miss the start of gameplay.
-You can use "103 North Mooreland Road" for your map software, or use the directions page linked above. Park in the school lot.

QUESTIONS: The set will be the NAQT Invitational Series #118. There will be no math calculation tossups; this does not preclude bonuses requiring calculation or questions on mathematical concepts.

AFFILIATION: As we are using an Invitational Series question set, the top 15% of the field will automatically qualify for the 2013 NAQT High School National Championship Tournament. This tournament has been awarded Platinum Certification by the Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence and as such the top 25% of the final standings will qualify for the National Scholastics Championship (pace-nsc.org), which will occur in June 2013.

FORMAT: Teams will be seeded to preliminary groupings before being reseeded based on record. All teams will be offered a minimum of 9 games. Trophies will be awarded to the top teams, and book prizes will be awarded to the top individual scorers. VCU reserves the right to cap the field based on availability of space and staff.

REGISTRATION AND FEES:
-The fee structure is as follows:
Base fee: $70 per team. There is no limit to the number of teams who can attend from one school.
Buzzer discount: $5 off school's total fee for each fully functional system (control box and eight activators all work)-no limit to # of systems you can bring
Staff discount: $10 off school's total fee. This could be a coach, parent, student who is not playing, etc. Team-provided staffers will keep score for various games not involving the team with which they are affiliated. Volunteer staffers must stay through all the games (except finals) in order to receive credit for their school. There is no limit to the number of staffers you can bring.
Minimum fee: The minimum fee is $0 (you can bring enough buzzers and staffers to eliminate your entire fee via discounts, but you cannot have a "negative fee.")

-To register, e- mail me at [email protected] with the number of teams, buzzers, and staffers you want to bring, and an email address where you can be contacted with details. We are also requiring a cell phone contact number belonging to someone who will be attending the tournament, so that we can track you down if you are running late. Feel free to share this announcement with any schools that you think would be interested in attending. There is no further registration form or other action needed on your part in order to be officially registered; you only need to e-mail me at that address with the information requested. Posts made in this thread will not be considered official registrations; you must e-mail me.

METHOD OF PAYMENT: All teams must pay by the day of the tournament. We prefer to accept payment in person right before the tournament starts, but we will accept checks by mail ahead of time if your procedures require it. Teams who do not pay by the day of the tournament will be charged a $25 penalty and will have two weeks to pay their total amount before we start mailing letters to your school administration about it.

We can accept cash, personal checks, or checks from school, school district, or quizbowl club funds. We have no ability to process purchase orders, credit cards, Paypal, or any other forms of payment. Bringing forms of payment outside of the three listed will be considered nonpayment and subject you to the $25 late payment penalty.

We will contact registered teams with instructions on who to make the checks out to. If you require a pre-tournament invoice in order to have a check cut, let us know by September 21st so that we can send you the paperwork in time. If you do not let us know about this requirement by September 21st, and it causes you to come to the tournament without your payment, then you will be subject to the $25 late payment penalty.

TEAM & ROSTER SIZE: There may be a maximum of six players on one team's roster, up to four of whom may play at one time. There will be no exceptions to this rule. If you bring more than six players, you must register a second team to have all of them play. There is a halftime substitution opportunity in each game. Each player may appear on only one team's roster throughout the day-no switching from the B team to the A team, etc. Teams may also play shorthanded with only three players. Teams consisting of fewer than three players may not play without my express prior permission.

FOOD: Neither breakfast nor lunch will be provided by the tournament. We will provide a list of suggested eateries for the lunch break.

Please e-mail me if you have any further questions. I'm looking forward to seeing a wide variety of teams from Virginia and surrounding states on the 13th.
George Berry
Quizbowl at VCU
Tournament Director, VCU Fall Tournament
[email protected]

List of registered teams (to be updated as registrations come in) (20):
Brookville A
Brookville B
Clover Hill
Collegiate
Cosby
Deep Run A
Deep Run B
Douglas Freeman
Hanover
Maggie Walker A
Maggie Walker B
Maggie Walker C
Maggie Walker D
Montgomery Blair
Nandua A
Nandua B
New Kent A
New Kent B
Richard Montgomery
Warwick

WAIT LIST (0):

[Pushkin's Beard]

GDS is interested in attending this tournament.

