I would like to start by giving some information on our school. We are a small (<500) non selective high school in New York who wants to get into "good quizbowl". Our school, due to our location has been participating in Qunlimited quizbowl for quite a while. We "won" second place in last year's NAC and a local high school invited us to try the Columbia Fall Quizbowl Tournament (Oct 8-16). We went in with moderate expextations, seeing as we lost all but one of our A team members, but we frankly got destroyed. We ended the day 2-7 having been baptized in fire. We didn't know what we getting into. We played High Tech (the team who referred us) , East Brunswick and Hunter (among others). Upon being 0-5 at lunch we decided to do some research about quizbowl and we were quite shocked at how uninformed we were. Not only did we find out that we weren't really playing QB, we also found out we were playing the best teams in the tristate area (including last year's champions). It wasn't a bad experience, but it encouraged us to do better and try this "good quizbowl". The High Tech team gave us some pointers (they were in the same boat) and directed us here for more information. So I have some questions.
My first question is: how do we study for quizbowl? Resources, subject areas, etc. Any information would be really helpful.
and My second question is: what are some local tournaments we can do to improve our skill and experience? National or local. Note that we are located just north of NYC.
Thanks for your replies. Although it'll be a hard transition, the team is motivated to try, and maybe we could be a respectable quizbowl team in a couple of years!