techno wrote:That being said, I don't believe we formed a superteam either. We finished behind one other high school team (High Tech A) and had comparable ppbs to both High Tech A and Lehigh, and played close games against both (within 100 points of each). If you want to argue that chimera teams can demoralize colleges by beating them, imho you shouldn't set the criteria as "is a chimera team" but rather "is an overly strong chimera team", or simply ban all high school teams. I am not trying to defend our choice to play as an open/chimera team - looking back on it I do regret the decision for the reasons you mentioned, especially because of how under the table the decision seemed. However, I don't think our specific case is a fair base of evidence to villainize all chimera teams without taking a case by case basis.
a bird wrote:techno wrote:That being said, I don't believe we formed a superteam either. We finished behind one other high school team (High Tech A) and had comparable ppbs to both High Tech A and Lehigh, and played close games against both (within 100 points of each). If you want to argue that chimera teams can demoralize colleges by beating them, imho you shouldn't set the criteria as "is a chimera team" but rather "is an overly strong chimera team", or simply ban all high school teams. I am not trying to defend our choice to play as an open/chimera team - looking back on it I do regret the decision for the reasons you mentioned, especially because of how under the table the decision seemed. However, I don't think our specific case is a fair base of evidence to villainize all chimera teams without taking a case by case basis.
I want to address a a few of these points from Vishwa's post re: the issue of demoralizing new collegiate teams. Even though your open/chimera team might not have been "overly strong," it was still significantly better than some (novice) college teams in the field. In most cases, a high school team (chimera or not) playing a college tournament will be able to beat teams of new college players (as the Penn Bowl open/chimera team did). As you say the demoralization issue applies to non-open high school teams as well, but it might be more demoralizing to lose to an open/chimera team.
a bird wrote: I'm not trying to call out the specific players from the Penn Bowl open/chimera team, or Penn's decision to allow the team to play, but I think more concrete norms should be established in future. Allowing high school open/chimera teams (whether or not they're 'super teams' by a given definition) is step away from making your event a legitimate intercollegiate competition.
techno wrote:I'm not sure I see your point here; I don't see how losing to a team of 4 high schoolers is less demoralizing than, for instance, losing to a high schooler playing solo or a B team from a high school. I'm not arguing that neither of those teams should have been allowed to play, but rather that I believe this issue goes beyond chimera teams and that blaming primarily chimera teams might be missing the point.
Skepticism and Animal Feed wrote:My personal view is that at most non-Nationals, non-Regionals tournaments, allowing an open or high school team to play under some kind of 'exhibition status' is okay, as the outcome of these tournaments isn't all that important, but I think post-2011 this is very much a minority view. For high school teams specifically, there is the concern that since high school teams vastly outnumber college teams, and most tournaments have finite rooms/buzzers/moderators, allowing high school teams to sign up can potentially lead to college teams not being able to attend a tournament because the field size cap has already been reached. This was the specific reason that ACF Nationals (a tournament historically limited to just a few dozen teams for logistical reasons) banned high school teams.
Skepticism and Animal Feed wrote:I believe that, traditionally, an exception is made for remote parts of the quizbowl world (like the Pacific Northwest) where there might not be enough teams to run a tournament without the inclusion of open teams.
Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) wrote:My only possible addendum worth discussing is to bring up the practice (which is infinitely more widespread through much of the high school circuit) of finding out that some team dropped an hour before the tournament and then making a call for extra players who are at the tournament to come together and make a scab exhibition team. I am almost certain that at some point or another I was forced to use one of these teams at Mizzou, and nobody cared. It's probably not going to come up as much in college since there usually aren't alternates or random extra players hanging around, but if it's 8:30 and a team just dropped and you don't have a good replacement schedule, do people at large have a problem with a random last minute exhibition team being plugged in to make the schedule work?
