Penn Bowl Trash Mirror @ UM Morris 3/27/11

[hartm242]

I decided to start a new thread for UMM's Spring Trash Tournament that accurately reflects our involvement as a Penn Bowl Mirror. I'm hoping that because this thread is more accurately titled and contains no reneged tournament dates, it will be less confusing than the previous thread. Please post to this thread and not the earlier "UMM Trash Tournament Spring 2011" thread. For any details from the earlier related thread, click here:

http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewto ... 19&t=10883

The University of Minnesota Morris is mirroring Penn Bowl Trash on 3/27/11.

LOCATION
Matches will happen in John Q. Imholte Hall, which is located at 600 East 4th Street, Morris, MN 56267. Check-in will occur in Imholte 109 from 8:30 to 9:00. Matches will start as soon as all teams get there. Please park in the South Parking lot behind the Regional Fitness Center. If you park in the North, East, or West Parking lots, you might get towed. So be warned that if you park in these lots, you may need to contact security at the phone number given on the Visitor parking space signs.

http://www.morris.umn.edu/visitors/down ... pusMap.pdf

HOTELS
If you're spending Friday or Saturday night in Morris, I would suggest the Best Northland Prairie Inn or the Super 8 a few blocks away, both on Highway 28.

FEE STRUCTURE & REGISTRATION
Post here with number of teams, number of experienced moderators, and number of buzzers. We may need moderators to bring their own laptops. This is the fee structure:

Each team: +$100
Each working buzzer system: -$5
Each competent moderator: -$5

If you have a question, post here. There's no limit on the number of buzzer systems and moderators you may bring, but the minimum fee is $80. Checks should be made out to UMM College Bowl and brought on the day of the tournament.

QUESTION SET
Penn Bowl trash is being written by Joe Nguyen and some other people from the University of Pennsylvania. It will consist of 12 rounds distributed thusly:
20/20 Total
4/4 Sports
4/4 Movies
4/4 TV
4/4 Music
2/1 or 1/2 Video Games
1/0 or 0/1 Comics
2/2 other (This will include a mix of food, consumerama, internet fads, trash lit, and questions which combine multiple elements of the distribution)

For more information, see the Penn Bowl Trash thread.

http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewto ... 19&t=10907

TOURNAMENT FORMAT
The tournament will consist of round-robin play. Our goal is to play 10 rounds. We're going to cap it at 16 teams.

CONTACT
You can post here. For other questions, email me at [email protected]. For day-of-tournament emergencies, call me at (651)343-3590.

[Cheynem]

Minnesota MIGHT attend this. We're sincerely supportive of your attempts to start hosting things and be an active team (as well as find a date that doesn't poach our tournament dates!), but it is a decent drive away on a Sunday morning.

[theMoMA]

Minnesota MIGHT attend this. We're sincerely supportive of your attempts to start hosting things and be an active team (as well as find a date that doesn't poach our tournament dates!), but it is a decent drive away on a Sunday morning.

On that front, we might be a little more inclined to attend this if it started at around ten in the morning instead of nine.

[Coelacanth]

What, you guys have never hit the road at 6am to drive to a quizbowl tournament? Suck it up already.

Seriously though, given that the format is unlikely to be a 15 round marathon, a slightly later start time is probably a good idea.

[Coelacanth]

My teammates have confirmed availability for this date, so assuming this still happens, we're definitely there.

[Cheynem]

Some of Minnesota played this at N'Western, but a number of us didn't, so a team from here may still go.

[theMoMA]

Pencil Minnesota in for a team if we can get the tournament start time moved back until later in the morning (assuming enough people want to come with me, I will drive).

[dtaylor4]

What's the latest on this?

Assuming I don't have any further bad car juju, I can probably come up and staff, but I just don't see the field panning out. Drake won't come, and I doubt ISU would either.

[hartm242]

The Morris Penn Bowl Mirror is happening this Sunday! Registration will be pushed back to 9am. We'll start the rounds at 9:30 or whenever everyone shows up. The closest parking lot to Imholte hall is the North Parking Lot. I'm not sure if security will enforce the parking lot restrictions on Sunday, but if you park in the north lot, it might be helpful to contact security using the phone number that is posted on the visitor parking signs. Otherwise, you can park behind the South lot near the Regional Fitness Center on 2nd street. It will be a longer walk to Imholte hall from the South Lot, but Morris is a small campus, so it still won't be much of a trek. The main meeting room for teams will be in room 109. If you could bring a buzzer system (or two!) with you, that would be appreciated. We'll give you a discount, and it's always nice to have back-up systems.

We'll do nine rounds of round robin play with a break for lunch somewhere in the middle, then we'll re-bracket and have three rounds of playoffs. It looks like we'll have eight teams. We've got 3 teams that have confirmed, and I'm waiting for results from the other five. For other questions, post here or email me at [email protected]. For day-of-tournament emergencies, call me at (651)343-3590.

[Coelacanth]

So, this happened. Thanks to all the very friendly folks at Morris for hosting this event. Thanks also to the dozens of pheasants we saw for not running in front of our car.

I am hoping for stats to be posted online at some point, but I'm not terribly optimistic. Any scoring system which relies on a custom-designed scoresheet and a moderator erasing something after seemingly every question seems unlikely to generate consistent statistical output.

Feedback pro: I thought the idea of tracking top scorers by category was fun. The "prizes" displayed an appropriate amount of whimsy for a trash tournament. Candy was appreciated by all.

Feedback con: The room setups were suboptimal. Having the computers on those big A/V carts meant that most of the time the players were unable to see the moderator's face as the questions were being read. It was also evident that nobody had practiced reading in rooms configured thusly. A quick runthrough the day before (or whenever) on some sample packets would have let everyone figure out how/where to sit/stand, how to do the split screen thing, etc.

Thanks again to everyone from Morris; I would definitely make the trip again.

[Cheynem]

Who won?

[Coelacanth]

Who won?

We went 9-0 to win the 4-team triple round-robin. I assume the chimera team of Arlo Lyle and the Harts went 6-3.

I don't want to comment on specific questions in case there are any more mirrors. I'll just say that given that all the teams had three players, and the combined age of any of the three non-us teams was AT MOST 70, and our combined age is 129, we had a certain advantage given the nature of the question set.

(edited for grammar)

[theMoMA]

Please post the stats in SQBS format. I am glad to help out if you need any assistance learning the program.

There were some issues with the schedule and the rooms, but the Morris folks were for the most part open to recommendations and did a good job running the tournament. In the future, it might be a good idea to practice reading games and keeping score in practice, because that's the kind of thing that can't really be learned without practicing it.