The Quizbowl Resource Center

Captain Sinico wrote:I can understand how a host would be squeamish at extending arbitrary faith that a tournament will get done, given the current rash of, well, tournaments not getting done. Frankly, I don't see how anyone could find fault with that. Quizbowl needs to start doing this better.

Quoted for painfully felt relevancy. I was at the tournament and out a plane ticket before I discovered that last weekend would be a similar situation.

HSAPQ would like to apologize for the terrible situation Robinson High School was put through this past week. Unfortunately the editor of the ACF-4 set, Billy Beyer, had not completed his editorial work and did not tell anyone he needed help in finishing the set. Last weekend Beyer sent the Michigan tournament that was supposed to use ACF-4 a different set without informing anyone within HSAPQ of his decision. Beyer served as HSAPQ’s CFO and accordingly was in charge of mailing the questions to our customers. No one in HSAPQ was aware of the full severity of the situation until this afternoon. Beyer did not answer his phone or return calls this week and did not answer emails from Coach Campana or other HSAPQ members asking why the questions had not been mailed. Beyer has been suspended from HSAPQ over this situation.

HSAPQ values the highest standards of professionalism and is taking action immediately to alleviate both the present situation with Robinson and any future concerns about our unreliability. As a first step HSAPQ would like to do anything possible to persuade Robinson to reconsider canceling their tournament. The ACF-4 set is finished and as a token of our apology HSAPQ would like to offer Robinson a completely free set of questions. These questions will be copied at HSAPQ's expense and hand delivered to your school at 7:30 AM Saturday morning. If Robinson feels unable to host the tournament this Saturday and would like to reschedule for another date, HSAPQ's offer of free questions remains open indefinitely.

I was really looking forward to this tournament, and needless to say, I was disappointed when I learned that it was postponed yesterday. It is unfortunate that a lack of communication between both Mr. Campana and HSAPQ and between the members of HSAPQ postponed what should have been an extremely enjoyable tournament. I hope this does not discourage Mr. Campana from running tournaments in the future. That said, now that things are beginning to calm down a bit (at least that’s my impression, I could be wrong), is there any information about when RAQIT could be rescheduled? I know I speak for all the members at TJ when I say that we were, and still are, very excited about this tournament. Best of luck to both HSAPQ and Mr. Campana.

Magister Ludi wrote:HSAPQ would like to apologize for the terrible situation Robinson High School was put through this past week. Unfortunately the editor of the ACF-4 set, Billy Beyer, had not completed his editorial work and did not tell anyone he needed help in finishing the set. Last weekend Beyer sent the Michigan tournament that was supposed to use ACF-4 a different set without informing anyone within HSAPQ of his decision. Beyer served as HSAPQ’s CFO and accordingly was in charge of mailing the questions to our customers. No one in HSAPQ was aware of the full severity of the situation until this afternoon. Beyer did not answer his phone or return calls this week and did not answer emails from Coach Campana or other HSAPQ members asking why the questions had not been mailed. Beyer has been suspended from HSAPQ over this situation.

HSAPQ values the highest standards of professionalism and is taking action immediately to alleviate both the present situation with Robinson and any future concerns about our unreliability. As a first step HSAPQ would like to do anything possible to persuade Robinson to reconsider canceling their tournament. The ACF-4 set is finished and as a token of our apology HSAPQ would like to offer Robinson a completely free set of questions. These questions will be copied at HSAPQ's expense and hand delivered to your school at 7:30 AM Saturday morning. If Robinson feels unable to host the tournament this Saturday and would like to reschedule for another date, HSAPQ's offer of free questions remains open indefinitely.

I would like to publicly thank Ted and the other HSAPQ board members for taking what steps they could to remedy this situation. While it is unfortunately beyond my power at this point to un-postpone the RAQIT tournament, I will do everything in my power to see if it can be re-scheduled this year if there's any possibility whatsoever. In the meantime, since I cannot *guarantee* I will have the staff and the facilities to re-stage this tournament later this year (though I fully intend to try) I still will be issuing registration fee refunds immediately to any team who pre-paid.

Let me also publicly express my thanks to the captain of the Mount Vernon team, the coach at TJHSST, and the numerous other coaches with whom I have spoken and/or exchanged email about this situation for their support and offers of assistance. I want to try to "make it right" somehow, if I can. All I can do is promise that I'll try.

