ACF Nationals 2010 Thanks

[salamanca]

All,

ACF Nationals 2010 was held this past weekend in scenic College Park, Maryland. The tournament featured some of the best quizbowl performances I’ve ever seen, as a host great players and teams showed what can be done on a challenging and deep set of questions. Donald Taylor has posted the final stats already and I’d like to take another chance to congratulate our champions:

Division 1: Stanford; Undergraduate: Minnesota A; Division 2: State College HS

I want to give a particular nod to the two teams that played for the overall championship, it was an exciting match and they both deserve to be recognized for their stellar play.

Now on to all the people that made this event possible…

First, I would like to thank my TD Adam Fine. I thought he did a superb job coordinating and juggling all of the little things that go into making a tournament experience first rate. He was responsive and thorough throughout the process and I hope the teams appreciated his professionalism.

Second, Donald Taylor did his usual bang-up job running the stat room, ensuring that updates were timely and that packets were where they were supposed to be.

For all of the other readers and staff, I thank you heartily, I can’t say enough about what it means to have so many people come out and give up part, if not all, of a weekend to help with ACF. I know Adam is going to thank everyone by name in the follow-up post to this, so I will just say that this event would not have been as successful without all of your contributions.

Next, I would like to take the opportunity to publicly thank all those people who contributed to this set, please give props to the following editors/writers for their contributions:

(Please note that the set will be posted by the end of the week, after I have one more chance to proofread it)

Susan Ferrari: Edited the biology and the chemistry, edited the myth for the submitted packets; wrote all the biology and chemistry for the editor’s rounds. In short, coordinated all of the submitted and editors’ rounds science and even helped proofread a first version of the set.

Matt Reece: edited physics, math, and “other science” for submissions, and submitted clean questions in those same categories for the editors’ rounds.

Mike Bentley: helped to edit the computer science for the submissions and wrote the computer science for the editors’ rounds. Also wrote a number of history questions in a pinch that helped fill out the editors’ rounds.

Ryan Westbrook: edited the geography and history for the submitted rounds, wrote geography and a portion of the history for the editors’ rounds. Wrote a majority of the myth for the editors’ rounds, also wrote a few social science and religion tossups for the editors’ rounds.

Jonathan Magin: wrote 7/7 non-western lit that was spread throughout the set.

Matt Lafer: wrote 4/4 history for the editors’ rounds.

Jeff Hoppes: wrote 5/5 history for the editors’ rounds and helped proofread a portion of the geog and history for the set.

Adam Kemezis: wrote 8/8 history spread throughout the set.

Leo Wolpert: wrote a few law questions and some bonuses and tossups to fill in repeats as we were completing the process; also helped with printing out the set and assembling it.

Paul Litvak: edited all of the social science for the submitted rounds, wrote half the social science for the editors’ rounds, edited and wrote Judaica, and a few other questions in random categories to fill in the set. Proofread, helped equalize bonuses late into the night on Thursday and Friday of last week.

Subash Maddipoti: edited all painting and fine arts other, wrote all painting and fine arts other for editors’ rounds, wrote over half of the history for the editors’ rounds on very short notice. Worked hard to ensure that bonuses were consistent and was generally invaluable as the date of the Tournament approached in helping fill in things that needed to be done.

Finally, as I told many of you on Sunday, this was my last tournament and this may have contributed to some of the emotion I displayed when I presented Subash, whom I have always admired as an editor, with the Carper Award. I have truly enjoyed editing and writing questions over the years, especially at this highest level, and I think the world of those players who strive meet the challenge that ACF Nationals has come to represent. I tried to do it justice one last time and I hope that some of you enjoyed the results.

Thanks,

[sobek27]

Good evening everyone,

First, congratulations also to the runner-up teams in each division: Minnesota A in Overall, Harvard in Undergrad, and Brown B in Division II. Minnesota played exceptionally the entire tournament, well enough to win ACF Nationals in many years. Harvard and Brown B were both two-man teams who worked hard to make the top and middle playoff brackets respectively.

There are plenty of people I would like to thank that made this weekend of top-notch quizbowl possible:

- Ezequiel, for working with me to coordinate this event every step of the way, and for assembling a challenging, yet fair, and certainly well-polished question set.

- Subash Maddipoti and Matt Weiner: my direction of ACF Nationals would not have run as smoothly as it did without the two of them. Matt ran the Rules Meeting for moderators, while both of them gave me several key suggestions throughout that certainly improved the quality of the event. Prior to the tournament, Matt reviewed the schedule and the brackets to ensure they were fairly balanced from top to bottom.

- Donald Taylor: as Ezequiel said, one of the best Stat Gurus out there. Completely on top of things when it came to entering and posting stats round-by-round.

- The rest of the moderating crew: Paul Litvak, Susan Ferrari, Leo Wolpert, Jon Pinyan, Jonathan Magin, Dan Greenstein, Mike Starsinic, Jason Dettelbach, Eric Douglass, Bryn Reinecke, and Ryan Westbrook each worked both days of Nationals, which encompassed 20 rounds and about 16-17 hours of time. Thanks also to Brick Barrientos, Seth Samelson, and Arthur Fleming for working the long Saturday, and to Emil T. Chuck, Shaun Hayeslip, Tricia Southard, and Matt Bollinger for helping out on Sunday.

- Jason and Bryn deserve another special thanks for working under tight time constraints to assemble 5 of the 6 trophies on Sunday morning. Well done!

- Jeff Amoros: he developed the "Lunch Options" handout for the teams, and also arranged the bagels and cream cheese on Saturday morning, which appeared to be a big hit among the players.

- The MAQT: Chris Ray and Jeremy Eaton helped deliver the food into Jimenez on Saturday morning, while SteveJon Guth and Logan Anbinder helped set up buzzer systems. (On a side note, I'd like to thank Logan and also Monica Remmers for fighting through ACF Nationals as Maryland B -- with the cancellations on back-to-back days, first they were in the field, then out, then back in, which left the team at two and created a tough situation).

- Lastly, the players on all of the teams. I was quite impressed with the mutual respect and sportsmanship I witnessed throughout the tournament. It compared quite favorably both to quizbowl events I've attended in the past and to other competitive endeavors of which I've been a part. Plus I cannot remember a more competitive ACF Nationals than this one -- at least seven teams proved capable of knocking off each other at the top, and the State College High School team proved every bit as tough as advertised, even on questions of this difficulty.

I hope that most or all of the teams enjoyed the ACF Nationals experience this year, and maybe this year's event will inspire more teams to attend ACF events at all levels in 2010-11.

Thanks again,

[Birdofredum Sawin]

I'll probably have more to say about both the questions and the tournament later, once I'm more fully recovered from the weekend and my return flight, but I wanted to register my gratitude for all the work that went into this year's ACF nationals.. This was a fantastic set to play, full of excellently constructed and interesting questions that were challenging yet playable. I think it was the best ACF nats set I've experienced as a player, and that owes everything to the enormous amounts of time and effort invested by Zeke, Subash, and the other writers and editors named in these posts. In particular, I want to commend the heroic work put in the week before the tournament by Zeke, Subash, Paul, and Leo, who drove themselves to the point of exhaustion (and beyond) to finish the set.

[No Rules Westbrook]

Lest I forget to say it anyplace else, hats off to Zeke for making this tournament happen, in the face of any obstacles (some of which were regrettably provided by me).

Everything about this event reflected a deep commitment to providing a great Nationals-worthy quizbowl experience, and I think everyone present felt that. If people take one thing from this tournament, I hope it's that level of commitment.