Set Used
We will be using the Collaborative Academic Spring Tournament (CAST) question set at this tournament. This set was written by several members of the Quizbowl community, and details about topic distribution can be found here. We anticipate this set will be of comparable difficulty to NAQT Invitational Series sets, if not slightly easier.
Registration
Please complete this form to register. We are setting a soft cap of 24 teams for bracketing purposes, but that can be expanded if there is enough interest. Registration will close on Thursday, April 4th.
Fee Structure
The base price is $85 for the first team and $75 for each additional team. We are also offering the following discounts:
- -$5 per functional buzzer system, capable of support four players per side (please bring extension cords if you have them!)
- -$10 per staffer provided by the school
- -$10 per 150 miles traveled to IHS (one way, according to Google Maps).
- -$10 for any new school/program (a school that has never played at either a BrainBusters Fall or Spring event in the past)
On-site Contact Information
The tournament director is IHS Quizbowl team coach and faculty adviser Benjamin Kirk, who can be reached for questions at bkirk at icsd dot k12 dot ny dot us, or by department phone at (607) 274-2191. An emergency cell phone contact will be provided to registered teams, or to those who request it via email.
Lunch
As they have in previous years, the IHS International Club will be offering a pizza or sub sandwich lunch and ala carte International Tasting Bar on-site for lunch in the IHS Cafeteria. We recommend staying at the school for lunch or bringing your own, since the nearest restaurants are 2+ miles away in heavy and unpredictable Ithaca weekend traffic. You may leave for lunch at your own risk, but with the warning that we will restart the tournament promptly at the announced restart time, and will start reading packets to whomever is in place at that time.
Tournament Format
Games will consist of 20 tossup/bonus pairs, read in untimed matches. During play, we will use ACF five second timing rules (five seconds to buzz in after tossup completion, five seconds to start answer to tossup after buzz, five seconds to start answer to bonus after bonus completion). The exact bracketing format used will depend on the final number of registered teams, but we expect to run a quasi-seeded round robin format in the morning, followed by a rebracketing and another round robin after lunch, with a single final match to determine tournament champion if needed.
We anticipate platinum certification from PACE, so the top several finishers will qualify for the 2019 PACE National Scholastic Championship in Reston, VA (a suburb of Washington, DC). As this tournament will not use an NAQT Invitational Series set, there will be no automatic qualification for their High School/Small School National Championship Tournaments. However, we anticipate strong performance at this tournament could be used for wildcard registration.
Field List (Teams/Buzzers/Staffers) - Soft cap of 24 teams
Cooperstown (2/2/0)
"Corn Horns" (1/1/0)
DeWitt MS (1/0/0)
Geneva (2/3/1)
House (1/2/lots)
Troy (1/0/0)
Total: 8/24
We look forward to hosting this tournament, and we hope to see a great turnout of local and regional teams!