Forming a History Bowl Team?

New high school teams looking for advice should post here.
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acrosby1861
Lulu
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Joined: Mon Mar 09, 2015 10:09 pm

Forming a History Bowl Team?

Post by acrosby1861 »

Hi. I'm trying to form a History Bowl team at my school. It's currently listed as a club, but I managed to find fourteen people who were interested in doing History Bowl. The first official meeting is Tuesday and I want to start doing packets right away. I'm leaning toward using NHBB regional sets from previous years, but I'm scared that it'll be too hard and the fourteen people will get frustrated and leave. What is an ideal level of difficulty for people who are just starting out with History Bowl? Would NHBB regional sets be too hard for new people to start out with?

Also, I want to host a NHBB tournament at my school. The principal and my club advisor really like the idea of hosting, but the activities director wants to know about any potential paperwork before we can finalize anything. Does anyone know if there any paperwork involved with that?

Thanks. :)

Edit: I felt like I needed to change the subject line because I kinda went off topic from what I originally had.
Arianne Crosby
Los Alamitos High School '17
UC San Diego '20
johntait1
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Joined: Mon Jun 17, 2013 10:51 am

Re: Forming a History Bowl Team?

Post by johntait1 »

acrosby1861 wrote:Hi. I'm trying to form a History Bowl team at my school. It's currently listed as a club, but I managed to find fourteen people who were interested in doing History Bowl. The first official meeting is Tuesday and I want to start doing packets right away. I'm leaning toward using NHBB regional sets from previous years, but I'm scared that it'll be too hard and the fourteen people will get frustrated and leave. What is an ideal level of difficulty for people who are just starting out with History Bowl? Would NHBB regional sets be too hard for new people to start out with?

Also, I want to host a NHBB tournament at my school. The principal and my club advisor really like the idea of hosting, but the activities director wants to know about any potential paperwork before we can finalize anything. Does anyone know if there any paperwork involved with that?

Thanks. :)

Edit: I felt like I needed to change the subject line because I kinda went off topic from what I originally had.
I started our school's History Bowl team with a few friends and convinced our sponsor to let us host last year, so I'll try to answer these questions from my experiences. Keep in mind that situations may be different across schools.

First of all, I'd recommend starting on NHBB C set, since many people can answer those types of questions. What we do is we start on C set(and make sure to start on round 1 as well), and then gradually progress to B set, and then A set, and finally Nationals. Right now we're currently doing B set after we read C set packets for a few weeks, and I'm planning on moving to A set in a week or two. Second semester I plan to read all Nationals questions to prepare our team for that, but each school's rate of progression will be a bit different depending on how skilled the players are.

Hosting is honestly really easy after you convince your club adviser and principal to do it. That was by far the hardest step for our team. At our school our club advisor emailed Dave Madden to get the details of hosting. There might be a bit a paperwork, but from my memory, it was mostly between our club adviser and the administration; I don't recall much paperwork between NHBB and the school. The main thing is that NHBB will send you material electronically, so you just need your club adviser to print that stuff off.

If there's a quizbowl club at your school, I'd highly recommend getting help from them. At our school the two clubs always help each other out since its pretty much the same people in both clubs. The quizbowl club President directed our tournament last year, and a lot of quizbowl people who were bad at history showed up to staff.

Lastly, when starting a club, my biggest tip is just be honest. Tell why you like History Bowl and explain what it is without sugarcoating anything. The people who end up interested will be the ones committed enough to spend a ton of time studying and going to every single regional tournament as well as Nationals.

Hope that helps, and feel free to ask any more questions!
Great Bustard
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Re: Forming a History Bowl Team?

Post by Great Bustard »

I've sent Arianne some info specific to hosting in Southern California, but the gist of NHBB hosting is NHBB hosts get 6 teams for free in the Bowl, 24 students for free in the Bee, and $50 off the first team at Nationals. We'd send a director, and possibly other people to help them. Host schools still need to provide readers as per the usual policy. We don't really need any formal paperwork, but we have an insurance policy if your school needs a copy. We'd need at least 15 classrooms (though the tournament would likely only use about 7-10) and a gathering space for the opening meeting/bee finals. Further info at: http://www.historybowl.com/regional-sit ... ournament/
Regarding training, see the sets at www.ms.historybowl.com if you really want something easier, but C Set is meant to be very accessible, especially the prelim rounds (Bowl 1-5) as Daniel notes. See also our resources tab on the menu bar at www.historybowl.com for our guide for teams.
David Madden
Ridgewood (NJ) '99, Princeton '03
Founder and Director: International History Bee and Bowl, National History Bee and Bowl (High School Division), International History Olympiad, United States Geography Olympiad, US History Bee, US Academic Bee and Bowl, National Humanities Bee, National Science Bee, International Academic Bowl.
Adviser and former head coach for Team USA at the International Geography Olympiad
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