BrainBusters Fall VI (Ithaca HS) - 11/11/2017

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Ithaca Cricket Ump
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BrainBusters Fall VI (Ithaca HS) - 11/11/2017

Post by Ithaca Cricket Ump »

We are pleased to announce that the Sixth Annual BrainBusters Fall quizbowl tournament will be held on Saturday, November 11, 2017, at Ithaca High School in Ithaca, NY. We realize that this is Veterans’ Day weekend, but due to the unavailability of facilities at IHS on other weekends during the month and the very real danger of weather-related problems if the tournament was moved back to December, we have decided to stick with this date.

The tournament will use NAQT set IS-170. This means that teams that are planning to play Delaware Valley’s TST tournament on October 14 (IS-168), Geneva’s high school tournament on January 27 (IS-172), and MasterMinds teams are all eligible to play, as the tournament will be run on different question sets than any of those competitions. Games will be untimed, read to the completion of the 20th tossup and any associated bonus. Powers, negs, and sudden-death overtime will be in effect. To simplify matters, timing will be ACF format - 5 seconds for everything (5 seconds to buzz after tossup completion, 5 seconds to answer after buzzing, 5 seconds to answer each bonus part with a prompt on 4). The current soft cap is 48 teams – expansion or contraction may take place depending on availability of staff and buzzers and school interest. Formatting will be the same as used in previous years: quasi-seeded round robin in the AM, followed by rebracketing and another round robin after lunch, with a final played. Each team is guaranteed a minimum of 9 matches during the day, and most likely one or two more. Top teams will receive trophies and 10 all-stars (the 5 overall top scorers and the top scorers from the 5 highest-placed teams that did not have an overall top-5 scorer) will receive medals and book prizes. A separate small school championship trophy will be awarded and a separate small school final (which may or may not be advantaged depending on final standings) will be played. (We use the NAQT definition of a small school – a public school with a 10-12 enrollment of 500 or fewer students with a non-selective admissions policy, OR a private or charter school with a 10-12 enrollment of 350 or fewer students.) Middle school teams and players are welcome to compete, with the caveat that they will be playing against mostly high schoolers on high school questions.

Top finishers will qualify for the 2018 NAQT High School National Championship Tournament in Atlanta, 2018 NAQT Small School National Championship Tournament in Chicago, and/or the 2018 PACE National Scholastic Championship in Reston, VA (suburban DC).

As in previous years, the following issues will be left to a vote of the coaches of the attending teams:
1) Whether or not to use math computation BONUSES (we will not use computation TOSSUPS, but there are math theory tossups in the games)
2) The preferred method for breaking standings ties among teams (points per game or head-to-head result; packet and time considerations force us to use one of these tiebreakers rather than play them off)
3) Whether or not the won-loss records from the AM round robins should carry over to the PM rounds.

FEE SCHEDULE
$85 for the first team from a school.
$70 for the second and any subsequent teams.
Schools may enter any number of teams they wish, but we reserve the right to limit each school to 2 teams if the field fills.

The following DISCOUNTS apply:
-$5 per fully functioning buzzer system (fully functioning means 8 buzzers that work – we reserve the right to rescind the discount for buzzers that do not meet this standard)
-$10 per staffer (moderator or scorekeeper) provided by the team (staffers will be assigned as readers until we have enough, then scorekeepers – if you have a preference, please let me know what it is and we will try to accommodate it)
-$10 if your team is traveling more than 150 miles one way to IHS (determined by Google Maps) – only one of these discounts per school.
-$20 if your school did not play BrainBusters Fall 2015 or 2016 – every team from your school can take this discount.

You may take as many buzzer and staffer discounts as you wish, with the proviso that the minimum fee per team is $40. We encourage you take as many buzzer and staffer discounts as you can, as it makes it far easier to run (and possibly expand, if need be) the tournament.

As in previous years, the IHS International Club should be offering both a pizza lunch and an International Tasting Bar on-site for lunch at the IHS cafeteria. We recommend staying at the school for lunch or bringing your own, since the nearest restaurants are 2+ miles away in heavy and unpredictable Ithaca weekend traffic. You may leave for lunch at your own risk, but with the warning that we will restart the tournament promptly at the announced restart time, and will start reading packets to whomever is in place at that time.

If you have any questions, please contact me at [email protected] .

If you wish to REGISTER, we are happy to announce that NAQT is allowing us to use the registration system on their website this year, and we are taking official registrations through that site. Go to:
https://www.naqt.com/registration/regis ... nt_id=8608

You will need to log in to the NAQT site to register; if you do not already have an account, you can quickly create one at that site. Please let us know, at minimum, school name and number of teams (the latter can be changed later if need be), your name and contact information, the number of buzzers and staffers you are bringing, and any other information we should know. You may enter rosters now if you know them (and we will ask you to do so just before the tournament date), but if you don’t know who’s playing now, don’t worry about that part. Payment is not due at this time, although if possible we are requesting pre-payment before the tournament date – information of that will be forthcoming to registered teams.

