Appropriate Team Size?

[Bolt52]

Though not from a 'new' team ERHS is a regrowing their Quizbowl Program. We run quizbowl as an after school activity that meets twice a week for an hour or an hour and a half depending on the day. Sometimes we have 4 or less people show up to meetings other times we have a lot more. As this year slowly comes to a close (not quite there yet), and we get a new influx of players, approximately how many people do think there should be to run an effective meeting/practice? If we were to get more members, should they all meet together on meetings or should we break them up and if so, how? What is the best way to manage a large "club" like team?

[Corry]

Back when I was in high school, Arcadia's quiz bowl team had 32 members. Each weekly meeting had about 20 people attend. This is probably an exceptional case (at least in the SoCal circuit), but for particularly large teams where more than 10~ people show up per practice, the easiest thing to do is just split up the teams between different rooms. Ideally, every person who shows up will have a buzzer, i.e. 10 people per room.

Meanwhile, at my college quiz bowl team, most of our team meetings involve about... 4 or 5 people. There's nothing wrong with that either. More practice is always better.

Overall, I wouldn't be too concerned about team practices. Try to get through 2-3 packets a meeting, and call it a day. After all, a lot of quiz bowl is simply centered around personal initiative. Everything I learned for quiz bowl, I essentially learned while studying by myself. From my personal observations, team meetings generally just exist as a way to maintain a base level of team cohesion.