Takanashi Rikka wrote:Okay, so allowing open high school teams to play at easy college tournaments is certainly a bad idea; but Penn Bowl is surely not the best example of this behavior as it usually only attracts experienced college teams and some really motivated high schoolers. Your argument that high schoolers should focus more on recruiting or just play solo for a college tournament is lazy advice at best. To give some context for Sohum's action at Penn Bowl, I was planning on attending Penn Bowl with him but had to bail due to a few things that came up, and we only had like 1 or 2 people that were of a high enough caliber to support him at Penn Bowl (both of whom also had personal obligations that day), stating that a high schooler should just focus more on recruiting people to attend tournaments shows that one doesn't understand how hard it is to recruit people in high school, getting people to go to a hard high school tournament is already hard enough, much less a regular college tournament; asserting that a high schooler can play solo at Penn Bowl is also a preposterous thing to say as most people are specialists who need a team to support them. Furthermore, using your own personal definition of "professionality" to label a certain practice as illegitimate does not make a good argument for your position at all and I'm sure many people hold different opinions on this practice.
insohumniac wrote:I have put off writing a response to this, but I do feel that it is warranted, especially considering my role in the formation of the team as it came to be. While I do respect the opinions stated before, I would like to say that, for the record, I could have helped avoid this scenario by choosing not to attend this particular tournament. This simple decision would have left Downingtown STEM, a perfectly capable and talented team, with a roster of three people, a predicament teams across all levels will inevitably have to face at a tournament. While I do think that Vishwa and Waley had cogent arguments, I believe that what happened is ultimately due to my foolishness, and something that I should have addressed immediately. I know how difficult it is to get a team to stay playing in quizbowl: it's been the core caveat of my efforts in trying to get more Delaware high schools to play quizbowl. Many teams in Delaware haven't played in years because they are simply scared of losing, and thus see no benefit in participating further. If we want this activity to continue, the focus should remain on learning and fostering an environment where students feel encouraged to learn beyond classes and assignments. That was a lot of my motivation for going to Penn Bowl. But that doesn't validate my actions, or forgive them. In retrospect, my actions in deliberately choosing to go to this tournament caused more harm than good. While I personally knew a lot of my opponents before I played them, I cannot refute the argument that losing to a high school team is demoralizing. In my three years of quizbowl, I have made no mistake more regrettable than this, even if the reception to my action was mixed and may not have been as harmful as I think it was. As Waley said, there were "obligations" that my other peers had. In reality, this was his way of trying to say that my peers, remembering their place as teenagers, and more importantly high schoolers, prioritized attending homecoming instead of Penn Bowl. No matter how many buzzes or powers I got or bonuses I helped answer last Saturday, I am a high schooler, and should have attended homecoming instead of Penn Bowl. While I can't say that I'm the social type or that I would have had a 'crew' to hang out with, it would have been a better decision than to potentially dissuade collegiate students from further participating in an activity that has numerous benefits. I had fun at this tournament. It was well run, the moderators were excellent, and I thoroughly enjoyed the question set. Regardless, this is something that I should have ruminated about at length before committing to, and as such, I apologize for my actions, knowing that I may well have hindered the growth of quizbowl through a careless mistake.
Noble Rot wrote:Moving on the topic at hand, I'd like to point out that this is remarkably similar to the situation that occurred last year at UCSD's mirror of Terrapin, and the community decided that a tournament can have adjustable eligibility rules, but they need to be clearly stated, so as to be fair to all. Without accusing either the folks of Downington, Charter, or Penn, I'll just say that I strongly believe that if a tournament wants to allow open high school teams to play, that's fine, but it needs to clearly state that in the announcement for said tournament, much like if open collegiate teams are allowed to play.
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:Noble Rot wrote:Moving on the topic at hand, I'd like to point out that this is remarkably similar to the situation that occurred last year at UCSD's mirror of Terrapin, and the community decided that a tournament can have adjustable eligibility rules, but they need to be clearly stated, so as to be fair to all. Without accusing either the folks of Downington, Charter, or Penn, I'll just say that I strongly believe that if a tournament wants to allow open high school teams to play, that's fine, but it needs to clearly state that in the announcement for said tournament, much like if open collegiate teams are allowed to play.
So, I'll play devil's advocate here as the person behind part of what happened at that UCLA mirror.
I deliberately avoided trying to go public with my plans because I knew a bunch of people would come out and talk shit, give the hosts a lot of crap beforehand, etc. Moreover - and this doesn't apply to my case since I was a non-student when I played Terrapin, but I think it's worth noting anyways - these people strike me as having extremely little sympathy, since almost all of them tended to be people from robust, well-established quizbowl programs and generally wouldn't have had much experience with teammates routinely totally fucking out on them (I'm glad to hear a greater diversity of voices in this thread, particularly from Charlie). Of course, a heated discussion occurred after - and, given the circumstances, perhaps rightly so - but at least the tournament happened, a fair result was determined, and I think there were some other net positive outcomes.
