Metro areas without enough good high school quizbowl

[Horned Screamer]

Quizbowl has often taken a state oriented approach to circuit organization, which of course is fine because it leads to things like focusing on a legitimate state championship, which is a good thing to have the circuit be more serious. It also is good because it probably gets more rural and small schools involved. However, I think a different approach should be added more often to outreach, which is focusing on building up city-wide circuits. The reality is that quizbowl teams primarily are interested in traveling no further than about 30 minutes to play a tournament, and that our ultimate goal in establishing circuits is to have an entire year of events for people to play without having to travel significantly. This could also mean increases in revenues for question writing, as more and more mirrors will be in demand, and most importantly, more and more teams will play and get better.

I just went through the list of 100 biggest metropolitan areas in the US. Sadly, 68 (so, over 2/3rds) are quizbowl deficient areas, and some others are still less than ideal (for example, I chose not to count some places in Ohio that might be a little lean on the grounds that as a whole their state has a pretty extensive reach to teams in each area). Here is the list.

Miami area
Boston area
Riverside area
Phoenix area
Seattle area
Tampa area
Baltimore area
Denver area
Pittsburgh area
Portland area
San Antonio area
Sacramento area
Orlando area
Las Vegas area
Indianapolis area
Virginia Beach area
Nashville area
Providence area
Milwaukee area
Jacksonville area
Memphis area
Hartford area
New Orleans area
Salt Lake City area
Buffalo area
Rochester area
Tucson area
Honolulu area
Fresno area
Bridgeport area
Albuquerque area
Omaha area
Albany area
New Haven area
Bakersfield area
Ventura area
Allentown area
El Paso area
Baton Rouge area
Worcester area
McAllen (Rio Grande Valley) area
Grand Rapids area
Columbia SC area
Little Rock area
Sarasota area
Knoxville area
Stockton area
Springfield MA area
Charleston SC area
Poughkeepsie area?
Syracuse area
Colorado Springs area
Fort Myers area
Boise area
Wichita area
Winter Haven area
Des Moines area
Madison area
Scranton area
Augusta GA area
Ogden area
Harrisburg area
Jackson MS area
Palm Bay FL area
Provo area
Chattanooga area
Lancaster PA area
Modesto area

A strategy where people look at these places and try to focus on pulling together whatever infrastructure they can to make some new tournaments happen would, in my opinion, be very effective. Obviously some places on this list have far more immediate quizbowl potential than others (Seattle has all those UW tournaments, for example, just not enough teams that play them or other good hosts). I would like to see if we can use this list to prompt discussion about ways we can pull together new events in these places and make quizbowl more viable, because it's pretty bad that we only have strong representation in a little over 20 large metropolitan areas. If you are from these places, please see this as a call to arms if you are not already doing your own work to make high school quizbowl happen.

[cchiego]

I like this idea Charlie, but I'm not sure what you mean by "quizbowl-deficient." A number of the places you mentioned have several good teams and a number of less-active teams. They may be more disconnected from the quizbowl mainstream, but there are certainly tournaments in the area for interested teams to play.

For instance, I'd reclassify at least Phoenix (Brophy, Desert Vista, BASIS...many more playing on good questions and they even set up their own league. Big props to ASU for helping set this up). Aren't there also a decent number of upstate NY teams that occasionally play good QB?

Other areas are mixed; Little Rock, for instance, has a crappy state format but a decent number (thanks to Harding and Parkview) of good qb tournaments and a few dedicated good QB teams.

Perhaps a better way would be to go through and classify in each as the following:

Mixed (some bad quizbowl teams and local formats, but a number of teams that regularly play good qb tournaments) Examples: El Paso, Little Rock, maybe even DC-area (It's AC)?
QB-deficient (some good qb and no bad qb, but not nearly enough good qb teams for the metro area size) Examples: Jackson, Nashville, New Orleans, Miami (maybe?)
Bad QB (only bad qb stuff--rarely, if ever a good qb tournament) Examples: Denver, Las Vegas, Memphis, Sacramento
No QB (no quizbowl activities of any kind) Examples: ??

Depends on it you count bad-question TV tournaments too.

Paradoxically, it might be the areas that are mixed or in bad QB areas that might be the easiest to recruit since teams that play a buzzer-based general interest knowledge competition already exist. Recruiting in QB-deficient or especially no-QB areas might be a harder call.

[Francis the Talking France]

I'm going to be going to college in Denver, and one of my main goals was to start up a club at DU and also get HS teams familiar and involved with real quizbowl. Chris sent me a couple of emails with email addresses of local high schools, as well as preliminary ideas for reaching out to schools and eventually getting quiz bowl off the ground in the area. I would be glad to contribute to the cause of bringing good high school quiz bowl to a vast and populated area such as Denver.