[jonathanmarx]

RM is very interested and we'll most likely send in a registration this week.

[Off To See The Lizard]

I'm not sure if this completely conflicts with your field or not, but according to the NAQT website the University of Maryland is planning on using the same set for Maryland Fall

[jonathanmarx]

I'm not sure if this completely conflicts with your field or not, but according to the NAQT website the University of Maryland is planning on using the same set for Maryland Fall

I just noticed this as well - if this does become a conflict, I'd say the best solution would probably be for UMD to switch to IS-120 because there are no DC area mirrors of that (closest one is UVA, I think). But I don't know if Maryland Fall is happening and I don't know if that switch is a possibility... it's a mystery.

[Pushkin's Beard]

I'm not sure if this completely conflicts with your field or not, but according to the NAQT website the University of Maryland is planning on using the same set for Maryland Fall

I just noticed this as well - if this does become a conflict, I'd say the best solution would probably be for UMD to switch to IS-120 because there are no DC area mirrors of that (closest one is UVA, I think). But I don't know if Maryland Fall is happening and I don't know if that switch is a possibility... it's a mystery.

UVA and Collegiate are pretty much the same the same distance from DC.

EDIT: Added Google Maps to show distance from GDS to the two schools.

[jonathanmarx]

UVA and Collegiate are pretty much the same the same distance from DC.

EDIT: Added Google Maps to show distance from GDS to the two schools.

Wow I totally did not realize that... just shows how screwed up my mental maps are. In that case, I rescind all previous suggestions.

[Matt Weiner]

I'm disinclined to believe that Maryland actually expects to host a tournament 26 days from now which they haven't announced or publicized in any way, so perhaps that is just a remnant of an old set request. If it's not then I will, humbly or otherwise, request that Maryland switch to some other set, since VCU's tournament actually, you know, exists, and whenever Maryland gets around to making theirs non-secret, they will be well behind the announcement pace.

[Important Bird Area]

I will, humbly or otherwise, request that Maryland switch to some other set

Note that there are no other regular-difficulty NAQT sets available this early in the year. If Maryland indeed switches, they would have to switch to a non-NAQT set.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

I'm disinclined to believe that Maryland actually expects to host a tournament 26 days from now which they haven't announced or publicized in any way, so perhaps that is just a remnant of an old set request. If it's not then I will, humbly or otherwise, request that Maryland switch to some other set, since VCU's tournament actually, you know, exists, and whenever Maryland gets around to making theirs non-secret, they will be well behind the announcement pace.

Disinclined to believe? They waited until fifteen days before to announce last year!

[Frater Taciturnus]

The announcement has been edited to reflect our PACE Platinum Certification, meaning that the top 25% of the field will qualify for PACE's National Scholastics Championship in June 2013!

[Pushkin's Beard]

GDS will be attending with one team and three buzzers. I will also send an email to that effect.

[Frater Taciturnus]

Hey folks, I am going to place a 16-team cap on the field, with a possibility to expand to 18 if we are sure that we can staff that.

We will still take registrations beyond that, but teams will be informed that they are on the waitlist (including their position on it) and the list in its entirety will also be in the main post.


EDIT: The Field is now full. We will allow teams to sign up for the wait list and they will be added to the field if the tournament expands or if a space in the field opens.

[nedsanger]

Unfortunately due to some unforeseen transportation difficulties GDS will not be able to make it to this tournament... *cue awkwardness*. Sorry that we're only letting you know this the day before the tournament, but we weren't informed that we wouldn't be able to come until around 4:00PM today, and we tried everything we could to come, to no avail. We wish you the best of luck with the tournament!

All the best,
GDS

[Matt Weiner]

Maggie Walker A (12-0) won this tournament in a final over Montgomery Blair (10-2, losing only to the first place team). Richard Montgomery, Maggie Walker B, and New Kent A were third, fourth, and fifth, respectively. Full stats are posted on the front page and will be linked here shortly. Thanks to all 20 teams for coming and to our guest moderators.

[Frater Taciturnus]

Full results from this tournament can be found here.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to to thank our guest staff, because without them, this tournament could not have been nearly as smoothly run as it was. Our thanks go out to Evan Adams, Tommy Casalaspi, Dave Porter, Daniel Hothem, Jimmy Ready, JR Roach, and Conan Zhao.