In any case, I do think that a large marquee event like the main site of Penn Bowl should probably try to set some more rigid standards, given its relative standing in the community, the fact that there's not a real problem with circuit stagnation in the area, its ability to attract a number of full high school teams, and a litany of other reasons. I myself plan to explicitly set such standards for large mirrors of non-ACF, non-NAQT, closed tournaments that I work on in the future - in particular, I have some retroactive misgivings about my decision to allow two strong high school players to play EFT together, given that either of them could have played solo (I don't think I payed enough attention to who the players were - turns out one of them played NSC solo). But as long as there continue to be forum posters who engage in white-knighting on behalf of hypothetical persons (as opposed to real people in some smaller circuits who may privately express puzzlement or annoyance at such attitudes) it's hard to blame hosts for not wanting to bother with the headache of defending themselves if they follow what "the community decided" and are clear about open / closed expectations, but get given crap anyways.
I wasn't trying to play any sort of "white knight" or "moral crusader," so sorry if my experience being limited to the Mid-Atlantic circuit makes my comments come off in that manner. Let me rephrase what I said earlier - my understanding of the tentative agreement reached in that thread was that for small, relatively isolated circuits, it's fine if the rules eligibility rules are changed, its just that this needs to be transparent (neither of which applied to this particular situation.) Did I draw the wrong conclusion based off of that thread?
Wes Janson wrote:Thanks to everyone who took their time to voice their thoughts on the general matter; it certainly gave me few things to think about.
However, since the current conversation inevitably ended up being focused on the single incident from Penn Bowl main site, I would like to apologize for the lack of transparency and professionalism in allowing the chimera team in the field. You should chalk up whatever happened in Penn Bowl 2017 as an ill-advised, last minute decision by an inexperienced TD. I've always favored the philosophy that "more quiz bowl is better" for everyone involved, but it's clear that bending around eligibility rules under the table is not the right way to go about this no matter the circumstances. I've certainly learned a lot from this experience, and I promise that we will do our best to ensure everyone gets a fair competition at future Penn tournaments.
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:But as long as there continue to be forum posters who engage in white-knighting on behalf of hypothetical persons (as opposed to real people in some smaller circuits who may privately express puzzlement or annoyance at such attitudes) it's hard to blame hosts for not wanting to bother with the headache of defending themselves if they follow what "the community decided" and are clear about open / closed expectations, but get given crap anyways.
jonpin wrote:Here's the thing... either quiz bowl is a competition that has rules, or it's a competition that has guidelines which can be waived if you're in the in-crowd and know the right people. If it's the latter, and new people who aren't in the in-crowd show up to a college tournament to find a hybrid team of high schoolers, some of them are probably going to think "what the hell is this?"
1.82 wrote:Hey, this has nothing to do with anything that's happened. The fundamental principle of interscholastic quizbowl is that teams are made up of students who all play for the same school, and this applies at any tournament that isn't explicitly declared open. There have been problems when people in this community (including but not limited to you) have failed to understand that this rule is in fact a rule even when it's inconvenient. Strangely, this isn't a headache for most people, and it's not something they need to defend themselves from!
dtaylor4 wrote:Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) wrote:My only possible addendum worth discussing is to bring up the practice (which is infinitely more widespread through much of the high school circuit) of finding out that some team dropped an hour before the tournament and then making a call for extra players who are at the tournament to come together and make a scab exhibition team. I am almost certain that at some point or another I was forced to use one of these teams at Mizzou, and nobody cared. It's probably not going to come up as much in college since there usually aren't alternates or random extra players hanging around, but if it's 8:30 and a team just dropped and you don't have a good replacement schedule, do people at large have a problem with a random last minute exhibition team being plugged in to make the schedule work?
In your example of a last-minute drop, I think the principle of "playing quizbowl > bye round" would apply. I've also seen it come up where no one drops, but the schedule is 1 off of a really nice number (23, 29, 15, etc), and a chimera team would make the scheduling much smoother. That being said, these scenarios are more "in case of emergency, break glass" than anything.
1.82 wrote:On a fundamental level, this practice is a problem because collegiate tournaments are for college students. NAQT has long recognized this, which is why NAQT collegiate tournaments have never been open to high school teams, and ACF has more recently made the same decision to bar high school teams from its events for the same reason. At the flagship events of collegiate quizbowl, the incongruity of permitting high school teams to play is generally recognized, because they do not contribute to the purpose of determining the best collegiate teams. At other events, high school students are often allowed to play, but they are still collegiate events that should cater specifically to the needs of college students. Allowing high school students to play on open teams at otherwise closed events actively hinders tournaments from meeting those needs.