The main issue for the college circuit is that, if I were to form a club (obviously not a great performing one), the closest tournament would be a 12 hour drive away, which kinda sucks. As for high school which is what this thread is about, it's mostly about reaching out to the major schools in the area in terms of knowledge bowl and other trivial trivia type things and getting them acquainted with the game in a practice setting and then eventually a tournament setting.

[Black-throated Antshrike]

Lancaster PA area

This does exist. They have a local league and Delaware and Charter normally get some teams at our tournaments from the area

[Horned Screamer]

I mean, I'm judging quizbowl deficiency by my subjective judgement of a lack of good events, or a lack of enough organizers, or a lack of active teams. As long as you're doing poorly enough in any of those categories, you can be judged quizbowl deficient in my eyes. For example: the Miami area has a couple schools that are pretty good and involved and I think they both host things, but nowhere near enough other teams play or host those events. I couldn't really ask Ransom Everglades to do more than they do, yet it's still very deficient. Similarly, Lancaster, PA is dominated by Chip-allied teams, so just because some teams there play good stuff doesn't mean I think it's a good enough circuit.

[Mr. Scogan]

I chose not to count some places in Ohio that might be a little lean on the grounds that as a whole their state has a pretty extensive reach to teams in each area

What areas in Ohio do you think lack enough good high school quiz bowl?

EDIT: I know Ohio doesn't have high-quality tournaments in every area code in the state, but I guess "regions" are relative.

[Excelsior (smack)]

I chose not to count some places in Ohio that might be a little lean on the grounds that as a whole their state has a pretty extensive reach to teams in each area

What areas in Ohio do you think lack enough good high school quiz bowl?

EDIT: I know Ohio doesn't have high-quality tournaments in every area code in the state, but I guess "regions" are relative.

If Charlie's criterion is "no good tournaments within a 30-minute drive", Cincinnati (in fact the largest MSA in Ohio) and Toledo are both top-100 nationwide in population, and lack anything resembling good quizbowl, that bastardized-NAQT thing Ottawa Hills plays notwithstanding.

[Alliance in the Alps]

Regarding Ohio, I think metro-wise Toledo and Cincinnati are the most lacking when it comes to quizbowl participation. The Toledo area uses a quizbowl format that I still have yet to comprehend, while Cincinnati, outside of Walnut Hills and Sycamore, doesn't do anything outside of OAC. Columbus seems to be slowly improving, while Canton might be somewhere good to look at as far as outreach goes (I don't think teams there do things outside of OAC either).

I think it could be easier to understand and use the list Charlie gave if the metros are rearranged in some sort of region-based order (where I'm arbitrarily creating regions to highlight some observations I saw with the list). Note that this ignores the actual amount of good/bad quizbowl actually happening, since I don't keep up with the entire quizbowl scene in the US.

New England (MA, RI, CT):
Boston area
Providence area
Hartford area
Bridgeport area
New Haven area
Worcester area
Springfield MA area

New York:
Buffalo area
Rochester area
Albany area
Poughkeepsie area?
Syracuse area

Mid-Atlantic (PA, MD, VA):
Pittsburgh area (what happened to the University of Pittsburgh's team? Are they still hosting tournaments?)
Allentown area
Harrisburg area
Scranton area
Lancaster PA area
Baltimore area
Virginia Beach area

Southeast (SC-GA-TN-MS-AK-LA):
Nashville area
Memphis area
New Orleans area
Baton Rouge area
Columbia SC area
Little Rock area
Knoxville area
Charleston SC area
Augusta GA area
Jackson MS area
Chattanooga area

Florida:
Miami area
Tampa area
Orlando area
Jacksonville area
Sarasota area
Fort Myers area
Winter Haven area
Palm Bay FL area

Texas:
San Antonio area
El Paso area
McAllen (Rio Grande Valley) area

(Is good quizbowl spreading in the Dallas-Fort Worth area? Last I heard it was a Chip-dominated area)

Midwest (MI, IN, WI, IA, NE, KS):
Indianapolis area
Milwaukee area
Omaha area
Grand Rapids area
Wichita area
Des Moines area
Madison area

Southwest (AZ, NM):
Phoenix area
Tucson area
Albuquerque area

West (CO, UT, NV, ID, WA, OR, HI):
Seattle area
Denver area
Portland area
Las Vegas area
Salt Lake City area
Colorado Springs area
Boise area
Honolulu area
Ogden area
Provo area

California:
Riverside area
Sacramento area
Fresno area
Bakersfield area
Ventura area
Stockton area
Modesto area

Observations:

A lot of these cities, especially the ones in the west and New England, are in states that don't seem to have much quizbowl at all to begin with. I'm not sure whether a city-based or state-based approach is more appropriate, although in a lot of these cases starting from the largest city in the state and branching outward would be the best idea, I think. On the other hand, just from reading this list (and I'm assuming Charlie is accurate in describing the amount of good quizbowl going on in each area), metros in states with good quizbowl participation such as Virginia Beach, Baltimore, and Grand Rapids really stick out. I'm wondering what the issue is here.

