Starting up a program

Dormant threads from the high school sections are preserved here.
Locked
jpage
Kimahri
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Aug 17, 2006 3:46 pm

Starting up a program

Post by jpage »

Hello all! I'm new here. Heard about quizbowl from a friend of mine, and I decided to get a team started hereabouts. We're a small school about an hour south of Houston, but there are enough people interested to get a team going to tournaments this year.

In order to get this going, I've got to submit information about the program and what it is about to our principal and she's got to approve it. That won't be a problem.

However, I do have a few questions:

Where can I find more information about tournaments in Texas? The Texas Quizbowl page (found here) doesn't have any information on anything for this year, though the statistics from last year indicate that it's a pretty active program. There isn't any info for Texas tournaments in 06-07 on here either. Am I missing something? Is there anywhere else I can go to find tournament dates?

How much does it cost to run a quizbowl team? I'm in quite a few other extracurricular activities so I've got plenty of experience with fundraisers (although any and all suggestions on good ways to go about fundraising would be great)... but I'm not sure how much we are looking at here.

What other suggestions do you have for starting up a team?

Thanks in advance!
User avatar
Stained Diviner
Auron
Posts: 5085
Joined: Sun Jun 13, 2004 6:08 am
Location: Chicagoland
Contact:

Post by Stained Diviner »

The Texas page you found is active, and my guess is that it will be updated in a few weeks. Don't hesitate to contact one or two of the people listed there (many of whom are frequent contributors to this board) with your questions. (I'm from Illinois myself, so I don't know much about Texas tournaments.)

If you go through the high school archives on this site, you'll find some general information on starting a team. If you have specific questions, feel free to post them here.

The only real cost to starting a team is that you should buy a buzzer system, which is something else you can find out about in the high school archives or from the Illinois page. The other main cost is entering and traveling to tournaments. You can buy practice questions or find them for free on the internet.

Don't hesitate to ask questions--you should find people on this board and coaches in your area to be helpful.
jpage
Kimahri
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Aug 17, 2006 3:46 pm

Post by jpage »

Awesome, thanks.

Makes sense that the site's active, we just started school yesterday, which is actually earlier than most texas schools (had to get a waiver to start this early). I'd been looking at the archives here a few weeks back and remembered seeing info on a tourney at A&M this fall, but it's not there. Maybe I was on the wrong year or maybe I'm delusional, but it seemed like it just disappeared.

Luckily enough we've actually already got a buzzer system for a similar program.

Thanks for the response. It's helped. I'll be presenting info about the program to the principal tomorrow, that should probably go well.
User avatar
Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
Chairman of Anti-Music Mafia Committee
Posts: 5647
Joined: Wed Jul 26, 2006 11:46 pm

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

About the buzzers, I recommend Zeecraft. Their website is zeecraft.com. I will second Mr. Reinstein in that you NEED a buzzer system. They really help practice for speed, and if you bring your system to tournaments a lot of times you get a discount.
You definitely need to fundraise, because most tournaments cost about $50 to $60 to compete in. A really good way to fundraise is to host a tournament at your school, which I'm sure other quizbowlers would be willing to assist you with. The biggestt help I can tell you is to compete as much as you can, because even if you get whupped a few times you still learn a lot and you will get better as a team.
If you can, track down practice questions to work with. naqt.com has some to order, and NAQT has a page called "You Gotta Know..." with a lot of good basics for your team to learn. There are also some links on this website to different practice questions, and some tournament directors might be willing to send you their old questions.
User avatar
First Chairman
Auron
Posts: 3651
Joined: Sat Apr 19, 2003 8:21 pm
Location: Fairfax VA
Contact:

Post by First Chairman »

Hopefully you will have read the PACE Special Discussions to help you with recruiting. We haven't really discussed how to start a team as much as we have talked about recruiting players.
Locked