Ben Dillon wrote:1.82 wrote:On a fundamental level, this practice is a problem because collegiate tournaments are for college students. NAQT has long recognized this, which is why NAQT collegiate tournaments have never been open to high school teams, and ACF has more recently made the same decision to bar high school teams from its events for the same reason. At the flagship events of collegiate quizbowl, the incongruity of permitting high school teams to play is generally recognized, because they do not contribute to the purpose of determining the best collegiate teams. At other events, high school students are often allowed to play, but they are still collegiate events that should cater specifically to the needs of college students. Allowing high school students to play on open teams at otherwise closed events actively hinders tournaments from meeting those needs.
Maybe this isn't the most relevant point, but wouldn't the same argument apply to middle schools playing at the high school level? Shouldn't NAQT have barred a talented middle school such as Kealing from HSNCT? I don't recall them being a standby team, after all; perhaps they took the place of a deserving high school team?
NAQT eligibility rules D.1 wrote:An individual student is eligible to compete at high school tournaments if he or she is in a grade between kindergarten and 12th grade (inclusive) as of the date of the tournament.
Hey man, this is not your mistake. You asked for special permission to play without really thinking about it because you wanted to play quizbowl! It is the responsibility of tournament directors to enforce rules and deny such requests because they are the ones who are in a position to enforce the rules. There's nothing to feel bad about here :)insohumniac wrote:I have put off writing a response to this, but I do feel that it is warranted, especially considering my role in the formation of the team as it came to be. While I do respect the opinions stated before, I would like to say that, for the record, I could have helped avoid this scenario by choosing not to attend this particular tournament. This simple decision would have left Downingtown STEM, a perfectly capable and talented team, with a roster of three people, a predicament teams across all levels will inevitably have to face at a tournament. While I do think that Vishwa and Waley had cogent arguments, I believe that what happened is ultimately due to my foolishness, and something that I should have addressed immediately. I know how difficult it is to get a team to stay playing in quizbowl: it's been the core caveat of my efforts in trying to get more Delaware high schools to play quizbowl. Many teams in Delaware haven't played in years because they are simply scared of losing, and thus see no benefit in participating further. If we want this activity to continue, the focus should remain on learning and fostering an environment where students feel encouraged to learn beyond classes and assignments. That was a lot of my motivation for going to Penn Bowl. But that doesn't validate my actions, or forgive them. In retrospect, my actions in deliberately choosing to go to this tournament caused more harm than good. While I personally knew a lot of my opponents before I played them, I cannot refute the argument that losing to a high school team is demoralizing. In my three years of quizbowl, I have made no mistake more regrettable than this, even if the reception to my action was mixed and may not have been as harmful as I think it was. As Waley said, there were "obligations" that my other peers had. In reality, this was his way of trying to say that my peers, remembering their place as teenagers, and more importantly high schoolers, prioritized attending homecoming instead of Penn Bowl. No matter how many buzzes or powers I got or bonuses I helped answer last Saturday, I am a high schooler, and should have attended homecoming instead of Penn Bowl. While I can't say that I'm the social type or that I would have had a 'crew' to hang out with, it would have been a better decision than to potentially dissuade collegiate students from further participating in an activity that has numerous benefits. I had fun at this tournament. It was well run, the moderators were excellent, and I thoroughly enjoyed the question set. Regardless, this is something that I should have ruminated about at length before committing to, and as such, I apologize for my actions, knowing that I may well have hindered the growth of quizbowl through a careless mistake.
Running the tournament well overrides chimera teams at high school tournaments when you have to deal with last minute disasters. In general, my philosophy is to just roll with it and use byes (or whatever), but there are some schedules where an unexpected drop completely wrecks everything and you have to do chimera teams, or other wacky things, that would normally be "wrong".Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) wrote:My only possible addendum worth discussing is to bring up the practice (which is infinitely more widespread through much of the high school circuit) of finding out that some team dropped an hour before the tournament and then making a call for extra players who are at the tournament to come together and make a scab exhibition team. I am almost certain that at some point or another I was forced to use one of these teams at Mizzou, and nobody cared. It's probably not going to come up as much in college since there usually aren't alternates or random extra players hanging around, but if it's 8:30 and a team just dropped and you don't have a good replacement schedule, do people at large have a problem with a random last minute exhibition team being plugged in to make the schedule work?
1.82 wrote:They [high schoolers] have high school tournaments designed to meet their needs.
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