Another recurring trend is the large number of metros in states with large populations (California, New York, and Florida in particular) that don't have established circuits outside of one or two (or none!) areas. I think starting them up here would be very beneficial to increasing the number of active teams in the nation.

By the way, if someone could do this with Google Maps, it would be great. I don't know how to do it, though.

[Frater Taciturnus]

As to Virginia Beach, if I recall correctly, multiple VHSL districts in that area limit tournament attendance to something like 1 or 2 non-VHSL events before VHSL is over.

[The Motley Eye]

By the way, if someone could do this with Google Maps, it would be great. I don't know how to do it, though.

Yo. If someone can go through and categorize each metro area using the categories that Chris laid out (or something that you think might work better), I can do the rest.

[cchiego]

Alright so I've had this question for awhile but haven't really gotten to express it before so here goes:

What are NAQT, HSAPQ, and PACE doing in the way of outreach?

PACE in particular seems like an ideal organization for doing this kind of concerted outreach, but I haven't heard of much, if anything other than the occasional actions of a few individual members. And even for NAQT and HSAPQ--theirs is a business model ripe for expansion. They're already doing the hard work of producing quality sets. I know that some of the individual members of NAQT are involved in local outreach efforts, but what about systematically targeting each area without QB?

It has to be more than just sending out postcards or sending mass emails to random contact lists. You've got to try to set up relationships with real people in these places and convince them that quizbowl is important. Now I know that this occurs to some extent in areas where there are outposts of good qb, but it's not systematic and it's a great deal of work for the individuals. Dave Madden had the right idea on outreach, but trying to take it all on himself and a few other paid associates was

Just for one day a month try the following: have your people call up 10 schools each and try to get in touch with a Chip coach. Send 10 letters to schools that we know play some crappy local format. Send 10 emails to schools with AcDec teams encouraging them to try quizbowl. Try to meet with, if possible, the producer of a bad QB local TV show.

Heck, it looks like we might be able to crowd-source this via HSQB. I'm willing to take the lead in identifying an area a month and gathering contact info (ideally with the help of a few other people) and then assigning schools/contacts to people.

[Sulawesi Myzomela]

I'm not entirely sure how we're defining quizbowl deficient here, but I would at least like to point out what I feel seems to be an incorrect assumption about the metropolitan areas (Louisville and Nashville) with which I have the most familiarity. Nashville has been included in this list while Louisville has not, but I believe that Nashville is not only just as active as Louisville, but probably even more so. I can maybe accept that both schools should be on this list, but the idea that Louisville is more active than Nashville is incorrect and I've compiled some information to prove my point.

I think it should be noted that in addition to the statistics I'll list below, each area had several good tournaments (Dunbar, Danville, and WKU for Louisville; WKU, Lincoln County, Tennessee Tech, and Webb School for Nashville) hosted just outside the metro area but still within a 2 hour drive for teams in the area. For the purposes of this discussion we will not include KAAC Quick Recall format played by many Louisville area teams or Westfield Insurance Quizbusters played by many Nashville area teams, as neither are considered to be good quizbowl.

(population statistics based off 2010 census, quizbowl statistics represent 2011-12 school year)

Louisville Metropolitan Area

National MSA Rank: 42
Metro Area Population: 1,307,647
Schools playing at least one good tournament: 7
Population per active school: 186,807
Good Tournaments in Metro Area: 3
Schools registered for NSC or HSNCT: 2

Nashville Metropolitan Area

National MSA Rank: 37
Metro Area Population: 1,617,142
Schools playing at least one good tournament: 13
Population per active school: 124,396
Good Tournaments in Metro Area: 3
Schools registered for NSC or HSNCT: 2

[Christ, I Know]

By the way, if someone could do this with Google Maps, it would be great. I don't know how to do it, though.

Yo. If someone can go through and categorize each metro area using the categories that Chris laid out (or something that you think might work better), I can do the rest.

Was I ninja'd in this work?

[The Motley Eye]

Not entirely. I've got a couple other ideas.

[bt_green_warbler]

What are NAQT, HSAPQ, and PACE doing in the way of outreach?

