Shorter College / NAQT High School Invitational - 10/13/09

[ShorterPearson]

Shorter Academic Bowl will host an NAQT High School Invitational on TUESDAY, October 13, 2009. This tournament is conceived as an invitational tournament for high schools in North Georgia and nearby counties, especially schools that do not regularly play NAQT tournaments or have younger quiz bowl programs. It is being sponsored by the Shorter College Admissions Office, and (because the tournament exists to stoke participation) there will be no entry fees for each high school’s first two teams entering the tournament.

(Why Tuesday? Long, long story. Feel free to ask offline.)

The tournament will be run based on NAQT rules; each round is 20 tossups (and untimed), with 30-point bonuses. A full rules document can be provided upon request; it is essentially identical to the NAQT rules found at http://www.naqt.com/rules.html, with comments about the timing of matches removed. The tournament will be questions provided by NAQT come from Invitational Series IS-89A. (No high school in the region should have played IS-89A yet, unless you’re taking a REALLY LONG road trip. If you have any reason to suspect you have, please ask.)

Registration and initial gathering will begin at 8:00 AM in the Shorter Chorale Room in the Minor Fine Arts building. The opening meeting and Admissions presentation will take place at 8:30 AM, with first matches to begin at 9:15. A full schedule will be prepared at the point we have commitments from teams to attend. At present, we are limiting registration to two teams per high school. As the field comes into focus, we may open the field to more teams per high school, although we reserve the right to charge a nominal fee for additional entries.

Please contact [url=mailto:cpearson@shorter.edu]Chuck Pearson[/url] for registration information.

[ShorterPearson]

October 1 is a natural date for a field update on Shorter's NAQT
tournament; thanks as always for your patience.

We have at present, broken down by county:

Floyd County: Peperell HS, Model HS, Coosa HS
Gordon County: Calhoun HS, Sonoraville HS
Carroll County: Oak Mountain Academy
Clarke County: Cedar Shoals HS
Marshall County (AL): Brindlee Mountain HS, DAR HS

We're going to leave the door open to new registrants through
Monday (October 5); if you've already contacted me and you're
on that list but you've not sent in a registration form,
PLEASE do that by Monday. After Monday, we'll open up the
field to third teams from each of the above schools, on the
proverbial first-come first-served basis. We're going to
cap at 24 teams (because anything more than that breaks the
schedule - ever tried running a 26-team quiz tournament?
It's UGLY); if you still have an interest in attending, be
aware that the field may close even sooner than Monday, and
the schools that are attending have third teams on standby.

Please, as always, e-mail with any questions or queries.

Chuck Pearson

[ShorterPearson]

Congratulations to Brindlee Mountain A (Riley Denton, Kaleb Smart,
Tiffany Rainwater, Travis Morgan) for winning the 3rd Shorter College
HS Invitational on October 13th, 2009. Brindlee A defeated DAR A
(Payton Edminston, Kerry Rice, Joey Mannor, Meghan Dennis, Mitch Lang)
in the final 285-175 to finish the tournament undefeated. In the
3rd-place match, Covington Eastside A defeated Brindlee B 355-135.

Indiidual stats were based on the results from the preliminary rounds,
because there were some issues with consistency once the tournament
got beyond Round 5. (All the top-eight teams played 7 rounds; there
were transportation issues with other teams that resulted in a
significant number of teams leaving early.) Based on the preliminary
rounds, we awarded medalist honors to Luke Weeks of Coosa A, with
88.8 points per game. The remaining all-stars: Tiffany Rainwater
(Brindlee A), Nic Walter (Eastside A), Clifford Lance (Calhoun A),
Joey Mannor (DAR A), Jacob Morgan (Brindlee B), Aaron Morgan (Pepperell
A), Benjamin Northrup (Sonoraville A), Ashley Aycox (Eastside B), and
Walter DeGuire (Calhoun C). Honorable mention to Ace Cook (Eastide A),
Hope Bettler (Armuchee), Travis Morgan (Brindlee A), Brady Melvin
(Brindlee C), and Riley Denton (Brindlee A).

Honors in our trash mini-game (and the first prize of fifty cents'
worth of Tootsie Rolls in a cheap plastic bag) went to Ace Cook
from Eastside B, with honorable mentions to Luke Weeks (Coosa A) and
Riley Denton (Brindlee A).

Nearly full stats can be found at:
http://www.chuck-pearson.org/shorterab/sabhs09/

This is the largest high school tournament Shorter has ever run, with
20 teams representing 9 high schools in Georgia and Alabama. It could
not have worked without the remarkable group of people we have in this
region.

The tournament is funded in full by the Shorter College Admissions;
thanks first and foremost go to Shorter's Vice President of Enrollment
Management, John Head, and his wonderful assistant, Joan Blackwelder,
for the support they provide for this tournament. Dr. Head went so
far as to provide gifts for all the players, coaches, and tournament
staff; what that office does is above and beyond the call, and it makes
my job so much easier.

Love and affection to "our original three", who have competed in this
tournament in all three years of its existence: Model High School
(advised by Skip Saunders), Pepperell High School (Apryl Hawkins), and
Calhoun High School (Terry Bennett). The feedback they have provided
over the years (and in Model High's case, the new freshmen they
"provided" for us this year!) has been invaluable in making this
tournament what it is.

Thanks to the coaches who read for us and helped as tournament
staff - Terry Bennett from Calhoun, Greg Brown and Kelli DeGuire from
Sonoraville, Matt Dennis from DAR, and Lee Henry from Brindlee
Mountain. Special thanks to two Calhoun players who pitched in as
tournament staff at a moment's notice, Savannah McKinney and Emily
Lance; the morning would not have been nearly as smooth as it turned
out to be without you.

Thanks to one of our original alumni, Chris Steele (newly minted
Doctor of Physical Therapy!) for coming back and reading for us.
Many thanks to April Barnes, one of the most faithful helping hands

Shorter College has ever known. And extra special super-geek thanks
to Erskine Thompson, my ever-trusty partner in quiz bowl crime, and
the best reader in Northwest Georgia and it's not EVEN close.

And last but never least, thanks to this year's model of Shorter
Academic Bowl - Ryan Coker, Eli Miles, Jamie Hopkins, Caleb Landrum,

Jeffrey Rice, Hayden Self, and Whitney Richert, as well as all our
friends who couldn't be with us on the day. The effort these people
put in, on top of their busy academic schedules, makes me proud
time and time again. I love these guys, and in all honesty, all of
you who advise student organizations should be envious, because I have
the best crew of the lot.

Until next year...