CMST II Available for Hosting

[cvdwightw]

The 2011 Collaborative Middle School Tournament will be available for hosting from February 19, 2011 until April 23, 2011. There is no fee to use this set of questions at your middle school tournament. This tournament is written and edited by members of the high school and college quizbowl communities.

This set will consist of 10 rounds of 20 10-point tossups and 20 three-part, 30-point bonuses. The category distribution of each round consists of (note that x/y means x tossups and y bonuses):

5/5 Social Studies:
1/1 American History
1/1 European History
1/1 World/Ancient History
0/1 American Government
2/1 Geography

4/4 Literature and Language Arts:
2/2 American and British Literature
1/1 Juvenile Literature
1/1 Other Literature and Language Arts

5/5 Math and Science:
1/1 Life Sciences
2/1 Physical Sciences
1/1 Astronomy
1/1 Mathematics (Theory)
0/1 Mathematics (Computation)

2/2 Fine and Performing Arts:
1/1 Visual Arts
1/1 Auditory Arts

4/4 Additional Topics:
1/1 Religion
1/1 Mythology
1/1 Current Events
1/1 Popular Culture or General Knowledge

Each packet will contain one extra tie-breaker tossup and one extra bonus. Tie-breaker questions will be taken from any of the above categories except popular culture.

For an idea of what our final packets will look like, please download last year's Collaborative Middle School Tournament. The 2011 version will feature some minor changes, such as a slightly different distribution and a commitment to shorter bonus parts, but the overall philosophy of the tournament remains the same.

Bids should be e-mailed to Dwight Wynne at dpwynne at gmail dot com and include:
-The name of the school(s) interested in hosting, and the name(s) and contact information of coach(es) serving as prospective tournament directors. High school and collegiate hosts may have players serve as prospective tournament directors in lieu of or in addition to coaches. We do not require previous experience.
-The prospective area from which you would draw teams (e.g. single school, single district, municipal area, state). We are happy to have multiple sites in close proximity, so long as the addition of one site will not severely impact the field of a second site.
-The date(s) on which the tournament would be held. Bids to use these questions for league play are welcome; however, we will give preference to schools that wish to host a weekend tournament.
-Fee structures. Since there is no fee to use these questions, we suggest a base entry fee of no more than 70% of the normal fee in a school’s area.
-Your prospective plan for reporting statistics to the CMST team. We do not require individual statistics; however, we do require win-loss record, points per game, total tossups answered, and bonus conversion (bonus points earned per bonus controlled) for each team. Previous experience is not required; we are happy to help new tournament directors learn quizbowl statistics software.
-An estimated maximum field size.
-Anything else you consider relevant to our consideration of your bid.

While it is not vital to bid acceptance, we would like to see hosts provide the following:
-In some areas it is customary to bring one team with more than eight players and have many students rotate playing. We believe that it is a more fun experience if all students play most of the time. We would like hosts to suggest to participating schools that they split their contingent into multiple teams, each with no more than eight players, and offer large “multiple team” discounts as incentives to do this. However, we understand that staffing and room constraints, as well as the number of chaperones available for a particular school, may make it unfeasible for some hosts to mandate this.
-We would like hosts to provide the greatest number of meaningful games for all teams, and are happy to assist hosts in devising a format to that end. We suggest that the top preliminary teams advance to a round-robin playoff bracket, and that consolation matches be set up for non-playoff teams that are interested in playing more questions.
-We recommend, but do not require, that tournament directors encourage high-finishing schools to explore applying for wild-card berths in NAQT's Middle School National Championship Tournament.

Any questions concerning bidding or the tournament itself should be e-mailed to Dwight Wynne at dpwynne at gmail dot com.

[cvdwightw]

List of hosts using CMST:

February 19
Chattahoochee High School (GA) - this tournament may move to March 12 or March 19

February 26
Tuscumbia High School (MO)

March 12
Barrington Middle School, Station Campus (IL) A Bracket - Prelim Stats A Bracket - Overall Stats B Bracket - Prelim Stats B Bracket - Overall Stats
Dorman High School (SC) Stats

April 2
Springfield High School (IL) - this date is tentative

April 9
Early College at Guilford (NC)
Longfellow Middle School (VA)

April 23
Bainbridge High School (GA)

If you do not see your school name on this list, and I have not responded to you confirming receipt of your bid, please contact me (preferably by PM, since chances are the problem you are encountering has to do with my spam folder).

[cvdwightw]

As shown by my last edit, we are now up to seven tournaments in six states, which assuming that all mirrors are able to run this year, is as many as we had last year. We're hoping to increase that number of tournaments this year, so if you have a nascent middle school circuit or you're looking to supplement your NAQT MS-01 set with another pyramidal-style tournament in April, please send in a bid!

[Mechanical Beasts]

As shown by my last edit, we are now up to seven tournaments in six states, which assuming that all mirrors are able to run this year, is as many as we had last year. We're hoping to increase that number of tournaments this year, so if you have a nascent middle school circuit or you're looking to supplement your NAQT MS-01 set with another pyramidal-style tournament in April, please send in a bid!

Speaking of bids: if you have a bid to send in that you think of sending in between February 17th and February 26th, please send it to me at andy.watkins2@gmail.com, rather than to Dwight--Dwight's going to be at a conference and may not have internet, and we at the CMST are interested in getting a reply to your bid as soon as possible.

[cvdwightw]

As of 9:15 Pacific Time this set has been fully edited, proofread, packetized, compiled, and sent to hosts using the set in February (unless the zip file doesn't work...). We will be revising the set in response to any feedback received from hosts, but believe this set to be of higher quality when compared to last year's initial version. If you wanted to bid but wanted to wait until we definitely had the set finished, I encourage you to bid now.

[alexdz]

Will there be some kind of discussion forum for this tournament available to hosts/coaches/moderators/etc. who have already heard the set?

[ether a go-go]

You should apply for access to the CMST group through the User Control Panel. (If we use the same group for next year's questions, then at some point within the next nine months somebody will have to figure out whether we want to kick people out of that group, but I still think you should apply--heck, next year you might be a writer.) Also, if you email me your comments, then I will post them in that group so the writers and editors can see them as soon as I do, which might be faster than you getting into the group. Since this set will be used several times over the next several weeks, feedback from anybody and everybody is good, especially feedback about specific questions.

[cvdwightw]

I've started adding statistics for tournaments that have them in the space next to the host name in the thread's second post, so people can see the statistics all in one place.

We're still taking bids, but because we want to release the set as practice material for MSNCT, cannot accept bids for dates later than April 23.