Terrapin Invitation Tournament (12/3/11) at Maryland

[Batsteve]

***EDIT: Terrapin Invitational has been cancelled. Full details in the thread. Mods, feel free to move this thread from the Announcement Forum when appropriate.***

[Cheynem]

Didn't people get upset at BARGE being on December 3?

[RyuAqua]

People were upset at both December 3 and December 10. Is it honestly better to have no tournament in December due to existing HS tournament conflicts and exams, or to let people who can't attend deal with it while the people who can attend do attend? I'm not sure. (Of course, moving this site to Sunday remains an option if Maryland is incapable of generating a field on Saturday.)

[huff paste]

Well he has been claiming the date since May...

[nurgles_herald]

Well, Penn State may be interesting in attending this; it'll depend on if I can strong-arm enough people into playing with me. Hooray! Quizbowl! It's so exciting!

[Madagascar Serpent Eagle]

Is there any word on mirror locations and stuff for this?

[Sulawesi Myzomela]

Is there any word on mirror locations and stuff for this?

Any update on this?

[Senator_Jay]

McMaster is sending a contingent, most likely consisting of me accompanied by some novices. And if it matters at all, I'm ok with either Dec. 3 or 10, and preferrably not the Sunday, given the extreme distances we'll be travelling, and things such as work and school happening on the Monday.

[Cheynem]

To quote my friend Maurice Ravel:

mirrors?

[The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus]

To quote my friend Maurice Ravel:

mirrors?

Not your friend Sam Scudder?

[Cheynem]

Scudder's dead.

[Transparent Pudding]

Since this is right before exams, I wouldn't expect a GW team in any sort of full glory, but as someone who can care less about academics, I'll probably try to make it.

[The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus]

We'll show up to this, but for the record the packet deadlines are far too early.

EDIT: Also post 777. Hooray!

[Sulawesi Myzomela]

We'll show up to this, but for the record the packet deadlines are far too early.

Especially when you don't even know if there's going to be a mirror close enough to attend. We'll probably end up writing a packet, and end up either submitting it late to this tournament, or really early to some Winter/Spring tournament.

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

I'll try to get a packet to this after 11/20.

[Sulawesi Myzomela]

I'm really sorry to post here yet again, but it's now been 3 weeks since somebody first asked if there were going to be any mirrors of this tournament. We are now about a month away from the tournament itself, and 2.5 weeks away from the final packet deadline. I'm going to be very upfront and say that while I wouldn't be able to travel all the way to Maryland, I really want to play this set, because it is apparently the only good quizbowl event in the month of December, and because I don't know if I'll be able to play another tournament before SCT due to Winter Break and some various other things.

Is there simply nobody in the Midwest or South (not to mention everywhere else!) who has expressed interest in mirroring TIT at this time? If that is the case, it would at least be nice to hear that so we can all just simply move on. Instead there are a lot of people out there in limbo, waiting to see what's going on with this tournament, and we would all like to hear some sort of update on whether or not there will be any mirrors of this.

[Madagascar Serpent Eagle]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that at this point my team won't play this even if there is a closer mirror, just because we aren't about to try to write a packet in two weeks just to get penalized for it being late. I'd have loved to play this tournament, but not at the price (both in dollars and stress) of doing all the planning and writing a packet on no notice.

[mhayes]

I'm really sorry to post here yet again, but it's now been 3 weeks since somebody first asked if there were going to be any mirrors of this tournament. We are now about a month away from the tournament itself, and 2.5 weeks away from the final packet deadline. I'm going to be very upfront and say that while I wouldn't be able to travel all the way to Maryland, I really want to play this set, because it is apparently the only good quizbowl event in the month of December, and because I don't know if I'll be able to play another tournament before SCT due to Winter Break and some various other things.

With only 4.5 weeks left, I assume that any mirror would have been announced by now. It's probably safe to assume that there won't be one.

[RyuAqua]

Is there simply nobody in the Midwest or South (not to mention everywhere else!) who has expressed interest in mirroring TIT at this time?

Or anywhere vaguely northeast of Maryland, for that matter? (I'm not able to play a tournament this date regardless, but on principle, more quizbowl for everyone is more important to me than the same amount of quizbowl for me.) Though I'm glad a December tournament exists, I'm quite disappointed by the lack of communication from Maryland's team, which is going to start really impacting teams' ability to make travel plans now if it hasn't already.

It probably makes the most sense at this point to throw the existing deadlines to the wind and say something simpler, like "If you get your packet in by 2 weeks before the tournament, you get to play for $70. Otherwise, you get to play for $140," while soliciting packets specifically from teams capable of writing a good one to ensure that there's a decent number. What packets are submitted already?

