Caesar Rodney HS wrote:Our practices are twice a week (is very very difficult to have more than that with all their other commitments, and my own sanity at times), lasting at least 2 hours, often 2.5.
I don't know exactly how to phrase it, but i need to be much more strict on things next year in practice... almost unfortunately, i enjoy what i do so much that we have a great time, and i think that's a distractor from getting better. So i'm not sure what to say to make things a little more serious, but i've already had one or two team members say to me that it needs to happen. I'll work on my wordage of that.
You should stress the importance of self-study and self-improvement to your players. Practicing outside of school practice will help improve the skills of your players.
I'm sure great athletes don't get a majority of their practices from school practice. A majority of their practices probably involve working out at a local gym, going to the Y, or practicing at home.
The same idea can be applied to Quiz Bowl.
asdf wrote:
You should stress the importance of self-study and self-improvement to your players. Practicing outside of school practice will help improve the skills of your players.
I'm sure great athletes don't get a majority of their practices from school practice. A majority of their practices probably involve working out at a local gym, going to the Y, or practicing at home.
The same idea can be applied to Quiz Bowl.
Self-study is, at least for our team, much more important than practice. We practice once a week on Thursdays (I would like to practice more, but there are commitment problems everywhere- there are no people on our team who don't play a sport or have a job) for about 1.5 hours. Our team is for the most part made of recreational players, while there are two players who really look to improve and write questions and study. Although more practices would probably help our team, our inability to have more than weekly practices makes self study extremely important.
Chuhern Hwang
James Monroe High School Class of 2009
University of Virginia Class of 2013
I'm going to have a more serious tone next year when it comes to studying and stuff. I'm making them write questions over the summer for the first time ever and we'll go from there.
Perhaps us still not being on Newsweek's Top Schools list gives us motivation to improve, knowing we have a long way to go. Tough to see more schools from Delaware on there, and Charter at #98, and CR never having made it once.
Mr. Andrew Chrzanowski
Caesar Rodney High School
Camden, Delaware
CRHS '97-'01
University of Delaware '01-'05
CRHS quizbowl coach '06-'12 http://crquizbowl.edublogs.org
Does quizbowl ever even come into consideration for ranking those things?
Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08
"I won't say more because I know some of you parse everything I say." - Jeremy Gibbs
"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White
Deesy Does It wrote:Does quizbowl ever even come into consideration for ranking those things?
No, it's based on percentages of students who take AP or IB tests.
Of course, it does not take into account how well they DO on those tests, whether the school pays for the tests or not (gee, you think the percentage might be higher in places where it does?), or the fact that many schools do not report that data. Basically, it's designed to make the 100 schools who get proclaimed "best" by their arbitrary formula purchase a bunch of subscriptions to Newsweek.
Matt Weiner
Advisor to Quizbowl at Virginia Commonwealth University / Founder of hsquizbowl.org
Like Matt said, the ranking of the top 100 high schools in Newsweek only look at one factor. Those rankings presumably don't factor in sports, grades, campus aesthetics, other activities, etc. Plus that list excludes "elite public schools," and private schools.
When one is playing high school quiz bowl or any quiz bowl, rankings don't matter. All that really matters is if you can answer more questions/ score more points than the other team. All you really need to have a good team is for one (preferably more) team members to be dedicated and to improve. If a few players on your team put some time and effort into quiz bowl and getting better, I don't see any legitimate reason why CRHS can't be a really good team. Having a coach who cares about getting better is another advantage.
Brendan Byrne
Drake University, 2006-2008
University of Minnesota, 2008-2010
The Byko ratings are a far better indication of how good a school is, compared to the Newsweek rankings. I'm not saying that because Maine South ended up near 800th or so, but if Evanston or Morgan Park are better schools than MS, I will eat a Cubs hat dipped in vinegar.
Tegan wrote:The Byko ratings are a far better indication of how good a school is, compared to the Newsweek rankings. I'm not saying that because Maine South ended up near 800th or so, but if Evanston or Morgan Park are better schools than MS, I will eat a Cubs hat dipped in vinegar.
Maine South also ranks much higher in the "High Schools I Know Exist" department.
Bryce Durgin
Culver Academies '07
University of Notre Dame '11
Texas A&M '15
greatschools.net is pretty fun. Basically it ranks schools by performance on the NCLB test (In Virginia it is the Standards of Learning) and gives between a 1 and a 10.