We've done some outreach to some of these areas. The upstate New York cities on this list, for instance, have thriving leagues (results from the 87-team Rochester league); schools that already play pyramidal questions for a dozen games a year will need a different message from schools that have never heard of quizbowl before.

Heck, it looks like we might be able to crowd-source this via HSQB

This sounds like a great idea.

[Horned Screamer]

Nick, you do realize that all you're doing there is pointing out to me that the situation is even worse than I originally thought, yeah? This was just me giving the list a once over and thinking which circuits stuck out to me as poor, so it's not like this list is DEFINITIVE, folks. I don't think elaborate comparative demographic arguments are warranted to point out that Louisville has a crappy circuit I originally overlooked.

[The Motley Eye]

Crowdsourcing!

I've started a Google Doc with the top 100 MSAs. If a couple people can help me classify each of the MSAs in terms of their quiz bowl activity, I can do some fun things with Google Maps and these data.

[Sulawesi Myzomela]

Nick, you do realize that all you're doing there is pointing out to me that the situation is even worse than I originally thought, yeah? This was just me giving the list a once over and thinking which circuits stuck out to me as poor, so it's not like this list is DEFINITIVE, folks. I don't think elaborate comparative demographic arguments are warranted to point out that Louisville has a crappy circuit I originally overlooked.

I'm bored and comparative demographic arguments are fun, but I don't disagree with any of this.

[ether a go-go]

I think that if we want to address these issues, then we as a community should address them. HSAPQ and NAQT already do some outreach, but they are constantly busy doing things like writing thousands of questions and working with tournament hosts. Also, anything that comes from them will sound very commercial to some people--you can have a great activity if you just pay us $X per team. If we have connections to high schools or colleges in or near these areas, then we should find a way to take advantage of them. If not, then we need to try to spread the word.

[The Motley Eye]

Here's a preliminary effort (KMZ - open it using Google Earth) using the definitions that people helped add to the Google Doc last night. You can click on each of the polygons to get additional details about the MSA. This has all top 100, not just the ones Charlie identified in his post, and it adds an additional category (Active) for areas that have an established network of good tournaments.

[TulaneKQB]

We've been trying to carve our own niche in Southeast Louisiana, but the problem is that communication becomes very difficult once you get outside of New Orleans (an issue that exists in many areas, quiz bowl being just one of them). We're working to get everyone on the same page, but the fact is that the networks just don't exist here like they do in, say, Metro Atlanta--making one from scratch has been tough sledding so far.

[mhayes]

We've been trying to carve our own niche in Southeast Louisiana, but the problem is that communication becomes very difficult once you get outside of New Orleans (an issue that exists in many areas, quiz bowl being just one of them). We're working to get everyone on the same page, but the fact is that the networks just don't exist here like they do in, say, Metro Atlanta--making one from scratch has been tough sledding so far.

I think you guys have done an exceptional job, Ryan. I think part of the problem is that many schools in the New Orleans area play Chipbowl.

[TulaneKQB]

That's certainly true, but in my experience it seems to mostly be because that's the only thing that's on the schedule. I've had coaches approach me and say something along the lines of "if you colleges hosted something, anything, then we would bring teams to it." The problem for us has been communication with schools outside of New Orleans, in terms of our simply not having enough contact information, teams elsewhere in the state unaware of our existence, and, most importantly, different parts of the state operating on wildly different schedules. In New Orleans, for instance, our spring semester is dictated by Mardi Gras, and there is a period of about a month that sees our weekend schedules totally booked (depending on how many of the parades and other festivities you're involved with or attend). This obviously isn't the case for Shreveport, Lake Charles, or even Baton Rouge who understandably operate on a different agenda from us (after all, as loathe as Tulane is to admit it, New Orleans isn't the center of the universe).

I can only speak from our experience, but this might be a problem faced by other metropolitan areas that are surrounded by decidedly smaller towns for hundreds of miles in any direction (the Denvers of the world, for instance). That obviously isn't an excuse, but it has made getting things off the ground more difficult.

[Mr. Scogan]

I chose not to count some places in Ohio that might be a little lean on the grounds that as a whole their state has a pretty extensive reach to teams in each area

What areas in Ohio do you think lack enough good high school quiz bowl?

EDIT: I know Ohio doesn't have high-quality tournaments in every area code in the state, but I guess "regions" are relative.

If Charlie's criterion is "no good tournaments within a 30-minute drive", Cincinnati (in fact the largest MSA in Ohio) and Toledo are both top-100 nationwide in population, and lack anything resembling good quizbowl, that bastardized-NAQT thing Ottawa Hills plays notwithstanding.