We’re looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible on November 11 for upstate New York’s premier quizbowl event!

--Scott & Becky Blish, Tournament Directors
--Benjamin Kirk, IHS Quizbowl Coach
Last edited by Ithaca Cricket Ump on Sun Aug 13, 2017 1:29 am, edited 3 times in total.
Scott M. Blish
Cheval, FL
Cornell 1990-92, 1997
Tournament Director, BrainBusters Fall
HSNCT moderator 2012-, MSNCT 2013-, SSNCT 2014-, PACE NSC 2013-, NHBB Nationals 2014-
Ithaca Cricket Ump
Wakka
Posts: 158
Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 8:51 pm

Re: BrainBusters Fall VI (Ithaca HS) - 11/11/2017

Post by Ithaca Cricket Ump »

Field update (9/13/2017) (teams/buzzers/staffers) - ** denotes small school

Amherst (1/1/0)
Brighton (2/0/0)
Delaware Valley (2/2/1)
(**) Geneva (2/4/3)
(**) Greene (1/0/0)
Ithaca (4 est./1/?)
Wallenpaupack (2/2/1)

14 teams (3 small schools), 10 buzzers, 5+ staffers
Cap = 48 teams
Last edited by Ithaca Cricket Ump on Wed Sep 13, 2017 10:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Scott M. Blish
Cheval, FL
Cornell 1990-92, 1997
Tournament Director, BrainBusters Fall
HSNCT moderator 2012-, MSNCT 2013-, SSNCT 2014-, PACE NSC 2013-, NHBB Nationals 2014-
Ithaca Cricket Ump
Wakka
Posts: 158
Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 8:51 pm

Re: BrainBusters Fall VI (Ithaca HS) - 11/11/2017

Post by Ithaca Cricket Ump »

Even at this early date (2 months before the event), the field for BrainBusters Fall VI is now over 25% full. Remember to get your registrations in sooner rather than later!
Scott M. Blish
Cheval, FL
Cornell 1990-92, 1997
Tournament Director, BrainBusters Fall
HSNCT moderator 2012-, MSNCT 2013-, SSNCT 2014-, PACE NSC 2013-, NHBB Nationals 2014-
Ithaca Cricket Ump
Wakka
Posts: 158
Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 8:51 pm

Re: BrainBusters Fall VI (Ithaca HS) - 11/11/2017

Post by Ithaca Cricket Ump »

Field update (9/27/2017) (teams/buzzers/staffers) - ** denotes small school

Amherst (1/1/0)
Berwick (2/0/1)
Brighton (2/0/0)
Delaware Valley (2/2/1)
(**) Geneva (2/4/3)
(**) Greene (1/0/0)
Ithaca (4 est./1/?)
(**) Moravian Academy (2/0/0)
Troy (1/0/1)
Wallenpaupack (2/2/1)

19 teams (3 Traditional Public small schools, 2 Private/Charter small schools), 10 buzzers, 7+ staffers
Cap = 48 teams
Scott M. Blish
Cheval, FL
Cornell 1990-92, 1997
Tournament Director, BrainBusters Fall
HSNCT moderator 2012-, MSNCT 2013-, SSNCT 2014-, PACE NSC 2013-, NHBB Nationals 2014-
Ithaca Cricket Ump
Wakka
Posts: 158
Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 8:51 pm

Re: BrainBusters Fall VI (Ithaca HS) - 11/11/2017

Post by Ithaca Cricket Ump »

Field update (10/12/2017) (teams/buzzers/staffers) - ** denotes small school

Registration deadline is October 28. We may extend this deadline some in order to get the field to a more logistically convenient number of teams, but that is completely at our discretion and registrations after that date are NOT guaranteed, even if we have not yet reached the field cap. Invoices will start being e-mailed to registered teams on or about October 14. Teams that register between October 14 and October 28 will receive invoices attached to their registration confirmation e-mails. Once paid, tournament entry fees will NOT be refunded unless the tournament is either cancelled entirely, or postponed to a date when the school requesting the refund cannot attend. Previous last-minute no-shows have unfortunately made it necessary for us to strictly enforce this policy.