[Matt Weiner]

So what's going on with this? As has been documented this remains a bad date for lots of teams, and with no mirrors lined up I doubt the main site is going to provide enough packets for even a viable reduced-field tournament. Is this moving to the spring, or what?

[Mike Bentley]

UW might be interested in hosting a small mirror later in December. We could probably submit a packet.

[Batsteve]

Due to my inability to secure mirrors, and the relatively small number of packets submitted to this tournament, it is being postponed until the Spring. Pending final discussion with the Maryland leadership, the target date is May 5th.

[Matt Weiner]

Due to my inability to secure mirrors, and the relatively small number of packets submitted to this tournament, it is being postponed until the Spring. Pending final discussion with the Maryland leadership, the target date is May 5th.

Hey, is this still happening? On May 5? Is there going to be an announcement/discount schedule for packets?

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

Due to my inability to secure mirrors, and the relatively small number of packets submitted to this tournament, it is being postponed until the Spring. Pending final discussion with the Maryland leadership, the target date is May 5th.

Hey, is this still happening? On May 5? Is there going to be an announcement/discount schedule for packets?

May 5th was a day that Maryland has chosen to host a high school tournament: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12538

[Emily Krok]

Yeah, this is still happening, I think, but not on May 5.

[Mike Bentley]

Yeah, this is still happening, I think, but not on May 5.

Any ideas on what the new date will be? We'd be interested in hosting a mirror at UW in early May if possible.

[RyuAqua]

Before May 12, we have a full schedule of tournaments. Once we get to May 12, more and more teams have left school for the year or started taking final exams, making packet submission and last-minute question wrangling chatoic. After May 12, HSNCT, NSC, and NASAT all come up quickly as things that would take players out of the field. Furthermore, teams have little reason or desire to play events after both Nationals effectively end the season. Perhaps it makes sense to convert this to an early-summer open tournament, a la ANGST last year, in late June or early July. (I'd play it.) Otherwise, it's time to just admit it's time to cancel this.

[The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus]

I would like to have a nice summer tournament to play, personally.

[Sulawesi Myzomela]

For the last two years we've played late season tournaments, once during the first weekend of May and last year during the last weekend in April. There were plenty of teams at both of those events, and I would assume that any post-Nationals event (which people were clamoring for just a few months ago) would be able to draw well across several mirror sites this year as well. I think it would be wonderful for another early summer tournament to exist. But instead of asking teams to move their actual regular season tournaments to the summer, it would be better for some other effort to happen.

If for some reason we're the only team that wants another tournament that late in the season, then it would not only be reasonable, but actually advantageous for Maryland to move the tournament to the summer.

[Mike Bentley]

Many West Coast teams are on the quarter system, which means that tournaments in September and March are very difficult to attend. Meanwhile, May ends up working out very well. I'd love to see a tournament written in this time frame (in addition to a summer tournament at regular difficulty).

[RyuAqua]

I suppose circuits/regions could decide amongst themselves whether a May tournament works for their circuit should one become available. It's certainly not the case that a May tournament would work in all circuits, and that would affect the quality and scope of packet submissions.

[itsthatoneguy]

Before May 12, we have a full schedule of tournaments. Once we get to May 12, more and more teams have left school for the year or started taking final exams, making packet submission and last-minute question wrangling chatoic. After May 12, HSNCT, NSC, and NASAT all come up quickly as things that would take players out of the field. Furthermore, teams have little reason or desire to play events after both Nationals effectively end the season. Perhaps it makes sense to convert this to an early-summer open tournament, a la ANGST last year, in late June or early July. (I'd play it.) Otherwise, it's time to just admit it's time to cancel this.

I believe ANGST was two summers ago.

Michigan would probably not send many players since we are out by the beginning of May and could not get the school to compensate us.

[Batsteve]

Due to several factors, Maryland is discontinuing plans to edit and host the Terrapin Invitational Tournament this spring. We plan on hosting a house-written high school spring tournament on May 5th, and splitting our editing attention between that tournament and TIT would do a disservice to both tournaments. In addition, the late date would cause problems for many schools to attend due to exams--I know Maryland would have trouble balancing writing with spring semester finals.

[DumbJaques]

Though I wasn't going to be heavily involved with editing TIT this year, I wanted to note publicly that I fully supported this decision (and, in fact, this was basically my explicit recommendation). Maryland's high school tournament has been too hard and somewhat inconsistent in the past, and making that a good quizbowl-promoting event once again attended by many non-circuit regulars in the state needs to be a priority for the club.

TIT continuing to be an accessible, well-written regular difficult tournament, of course, also needs to be a priority, but I have no reason to doubt that will happen next year. I know people were discussing the possibility of moving this event to the summer - I'm personally against that because I think we're already suffering from a paucity of regular difficulty events during the year, but the club will presumably make a decision on that based on community demand.