The MSA of Cincinnati I don't think is the largest in Ohio if you're just talking about figures that are in Ohio (the MSA of Cincinnati spans three states), but that's beside the point. Yeah, when I first opened this thread, I was instantly thinking "Cincinnati and Toledo" areas too, but its not a matter of quiz bowl not existing in those areas (good quiz bowl, that is), but the lack of schools and tournaments that do it. In Cincinnati, the only active schools you see are Walnut Hills and Sycamore/Academic Aves. The good thing is that there are tournaments within driving distance from Cincinnati, in ninety minutes or less you can go to the tournaments at Northmont and Tipp, and in two hours you can go to tournaments at the U of Louisville. Obviously, it would help the SW Ohio circuit if Xavier and UC had quiz bowl clubs.

As for NW Ohio, yeah I think it probably is a huge black hole of quiz bowl. Aside from BGSU's A-set tournament, I don't even think there is anything going on up there. Strangely enough, however, there are more teams from area code 419 (Northwest Ohio) registered for HSNCT than 937 and 740 combined (Dayton and suburban Columbus, respectively), those teams being Maumee Valley, Ottawa Hills, Findlay and Riverdale.

I'm not saying the circuits in Dayton or Columbus are weak, as in fact they are not. Ohio State has done a lot to outreach to new teams, Columbus area and afar to pyramidal quiz bowl and a lot of these teams like it.

[Kyle]

Among the metropolitan areas that are not on the list is New York City. This makes sense, since that area has a bunch of dedicated teams, including one of the absolute best teams. It also has no shortage of tournaments, including one of the best high school housewrites. But we all ought to keep in mind that, just within New York City alone, there are more than 500 high schools. All of them are within a reasonable commute of each other by public transportation. So I don't necessarily think that we should be limiting these efforts to urban areas where there is no quizbowl; there's a lot of expansion left to be done in areas where there is already quite a lot of quizbowl.

I have brought this up before, but I remain curious whether schools that cannot be induced to attend Saturday tournaments reliably could not be attracted to join some sort of local league. Most high school extracurricular activities, including sports, happen in the context of local leagues or conferences. If you're talking about a bunch of schools that are within close range of each other by public transportation, then playing one game every Tuesday afternoon for seven weeks is not necessarily an impossibility (and obviously half of those games would be at your own school). That's not a major time commitment, but it would be a way to make players have a sustained interest in quizbowl in a way that playing a one-off tournament would not allow. This was the approach we tried to take in Oxford this year, but we couldn't find enough schools that were willing to compete.

[David Riley]

Just curious...given their stature in college quizbowl, has Brown tried any outreach with the Providence area?

[Kyle]

Just curious...given their stature in college quizbowl, has Brown tried any outreach with the Providence area?

NAQT's newest writer is a high school faculty member from Providence.

[cvdwightw]

Just curious...given their stature in college quizbowl, has Brown tried any outreach with the Providence area?

Around the time of the whole Trygve fiasco, Guy and Ian did a giant snail mail campaign for a Fall Novice Tournament mirror that may or may not have ever occurred.

I have brought this up before, but I remain curious whether schools that cannot be induced to attend Saturday tournaments reliably could not be attracted to join some sort of local league.

This is something that some coaches in Orange County were talking about - a lot of the time they don't have the ability to make full-day Saturday tournaments (because they don't have enough players available, because they get the announcement too late to get paperwork in, etc.) but they would love to still compete in smaller tournaments (either half-day tournaments or a weeknight league). Assuming I don't get bogged down with other stuff over the summer I'm going to try to talk to a few coaches and see if we can get something set up for the next school year.

I'm willing to take the lead in identifying an area a month and gathering contact info (ideally with the help of a few other people) and then assigning schools/contacts to people.

You guys should seriously listen to Chris when he says this. Last summer we made a contact list for just about every high school academic team in the area we could find. He did some serious follow-up work in the San Diego area and the results are astounding.

[Nun's puffs]

Pittsburgh area (what happened to the University of Pittsburgh's team? Are they still hosting tournaments?)

Pitt is still hosting SAGACITY and Battle of the Burgh, as evidenced here:
http://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament-te ... nt_id=4032
http://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament-te ... nt_id=4033

[Alliance in the Alps]

Pittsburgh area (what happened to the University of Pittsburgh's team? Are they still hosting tournaments?)

Pitt is still hosting SAGACITY and Battle of the Burgh, as evidenced here:
http://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament-te ... nt_id=4032
http://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament-te ... nt_id=4033

Whoops, I missed them somehow when scrolling through the list of NAQT events.