(**) Adirondack (1/1/0)
Amherst (1/1/0)
Berwick (2/0/1)
Brighton (2/0/0)
Delaware Valley (2/2/1)
(**) Geneva (2/4/3)
(**) Greene (1/0/0)
Ithaca (4/2/1+)
(**) Lakeland (2/0/1)
(**) Milford (1/0/0)
(**) Moravian Academy (2/0/0)
"Team B" (1/0/0) - hybrid team of high schoolers from different schools. This is an exhibition team: results and statistics against them do not count for or against regular teams in the standings, and this team is not eligible for either the tournament championship or nationals qualification. For the PM brackets, if they would have qualified for the championship bracket, they will instead be placed in the highest non-championship-eligible PM bracket and replaced in the championship bracket by the 3rd place team in their AM group. The members of this team WILL be eligible for individual all star awards and/or book prizes.
Troy (1/0/1)
Wallenpaupack (2/2/1)
(**) Wellsboro (1/1/1)
(**) Whitney Point (1/1/2)

25 teams (9 Traditional Public small schools, 2 Private/Charter small schools), 14 buzzers, 12+ staffers
Cap = 48 teams (may be contracted to 36 if not enough buzzers and staffers available)

Current nationals qualification spots:
HSNCT = 4
PACE NSC = 6
SSNCT Traditional Public = 3
SSNCT Private/Charter = 1
Scott M. Blish
Cheval, FL
Cornell 1990-92, 1997
Tournament Director, BrainBusters Fall
HSNCT moderator 2012-, MSNCT 2013-, SSNCT 2014-, PACE NSC 2013-, NHBB Nationals 2014-
Ithaca Cricket Ump
Wakka
Posts: 158
Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 8:51 pm

Re: BrainBusters Fall VI (Ithaca HS) - 11/11/2017

Post by Ithaca Cricket Ump »

Ithaca A first-sentence powered/20d the final question cycle to overcome a 100-point deficit with three tossups remaining and defeat Delaware Valley A 330-320 to win their 5th BrainBusters Fall championship in dramatic style at Ithaca HS on Saturday. Fayetteville-Manlius defeated Troy 345-220 in the third place game, with both schools earning their first-ever HSNCT berths despite neither team being at full strength. The fifth place game doubled as the small school title game, with Cooperstown A winning their 4th BB Fall Small School title in another thriller over Lakeland, 265-260. All six of those teams earned HSNCT and PACE berths, and Cooperstown and Lakeland berths in the SSNCT Traditional Public division.

It was an all-Ithaca affair for seventh place, as Ithaca B defeated Ithaca C, 325-220, guaranteeing that Ithaca would qualify three teams for PACE NSC. The final PACE berth was decided in the ninth place game, which Buffalo's Nichols School won by defeating Brighton A from Rochester 265-140. Nichols also clinched a SSNCT Open division spot. For eleventh place, Wallenpaupack A defeated Delaware Valley B 260-225.

The 3rd and 4th SSNCT Traditional Public qualification spots were taken by Geneva's A and B teams, as the two qualifying teams in the Third Bracket. The final SSNCT Trad Public spot was claimed by Milford A, the top eligible team in the Fourth Bracket.

The 2nd SSNCT Open spot was decided by a playoff held simultaneously with the crossover games, as Emma Willard and Moravian Academy A both finished with 4-1 records in the Third Bracket. Emma Willard won that playoff, 295-110, to claim the final spot in Chicago in April.

The tournament all-stars were PACE-style (6 top scorers, as well as the top scorers from the top 5 teams that didn't have one of those 6):

1 (tournament MVP). Alex Pyle, Troy
2. Michael Goerlitz, Lakeland
3. Matthew Hasenwinkel, Fayetteville-Manlius
4. Josh Schecter, Milford A
5. Jacob Gruver, Adirondack
6. Seamus Hogan, Geneva A
7. Wriley Nelson, Cooperstown A
8. Julian Perry, Ithaca A
9. Colin Kawan-Hemler, Delaware Valley A
10. Aidan Uckun, Ithaca B
11. Kaelen Imani, Ithaca C
Scott M. Blish
Cheval, FL
Cornell 1990-92, 1997
Tournament Director, BrainBusters Fall
HSNCT moderator 2012-, MSNCT 2013-, SSNCT 2014-, PACE NSC 2013-, NHBB Nationals 2014-
Ithaca Cricket Ump
Wakka
Posts: 158
Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 8:51 pm

Re: BrainBusters Fall VI (Ithaca HS) - 11/11/2017

Post by Ithaca Cricket Ump »

Full statistics for the tournament can be found here: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/4467/
Scott M. Blish
Cheval, FL
Cornell 1990-92, 1997
Tournament Director, BrainBusters Fall
HSNCT moderator 2012-, MSNCT 2013-, SSNCT 2014-, PACE NSC 2013-, NHBB Nationals 2014-
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