What's Going on in Wisconsin?

[Chandragupta Maurya]

I was kind of wondering what's up with high school quizbowl in Wisconsin,
Since I used to live there and have some friends who live there,
And I was kind of wondering what the state of the circuit is there.
I did see some teams from Wisconsin qualified for HSNCT, but there doesn't seem to be a thread for QB in the Badger State.

[gaurav.kandlikar]

I think I remember River Falls high school coming to the 2009 fall novice tournament, and Hudson, which I guess is right across the MN/WI border, comes to a lot of MN tournaments (http://naqt.com/stats/school-results.jsp?org_id=64213). These teams could probably be convinced to travel to western Wisconsin once in a while. There seems to have been a few NAQT tournaments frequented by La Crosse Logan/La Follette/Holmen etc., and there was apparently a MS tournament in the state last year too, which hopefully means that the circuit is growing.

Do you know what school your friends go to?

[eliza.grames]

I know that there is quizbowl up in the northern part of Wisconsin, for sure in Bayfield, Washburn, and Drummond. I have doubts about how far would be willing to travel for tournaments though - probably no farther than Eau Claire or Wausau.

[Chandragupta Maurya]

Do you know what school your friends go to?

My friends go to school in Brookfield, which is a suburb of Milwaukee, so I was wondering if there was any circuit in the Greater Milwaukee area or if there were any teams in the area. Does anyone know if either Brookfield East or Brookfield Central have teams?

[eliza.grames]

My friends go to school in Brookfield, which is a suburb of Milwaukee, so I was wondering if there was any circuit in the Greater Milwaukee area or if there were any teams in the area. Does anyone know if either Brookfield East or Brookfield Central have teams?

I couldn't find anything about either Quiz Bowl or Knowledge Bowl on Brookfield East/Central websites, and they have never played a tournament that uses NAQT questions, according to NAQT's website.

[Chandragupta Maurya]

My friends go to school in Brookfield, which is a suburb of Milwaukee, so I was wondering if there was any circuit in the Greater Milwaukee area or if there were any teams in the area. Does anyone know if either Brookfield East or Brookfield Central have teams?

I couldn't find anything about either Quiz Bowl or Knowledge Bowl on Brookfield East/Central websites, and they have never played a tournament that uses NAQT questions, according to NAQT's website.

Are there any circuits though? Perhaps in Madison, Green Bay, the Fox Cities, or Milwaukee? I know Chicago's circuit may attract a few teams, and a team from Oshkosh is present...

[bt_green_warbler]

UW hosts tournaments, most recently this one.

[Standard-winged Nightjar]

We're doing a National History Bee and Bowl State Tournament for Wisconsin on our C set at Beloit High School this coming year; date to follow shortly. This came about through a guy who's a history teacher and head of his school's history club. He's already had about 20 schools express tentative interest, so hopefully this will give WI qb a shot in the arm.

[eliza.grames]

We're doing a National History Bee and Bowl State Tournament for Wisconsin on our C set at Beloit High School this coming year; date to follow shortly. This came about through a guy who's a history teacher and head of his school's history club. He's already had about 20 schools express tentative interest, so hopefully this will give WI qb a shot in the arm.

Beloit is a terrible location for a Wisconsin State Tournament - it's practically in Illinois. I suppose it is too late to change this now, but it would be much better to host the tournament in Wausau or Appleton.

[Chandragupta Maurya]

We're doing a National History Bee and Bowl State Tournament for Wisconsin on our C set at Beloit High School this coming year; date to follow shortly. This came about through a guy who's a history teacher and head of his school's history club. He's already had about 20 schools express tentative interest, so hopefully this will give WI qb a shot in the arm.

Beloit is a terrible location for a Wisconsin State Tournament - it's practically in Illinois. I suppose it is too late to change this now, but it would be much better to host the tournament in Wausau or Appleton.

Appleton is probably better - it will be easier to find a venue there than in Wausau.

[in on these shenanigans]

We're doing a National History Bee and Bowl State Tournament for Wisconsin on our C set at Beloit High School this coming year; date to follow shortly. This came about through a guy who's a history teacher and head of his school's history club. He's already had about 20 schools express tentative interest, so hopefully this will give WI qb a shot in the arm.

Yeah, and there are plenty of IL high schools in that area that might be interested, too; is it possible to make this just a tournament and find another site closer to most of Wisconsin to host an official "state" tournament?

Also, make sure that the contact at Beloit HS is informed of the IL quizbowl circuit in his backyard and its potential for mods. Depending on the date, we can help him out there. If you give him my email address, I can talk to him.

[Standard-winged Nightjar]

The deal with Beloit is that a teacher who's the history club advisor there reached out to me and said that he wanted to bring NHBB to his school, and to Wisconsin. While Beloit isn't exactly centrally located, it's also not over 90 minutes from the majority of Wisconsin's population, and he's already gone to the trouble of reaching out to all sorts of other history teachers at a conference he was recently at. I'd be happy to run a B set in WI as well, more in the central part of the state if I could be convinced there would be at least 10 teams that would go to it. If people want to make that case, help me find the teams, and help me identify a second WI host school, I'm all ears.

[cornfused]

We're doing a National History Bee and Bowl State Tournament for Wisconsin on our C set at Beloit High School this coming year; date to follow shortly. This came about through a guy who's a history teacher and head of his school's history club. He's already had about 20 schools express tentative interest, so hopefully this will give WI qb a shot in the arm.