And ... the only HS I can see that gets a '1' in Virgina is:
STPickrell wrote:greatschools.net is pretty fun. Basically it ranks schools by performance on the NCLB test (In Virginia it is the Standards of Learning) and gives between a 1 and a 10.
And ... the only HS I can see that gets a '1' in Virgina is:
I'm proud to have gone to a school that was a '2'.
Magnet schools and private schools excluded, data limited to whatever a poorly designed website with pop-up ads can manage to collect, based on one factor...sounds like a reliable ranking to me.
It seems like a good way to rank high schools would be to see what percentage of their students are either in college or in a career with a future 3 years after graduation, and compare that to the expected percentage for a school with the same economic profile. I doubt anyone has done this, since it won't sell many magazines.
Matt Weiner
Advisor to Quizbowl at Virginia Commonwealth University / Founder of hsquizbowl.org
Matt Weiner wrote:
Magnet schools and private schools excluded, data limited to whatever a poorly designed website with pop-up ads can manage to collect, based on one factor...sounds like a reliable ranking to me.
But they won a Webby Award! That surely must mean they're scientifically accurate.
Dan Goff
HSQB sysadmin
Virginia Tech '13
South Carolina '15
and a couple other places
Not Thomas Dale HS
Matt Weiner wrote:
Magnet schools and private schools excluded, data limited to whatever a poorly designed website with pop-up ads can manage to collect, based on one factor...sounds like a reliable ranking to me.
But they won a Webby Award! That surely must mean they're scientifically accurate.
Of course it does... wait, whats a Webby Award?
Bryce Durgin
Culver Academies '07
University of Notre Dame '11
Texas A&M '15
As a current student at a private school with dying quiz bowl, I think I can offer a good composite point of view.
Shady Side had a brief period of being insanely good (2005-2006). That was my freshman year and Andy's junior year. We were 5th at HSNCT. A ton of people showed up at tryouts that year. Then Grant graduated and went off to noted paradise New Haven, CT.
Andy followed as captain. Tryouts were sparcely attended. One insanely good kid showed up, but he just stopped showing up a school after a while. We went to nationals and came in 21st or something. Andy graduated and is now spending his time in the People's Republic of Cambridge.
Now, I'm the captain, and well, despite my best efforts (32nd individually at HSNCT), there just isn't all that much interest or meaningful winning. We are still very competitive in PA, but we just can't beat good national teams. We just graduated half of the team.
In short, quiz bowl at SSA will probably die after I graduate next year. It isn't that Grant, Andy, and I haven't tried to keep it alive. I hate to complain, but it is really hard to get extracurricular activities to be really consistently good at SSA. We are required to play 2 sports, and the only time we can practice during "school hours" is between 3 and 4. The group that would play quiz bowl is also the group who does stuff like Model UN, Debate, and Science Olympiad, and with only 500 kids, its not that big of a crowd.
In short, I think my point is that things like this go in cycles. Schools will come in top 10 one year and disappear the next. Not everyone can be good. It really helps to have a dedicated advisor (we really don't). It is also nice to have some raw talent and a strong area. While it is not ideal to have to play Charter a gajillion times, it is better than not playing. I hate to invoke Charlie Steinhice, but winning is better than losing, losing is better than getting crushed, and getting crushed is better than not playing.
(I rambled a bit).
Charlie Rosenthal
Shady Side Academy '09
Carleton College '13
University of Pennsylvania '18
Let's just say from the responses and feedback i've gotten from my team, i'm feeling GREAT about next year. Almost to an unfortunate point where we're going to be disappointed not getting second in Delaware-exclusive tourneys.
We shall see.
Mr. Andrew Chrzanowski
Caesar Rodney High School
Camden, Delaware
CRHS '97-'01
University of Delaware '01-'05
CRHS quizbowl coach '06-'12 http://crquizbowl.edublogs.org
TheCzarMan wrote:I find that an incredibly ignorant statement and one which doesn't reflect the issue that me and Andrew were bringing up.
Which is what, exactly? What are you proposing, in concrete terms?
I suppose some kind of schedule in which six teams from the same school did not all land in the same division would be a good thing. Every match is supposed to be competitive, and having two teams from the same school play against each other does a disservice to teams playing in more competitive matches. Of course no one is expecting seven divisions, especially with small numbers of teams, but if you have two divisions a 3-2 split rather then a 5-0 split would be nice.
P.S. I am assuming an NAQT tournament structure. If this a problem in the playoff rounds hats off to Charter for qualifying all 6 teams for playoffs at once.
