NJ Discussion 2011-2012

[jonpin]

Ed,
That's a good analysis. I'll look into switching NHBB Ridgewood to November or December next year when I head over to RHS later today. NHBB Princeton will stay around where it is this year.

In looking at the calendar, that's exactly what I'd recommend, moving the Ridgewood bowl to late fall.

Perhaps this year was anomolous---No SHP Pirate invitational in September, the clash of FAcT & LIFT in October, no Quaker Invitational in November, and a choice by Bergen to host a Middle School rather than its annual October HS tournament. Whatver the case, NJ & its surrounding region lost about 4 four tournaments as a consequence during the Fall Season.

It is hard to tell whether fall 2011 or fall 2010 was the anomaly. To my knowledge, Pirate Open hadn't run for a bit before 2010, and Bergen had only run two fall tournaments before this year. Our 2009 event was in December and our 2010 was in October. Before we had any idea what we'd be hosting, Hunter announced the Fall Novice for Halloween weekend, and that is a useful tournament to have at about that time. If Bergen was hosting a high school event, it would've been in December, but once NAQT approached us about the middle school event, we moved it earlier so that it would be before our application deadline... great how that worked out.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

THIS. This was exactly the problem in our subregion as well, as i found nothing in November to attend, one tournament in December to attend, and one tournament in October to attend. Now suddenly there are so many competitions that almost every single week is full of something in a 200-mile radius from our school. This needs to be changed.

There was NHBB Maryland, open to Delaware teams on an HSAPQ set on Nov. 19. Not to mention the original plans for NHBB Delaware on Jan. 14 when there wasn't anything else in state. As a social studies teacher, HSAPQ fan, and quiz bowl coach, I'm not sure why those weren't of interest to you.

To be honest with you? No one on the club has much interest in history (or has the time to do it on their own), and the ones that have a semi-interest in it don't much like the psuedo-history questions that pop up in NHBB. Needless to say, it's our weakest category and i haven't been able to inspire anyone to care much about it.

[Smuttynose Island]

Out of curiosity what do you mean by "pseudo-science?"

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

"Pseudo-history," like "pop history." Johnny Appleseed, "football," "fireworks," non-academic clues, a bonus series about fashion and accessories. Stuff like that. I get why they're there, but my kids don't really care for them. I'll try to encourage the young kids a little more if i can.

[The Predictable Consequences]

To be fair, that was pretty much non-existent in the set I played this year. From my experience, the HSAPQ sets (as opposed to the housewritten regional sets of last year) are of very high quality.

[Scaled Flowerpiercer]

I can second what Ryan said, I would say that the portion of the distribution which would be considered trash was probably less than 1 question per packet, the distribution has not changed much from last year's HSAPQ-written nationals I am pretty sure, which had similar very little trash (though I played a B set, it is possible that there is more "trash" at C-set tournaments), http://www.hsapq.com/questions/20/ The only difference between those sets and the sets you would play at a state Bee/Bowl being a) the difficulty and b) the power marks in the 2nd quarter.

[Standard-winged Nightjar]

Also the length, last year's nationals questions were considerably longer. Most of the stuff that's in the set that one wouldn't normally think of as history isn't trash or random stuff, it's more stuff like the history of religion, myth, and philosophy; history of the arts, historical geography, or recent history (though not usually stuff so recent it wall fall under the heading of current events).
Maybe that would leave the history purists with something to be desired, but there's still roughly 80% of the questions as usual history there for them - far more than any other high school tournament - while RMP or fine arts players in particular will find there's enough there to keep their interest. In the future, this percentage (i.e. the percentage of important stuff that happened in the past but that's not nomally thought of as history) will likely increase. Anyway, it's still certainly history - just not what is usually thought of as such from a narrow, quizbowl-centered definition of the subject.

[Smuttynose Island]

"Pseudo-history," like "pop history." Johnny Appleseed, "football," "fireworks," non-academic clues, a bonus series about fashion and accessories. Stuff like that. I get why they're there, but my kids don't really care for them. I'll try to encourage the young kids a little more if i can.

I can assure you that the HSAPQ sets attempt to minimize the "bad" sort of this history, while maintaining important and accessible "pop" history, which is really just a form of social history, which probably deserves to be asked about more than it actually does.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

"Pseudo-history," like "pop history." Johnny Appleseed, "football," "fireworks," non-academic clues, a bonus series about fashion and accessories. Stuff like that. I get why they're there, but my kids don't really care for them. I'll try to encourage the young kids a little more if i can.

I can assure you that the HSAPQ sets attempt to minimize the "bad" sort of this history, while maintaining important and accessible "pop" history, which is really just a form of social history, which probably deserves to be asked about more than it actually does.

Okay, those were all answers though.

My opinion on them has changed in the last year, for sure (the original questions we saw more than a year ago really, i thought, were not great), but i just haven't had any kids interested. I can't commit many more weekends than i already do, but i'll see what they want to do individually.

Sorry for derailing this thread.

[Scaled Flowerpiercer]

Going back to the original subject of trying to prevent the crowding of tournaments later in the year, I think that having a meeting like the one you NJ coaches are planning will rather easily solve the problem, as part of the issue is just scheduling tournaments in advance: If you want to host an October tournament, you almost have to be prepared to do so before the school even even starts, while you can add a March tournament to your hosting schedule with relative ease once the school year has progressed.

Also, I decided to do my own count of how unbalanced my team's schedule is, what with our rather small traveling range and our additional Westchester tournaments: September-January: 7 tournaments (2 cancelled from snow) February-May: 14 tournaments (not counting nationals or tournaments in the area which we can't go to)

[Edward Powers]

Congratulations to our local teams and individual performers!

Hunter won the National History Bowl Championship over the weekend, while Saint Joe's finished in a tie for 5th in a field of 138 teams.

Then on Sunday, Jack Mehr of Saint Joe's and Patrick LeBlanc of High Tech finished tied for 6th & 3rd, respectively, in the JV phase of the National History Bee, competing in a field of over 140 JV contestants.

Meanwhile, Alec Vulfson of Irvington was a Quarterfinalist in the Varsity Bee and Alex Frey of Saint Joe's earned the Individual National Championship Title in the very same Varsity Bee, while Richard Yu of Hunter earned both the MVP Trophy in the Bowl competition while finishing tied for 2nd overall to Alex in the Bee in a field with over 170 competitors.

So both Varsity National Championships currently belong to our region, while our younger players revealed that there is also great depth in our area! So, once again, congratulations to all of our outstanding competitors!

[ProfessorIanDuncan]

Thanks for the shout out Mr. Powers. I also feel the need to include Ryan Rosenberg in that list because he reached the top 16 in the bowl BY HIMSELF.

[Edward Powers]

You deserved a shout-out Alec. And thanks for the info on Ryan, which does not really surprise at all, given his terrific abilities.