[cchiego]

The problem for us has been communication with schools outside of New Orleans, in terms of our simply not having enough contact information, teams elsewhere in the state unaware of our existence, and, most importantly, different parts of the state operating on wildly different schedules

This can easily be remedied, especially if (as it seems) there's some semblance of a buzzer-based activity that these schools might do. Simply call up the school, ask who the quiz bowl (or academic team or whatever) coach is, get the contact info (email AND phone), then get in touch with those coaches. If they don't have a team, ask who would be a good person to contact (principal, VP, resources person, librarian, etc.).

The problem for us has been communication with schools outside of New Orleans, in terms of our simply not having enough contact information, teams elsewhere in the state unaware of our existence, and, most importantly, different parts of the state operating on wildly different schedules.

Not to pick on y'all here, but all of this can be corrected. I just did a search for Baton Rouge quizbowl and lots of links popped up. There appears to be a Catholic school league of some kind and I found the contacts for several of those teams just by doing google searches of the individual school websites.

I also found a couple of local news articles on the LAAC "state championship" which listed all the teams competing in each division. Call up each of those schools, ask who the quiz bowl team coach is and...voila. Keep trying if the initial contact doesn't work. You may even want to go to this LAAC state championship just as an "observer" and use time in between rounds to chat with teams and coaches.

Now will all of these schools be interested in QB? No, especially not initially. But staying in touch with them and establishing personal relationships with the coaches that do respond will net big time payoffs over time.

And yes, I'm definitely willing to gather this kind of contact information for various areas.

[Grams's Go-Go Boots]

Sometimes you can even get contact info from an organization like the LAAC, if you ask nicely enough.

[ether a go-go]

Sometimes you don't have to ask. It's probably a good idea to ask if they have a policy about getting contact info off their website, but there are a few areas out there with the information posted on the internet, including this one.

[cchiego]

Sometimes you don't have to ask. It's probably a good idea to ask if they have a policy about getting contact info off their website, but there are a few areas out there with the information posted on the internet, including this one.

Right, although it depends on the area--in San Diego, there's often massive turnover of coaches each year so I ended up getting a lot of confused emails when I got a hold of some documents from a few years before. That was easily corrected though when I got through to one coach who then sent me the full updated contact list. Voila.

Another question--every now and then teams from these "barren" regions show up at national championships. Why aren't we getting a hold of them there and using this opportunity to discuss how to set up a circuit with them? At the very least we could get more information on potential other contacts there and some context as to what the local scene is like (and how it got to be like that).

[Broad-tailed Grassbird]

I chose not to count some places in Ohio that might be a little lean on the grounds that as a whole their state has a pretty extensive reach to teams in each area

What areas in Ohio do you think lack enough good high school quiz bowl?

EDIT: I know Ohio doesn't have high-quality tournaments in every area code in the state, but I guess "regions" are relative.

If Charlie's criterion is "no good tournaments within a 30-minute drive", Cincinnati (in fact the largest MSA in Ohio) and Toledo are both top-100 nationwide in population, and lack anything resembling good quizbowl, that bastardized-NAQT thing Ottawa Hills plays notwithstanding.

Within 30 minutes is an interesting parameter, because Toledo is ~1 hour from Ann Arbor. For reference, by my quick estimates half the teams who played MSU's Rube Goldberg tournament drove at least an hour to get there. It really depends on what region you are in. Also, Toledo is not exactly high on the "we need quiz bowl here" area, as it can organically just come about if DCC, Michigan, OSU, Case, other HS's about the same distance away keep running tournaments.

The Grand Rapids area (more or less the Ottawa-Kent superconference) doesn't have much of a presence other than Holland High. Now I've done research and found a league exists ("Grand Rapids Metro Quiz Bowl League"). That league has zero web presence, but GR West Catholic apparently has had a lot of articles written about them for finishing 2nd in Class B at Bad States. West Michigan is in general just weird. It's very isolated by choice from Lansing (let alone Detroit) even though it's an easy drive down I-96.

[TulaneKQB]

Not to pick on y'all here, but all of this can be corrected.

Right, I wasn't trying to say that remedying some of the state's problems would be impossible, or anything along the lines of "woe is us"--just that implementing these fixes is a big responsibility and that it might take longer for things to get better than tomorrow or even next year. That specific problem--finding reliable contact information--has been a hurdle for us thus far, especially since the vast majority of our team (and the university) is from out of state, myself included. Thanks for the tips, though.

[Nun's puffs]

Sometimes you don't have to ask. It's probably a good idea to ask if they have a policy about getting contact info off their website, but there are a few areas out there with the information posted on the internet, including this one.

The presence of Jesuit on this list tells me that this is bowl.

