SCOP Spring - Regular Difficulty (Canceled)

[TheDoctor]

Since our Novice set is already nearing completion, the SCOP writing team thought we’d try our hands at something new. SCOP Spring is a regular difficulty tournament on offer from 2 January 2016 through 2 April 2016. Like our other sets, SCOP Spring is written by a conglomerate of writers (most from Illinois), and is head edited by Alec Krueger and myself. Previous years' Novice and MS questions are available on our website and posted in the archive.

The set includes twelve rounds of 20/20 (tossups/bonuses) and a half packet (10/10) to be used as replacements and tiebreakers. Tossups are powermarked. Bonuses are worth thirty points each, have three parts, and are intended to be read one part at a time. As in previous years, these questions are written to the national format, with each round using 20 tossups, each read to two teams, and up to 20 bonuses, as earned by those teams; if your tournament will deviate from this format, you must confirm this with me prior to receiving the questions. The use of this set on significantly altered formats without my prior approval will result in financial penalties.

Distribution
SCOP Spring's distribution per round is:

5/5 Science (including 1/1 Noncomputational Math)
4/4 Literature
4/4 History
2/2 Religion and Mythology
2.5/2.5 Fine Arts
1/1 Geography and Current Events
1/1 Philosophy and Social Science
.5/.5 Trash

Fees
The mirror fee is $15 per team (including house teams). We offer a $2/team discount for complete statistics (in SQBS format with full individual statistics and with round report enabled) posted promptly after your tournament. There is an additional discount of $3/team if you choose to scan and e-mail (or snail-mail) your raw scoresheets to me for the calculation of conversion statistics by topic.

Prospective mirror hosts, or anyone with questions about this or the Novice or Middle School sets, may contact me at [email protected].

Scheduled Mirrors
1/16 Winnebago, IL
1/16 Dorman, SC
1/16 Blacksburg, VA
1/30 DeKalb, IL

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Is there a reason why this set is only planned to be 12.5 packets long, rather than a more standard 14?

[TheDoctor]

We have no desire to write or edit that many rounds when there are undoubtedly tournaments for whom this number will be suitable. In fact, having been working on standardized schedules for the Illinois Coaches Association, none of which uses more than eleven rounds, I can say definitively that it is entirely possible to run a good tournament on this set. If a tournament needs more rounds, they are free to use a different set.

[Joshua Rutsky]

Kristin, I don't suppose you are interested in speeding production on this for an earlier event in November 2015?

Josh Rutsky
Hoover HS

[TheDoctor]

Kristin, I don't suppose you are interested in speeding production on this for an earlier event in November 2015?

I don't think so; we're working on finishing out the Novice and MS sets first, and I doubt we will be done with the initial writing phase of Spring until November.

[TheDoctor]

Due to a number of factors, we've decided to withdraw this set for this year. We've been in contact with the prospective hosts to ensure they can find alternate question providers. We're banking many of the questions that were written for this year, and will likely put the set out when we're more confident in having the time to produce it properly, though we expect that this is likely to happen bi- or triennially, rather than annually. Thanks to everyone who was interested in using SCOP Spring.