Beloit is a terrible location for a Wisconsin State Tournament - it's practically in Illinois. I suppose it is too late to change this now, but it would be much better to host the tournament in Wausau or Appleton.

I tried, and it's ridiculously unpopular among coaches to host tourneys at places that aren't UW-Madison. No joke, though.

[MichaelFalk]

Do you know what school your friends go to?

My friends go to school in Brookfield, which is a suburb of Milwaukee, so I was wondering if there was any circuit in the Greater Milwaukee area or if there were any teams in the area. Does anyone know if either Brookfield East or Brookfield Central have teams?

Sorry for being late to the party, but I hope this is still relevant as I don't think you got a complete answer to your question yet. Neither of those schools plays quiz bowl right now, but my school has a healthy junior high program in its second year that feeds students to both Brookfield high schools (as well as Tosa West, Marquette, DSHA, and CMH), so it wouldn't surprise me to see something start there in the coming years.

[Kanga-Rat Murder Society]

Sorry that I am so late here. Wisconsin has several teams that show up to quiz bowl tournaments, but there is definitely not a true circuit in the state. Most of the teams practice every once in awhile, but it's hard for people to take the game seriously when there are only 2-3 good tournaments in the state every year. Wisconsin has a fair amount of natural talent, and every couple of years there is a very good player or set of players that they can do a bit of damage at nationals. Without a real circuit, though, it is very tough to go be better than solid, and that is typically the level where the top Wisconsin teams end up.

I'm not really sure how to fix the situation in the state. The problem here is obvious: There is not a circuit, so teams don't study. Since teams don't study, there is no need in forming a circuit. I've taken small steps to try and improve the situation. I've encouraged some Illinois teams to play in Madison (and in the process, hopefully talk to them about the IL circuit, their study habits, etc.). The problem is that no teams want to travel 1.5-3.5 hours to play NAQT tournaments, and anything outside of NAQT would have little to no interest in this state. I've also tried to talk Wisconsin teams into travelling to tournaments in Illinois and Minnesota, but most teams simply don't put enough time and effort in to want to make that journey. I also brought up ACE camp to no avail.

It's also tough to develop a circuit when nobody is hosting tournaments. We host two tournaments per year, and I think Lawrence would host one or two if there were enough interest. That means that there are at most four tournaments on good questions in the state, which obviously does not suffice.

I'm interested in knowing what others think we should do in Wisconsin. It's not like there aren't experienced people in Madison. Seth Teitler, Gautam Kandlikar, and to a lesser extent, the Lyon Brothers, Tim Hartman, Alex Gerten, and myself all have a fair amount of experience. We have the staffers and TDs to try things to get tournaments off the ground, but i'm just not sure how to break the cycle.

[eliza.grames]

I don't think it's just a problem in the Madison area (although I have no idea what happens around there). We usually have a few teams from Wisconsin (LaCrosse area) come to GINVIT. I think another Wisconsin (and Minnesota) problem is that there aren't any active universities in the northern half of the state to host high school tournaments. I know that northern Wisconsin has quite a few active Quizbowl teams, but they only attend tournaments hosted by other high schools. Perhaps somehow getting participation from those teams (or, more ideally - getting UWS and UMD to form collegiate teams and host things) would be a good idea. I know NMU has an active team this year, so they could do something in the UP.

[Standard-winged Nightjar]

Does anyone have a list of coaches in Wisconsin I can contact regarding History Bowl at Beloit on Jan. 21?

[eliza.grames]

Does anyone have a list of coaches in Wisconsin I can contact regarding History Bowl at Beloit on Jan. 21?

I don't have one for Wisconsin, but I'll tell you how I made one for Minnesota that took less than 8 hours. Use NAQT's website, search for schools in WI (the only search term you should enter is "WI" under state. When you get to the end of the list that it will let you see, enter the first 2-3 letters of the last school on the page (in Wisconsin's case, you'd want to enter "la" because of Lake Holcombe) to get the next set of results and so forth. Once you have a master list of high school's in Wisconsin that are large enough to have a team, you have to find every high school's website to get the most current contact information on their quizbowl team. Some schools list them as academic competition teams, so you have to do a bit of digging, but most of the time the team will be listed under activities or extracurriculars. Generally, if I didn't find what I wanted within a few minutes, I just left that school off the list because it probably wasn't a very active program anyways. I don't recommend going with NAQT's coach listing, since that isn't always current (for instance, my high school play director was listed as being a coach at a school that she hadn't taught at for three years). You may want to pester someone from Lawrence or UW-Madison into doing part of this work, since they would certainly benefit from the list. I'd be willing to do A-Ke if others want to divvy up La-Z.

Option B, which I have not tried, is to find a list of tournaments hosted in Wisconsin over the past few years, contact the hosts, and ask them for their contact lists. I did not choose this method, because I figured it would lead to outdated results and wouldn't be as comprehensive as I wanted it to be (that and Minnesota has the Knowledge Bowl problem).

[bt_green_warbler]

Use NAQT's website, search for schools in WI

More generally: we are happy to share our state-level contact lists directly with hosts who are using NAQT questions for their tournaments.

I don't recommend going with NAQT's coach listing, since that isn't always current

Please contact us if you find outdated information on naqt.com; it doesn't help anyone spread good quizbowl if we're trying to contact coaches who retired years ago!