[etchdulac]

I just went through the list of 100 biggest metropolitan areas in the US.
San Antonio area

Texas:
San Antonio area

I started a San Antonio circuit from scratch this school year (taking it from no QB to QB-deficient on Chris Chiego's scale), got sponsorship from the local newspaper and a local university, and have about 15-20 schools which have played at least two local NAQT events (at Trinity and Antonian College Prep) plus some which have traveled to Houston for more experience. Three San Antonio teams (Antonian, O'Connor, Clark) will be at HSNCT in Texas' contingent of approximately 21.

Anyone with questions about firing a quiz bowl email blast into the dark or starting circuits from scratch is welcome to contact me.

[The Superfluous Man]

Just curious...given their stature in college quizbowl, has Brown tried any outreach with the Providence area?

Dennis Jang and I paid a visit to the Wheeler school a few years ago, but that never really took off. Academic Decathlon is already the established form of academic competition in that region. That's not a bad thing; it tests a different kind of knowledge, but legitimate knowledge nonetheless.

Also, any Providence circuit would have to anchor itself on the private schools. The public school system has many problems far more important than quizbowl, though in my year of absence I can't say how things have changed:
http://www.browndailyherald.com/state-s ... 6q6husV12A

[bt_green_warbler]

Discussion of DC-area tournament field sizes and outreach can be found in this thread.

"How to increase the size of existing tournaments" is well worth discussing, but that is not the subject of this thread, which is "how to establish more tournaments in areas that don't have enough (high-quality) tournaments."

[cchiego]

There are teams that travel to HSNCT, demonstrating that they are willing to go to significant lengths to play good tournaments, but they only play 1 or 2 decent tournaments a year because they do not have access to tournaments in their region. It would be nice if we as a community found a way to address that problem. It would be more than nice--it would be great.

So who are these teams? Can we flag them before HSNCT so that we can make sure that anyone who reads for them throughout the day talks to them and tries to help them or at least find out some more info?

I don't see any teams from areas in CA, TN, AR, GA, or MS that don't have contact already with decently sized good qb circuits of some kind. Of course, they could probably all use some help--every circuit, as Reinstein points out can stand to expand--but I don't see from a quick glance any team from a place that's a complete island.

Perhaps we could though come to HSNCT armed with packages of information on how to host tournaments of your own, how to PR for your tournaments, and how to get more teams in your area involved in good QB. Then, if we do run into teams from QB-deficient areas or the rare QB desert island, we could immediately give them something to read over the bye rounds.

And we probably are underestimating the work some of these teams have been going through in the QB wilderness. The Montana circuit, for instance, is small but seems to have a decent number of tournaments on good questions. It might be a better use of time and resources to help these more marginal circuits grow rather than trying to start things out of scratch.

[Mods, looks like something happened here with a thread split while I was typing this--can you put this post in the metro area post?]

Done. --Mgmt.

[Grams's Go-Go Boots]

It wasn't super serious or anything, but that Bill James-esque survey thing I posted a few months ago would be a good way to assess the quality of circuits.

[ether a go-go]

I like Chris' post--it has some good ideas worth developing.

They aren't necessarily from metro areas, but each year, including this year, there are teams from Iowa and Wisconsin at HSNCT even though those states don't have developed circuits. Madison, Milwaukee, and Des Moines are all on Charlie's list. Also, if you are moderating a match between teams with losing records, especially if they are lopsided losing records, there is a good chance that at least one of the teams is from an area without a good circuit. The area must have something, since it has at least one willing team and a way for them to qualify, but it might not have much beyond that.

[Wendish Crusade]

They aren't necessarily from metro areas, but each year, including this year, there are teams from Iowa and Wisconsin at HSNCT even though those states don't have developed circuits. Madison, Milwaukee, and Des Moines are all on Charlie's list.

None of the Iowa schools currently registered for this year's NAQT HSNCT are from metro areas; only one of the three (Chariton) has been attending tournaments in the Des Moines-Ames area. (I recognize Ames isn't really part of the metro area in question either, but when it takes Drake's help for Iowa State to have enough staff for a high school tournament and it takes Iowa State's help for Drake to have enough staff for a high school tournament, we're one area for quiz bowl.) Another of the three should be if they (Mediapolis) were willing to drive across the state to get to the Alta-Aurelia tournament... but I digress.

To be frank, it's a good example of an area with a functioning circuit that plays predominately bad quiz bowl: I've already named in this post all three Iowa tournament hosts using NAQT questions, and given that we had a school actively refuse to come to ours because we were using NAQT questions my hopes are not high as to what the rest of the tournaments in these parts are using. I'm watching this thread for ideas (although admittedly my direct involvement with the area is essentially at an end), but I took my shot at slightly expanding the range of hosts and had it fall through.

[Nun's puffs]

Watching the record-breaking Teen Jeopardy winner today inspired me to look into the quiz bowl scene in Nebraska, and sure enough, there was a 32 team tournament held at Nebraska Wesleyan this year and a 56 team tournament held at the winner's high school (Elkhorn South) last year on what I can only assume was bowl:
http://www.sewardpublicschools.org/vnew ... 1c603b8b6e
http://www.omaha.com/article/20110205/N ... 59945/1025
Apparently Bellevue has also hosted a tournament for over 20 years:
http://www.roysmith.com/qb/index.html
And there has been a tournament run on NAQT speed checks for a few years now:
http://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament-te ... nt_id=4233

[cchiego]

So what do we want to tell these teams or areas once we identify them? Let's put together some of the best ideas here and I'll try to condense and draw up the best advice into fliers that we can hand out at nationals or send to hosts from these regions. Sort of "how-to" guides for fledgling circuits that would include:

(1) PRing good QB
(2) Hosting tournaments
(3) Recruiting more teams

Matt W.'s advice from the DC thread is a good start, as is Charlie's in this thread. Of course, things will have to be modified when dealing with Chip-territory teams, AUK-territory teams, It's Ac teams, etc., but there should be a good common core of knowledge already here that just needs to be revised for newbie consumption.

Let's try to come up with something by the time of HSNCT so that we have something to give to the teams there at registration. It might also be a good idea to have some volunteer "Good QB ambassadors" on hand at registration to strike up conversations with these teams' coaches and players rather than trying to haphazardly get a few words in between matches on Saturday.

After that, we should start identifying areas where we want to make a big push over the summer. Some places have already been mentioned, but it might be ideal to find interested teams in these areas that we can work with to get local knowledge and have a tangible local contact person that we can reference in any outreach efforts.

I will be back in Memphis during August and will hit up every contact I can find in that area (especially in changing News Channel 3's Knowledge Bowl to good questions). [Any Memphis-area Knowledge Bowl player who randomly comes across this should definitely contact me--I've seen a few comments on the WREG website expressing dislike with the questions but haven't seen anyone specific.]

Watching the record-breaking Teen Jeopardy winner today inspired me to look into the quiz bowl scene in Nebraska, and sure enough, there was a 32 team tournament held at Nebraska Wesleyan this year and a 56 team tournament held at the winner's high school (Elkhorn South) last year on what I can only assume was bowl:

From what I understand, most of Nebraska and the Great Plains in general is dominated by Academic Hallmarks (i.e AUK).

[Standard-winged Nightjar]

other stuff...

It has to be more than just sending out postcards or sending mass emails to random contact lists. You've got to try to set up relationships with real people in these places and convince them that quizbowl is important. Now I know that this occurs to some extent in areas where there are outposts of good qb, but it's not systematic and it's a great deal of work for the individuals. Dave Madden had the right idea on outreach, but trying to take it all on himself and a few other paid associates was

... sentence fragment

Just wondering where you were going with this. In the meantime, NHBB will be having basically 4 people working full time on outreach in the fall. And let's see what the History Channel airing the middle school history bee brings. Never mind the TV-centric format. Our regionals are pyramidal, and as mentioned in another thread, we're expecting 2000+ middle schools next year. Those kids will move into high school too. This will take a few years, but if the History Channel says yes to covering year two of the Middle School Bee (we'll know by early August), then we, and all of quizbowl, will be in very good shape indeed when it comes to new schools coming in.
Anyone doing high school outreach anywhere should contact me. Anyone doing middle school outreach anywhere should contact Nick Clusserath (info at historybee dot com).

[tiwonge]

Do you have a date when the NHBB will be aired? I'll send out a notice to keep an eye on it.

[Standard-winged Nightjar]

Friday, June 1. It will repeat various times over the following week, but not sure when. It will now air at 8pm eastern / 7 central. Not sure for the rest of the country - check local listings. It lasts 2 hours.

[scquizbowl]

This is a good topic. Sorry I didn't get into it earlier, but it's interesting. Many metros are deficient in quiz bowl.

The Charleston area still has quiz bowl, but it is very mixed. Charleston County still plays the county circuit, with James Island, Wando and Academic Magnet, but those are the only schools that go far. Wando went to nationals this year, which I was impressed about. James Island is going to like they have most years.

It is hard to find results outside of your local area. Berkeley County just started middle school quiz bowl this year (other than QUEST). Dorchester County has a HS quiz bowl, but they only play inside the county. The only tournament that most of the schools from the Lowcountry go to is USC.

Just outside of Charleston, Georgetown County (in Myrtle Beach metro but mostly Charleston TV market) has a HS quiz bowl.