I am amazed that coaches hosting tournaments at their schools would put such trust in the question providers, no matter how formerly reliable those companies may be, that they would be willing to receive the question sets just a day or two before their tournament. In effect, the question writers are dictating, "You must take what we give you and really like it!" Wouldn't a coach/host want to have some time to pre-read all the questions, possibly deciding to edit or sub for some here-and-there that are not clearly written and may generate protests, or are unappealing for reasons pertinent to that particular school's participants? Perhaps I'm still haunted by the hours I had to spend correcting grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. and fine-tuning for accuracy the questions my own student-scholars (including one of the current writers for HSAPQ) wrote for Gonzaga's tournaments. At any rate, I believe any respectable coach deserves to have his question sets in hand at least a few weeks before his tournament, before he may spend considerable time and some money finalizing arrangements for facilities, food, and whatever else goes into having a tournament. Yes, many of us are full-time teachers -- we have a lot of other stuff on our daily plates to worry about.

Admittedly, some of the issue might be the fact that there really aren't that many providers of pyramidal questions out there (house-writes and mirrors notwithstanding), and thus those few providers can more or less dictate the terms to tournament directors who would like to use good questions.

I don't necessarily think that the people who run those providers are intentionally delivering questions at the last minute because no one can do anything about it, but there's no incentive for them to not do it.

Of course, I could be totally wrong--this was just the first thought that came to mind when I saw your post, Fr. Meehan.

Fr. Ken Meehan wrote:I am amazed that coaches hosting tournaments at their schools would put such trust in the question providers, no matter how formerly reliable those companies may be, that they would be willing to receive the question sets just a day or two before their tournament. In effect, the question writers are dictating, "You must take what we give you and really like it!" Wouldn't a coach/host want to have some time to pre-read all the questions, possibly deciding to edit or sub for some here-and-there that are not clearly written and may generate protests, or are unappealing for reasons pertinent to that particular school's participants? Perhaps I'm still haunted by the hours I had to spend correcting grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. and fine-tuning for accuracy the questions my own student-scholars (including one of the current writers for HSAPQ) wrote for Gonzaga's tournaments. At any rate, I believe any respectable coach deserves to have his question sets in hand at least a few weeks before his tournament, before he may spend considerable time and some money finalizing arrangements for facilities, food, and whatever else goes into having a tournament. Yes, many of us are full-time teachers -- we have a lot of other stuff on our daily plates to worry about.

For clarification, I'm fairly certain that Ted's position doesn't involve writing any questions, and I'm absolutely certain that HSAPQ publicizes a policy that their questions can't be edited by hosts (presumably against justifiable fears that hosts may want to use their superior questions, but insert computational math, or some such). I certainly agree with you, though, that having the questions a good deal in advance allows you to devote more attention to other arrangements.

I am exploring the possibility of re-scheduling the RAQIT I academic tournament. While I am still checking on the availablility of facilities & staff, it seems that Saturday, May 9 is a possibility.

Does anyone know of any major conflicts with May 9? Thanks!

Robbie Ram wrote:I am exploring the possibility of re-scheduling the RAQIT I academic tournament. While I am still checking on the availablility of facilities & staff, it seems that Saturday, May 9 is a possibility.

Does anyone know of any major conflicts with May 9? Thanks!

The Virginia NAQT State championship is that day.

As Harry said, this has been discussed in another thread about the VA NAQT Championship: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7547

Although obviously this presents no conflict for us in DE...

Caesar Rodney HS wrote:As Harry said, this has been discussed in another thread about the VA NAQT Championship: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7547

Although obviously this presents no conflict for us in DE...

Well, I guess that means May 9 is "out" for RAQIT... how does everyone feel about April 18???

Robbie Ram wrote:

Caesar Rodney HS wrote:As Harry said, this has been discussed in another thread about the VA NAQT Championship: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7547

Although obviously this presents no conflict for us in DE...

Well, I guess that means May 9 is "out" for RAQIT... how does everyone feel about April 18???

I hear VCU is already hosting a tournament that day.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6584

EDIT: added link

Sooooooo.... as pointed out above, it looks like VCU has an academic tournament April 18. While I would guess that most of the teams who registered for RAQIT would not/will not be going to VCU anyway, I still hate to conflict with another Virginia tournament which is within driving range of almost all of the teams who are in the RAQIT field.

That pretty much leaves me with one and *only* one possible Saturday on which the RAQIT could be re-scheduled: April 25... and that still depends on whether or not there's building space available here that day and whether or not I can get enough people to staff the tournament that day.

Therefore, let's tentatively re-schedule for April 25, and I'll let you know ASAP if it's even going to be possible for us to host on that date.

In the meantime, if there are any *other* additional conflicts on April 25, please let me know. I obviously won't be able to accommodate *every* team from the original RAQIT field, but if *most* teams can still do April 25 *and* if we can host that day, then we'll go for it.

Otherwise... um... I hope you'll come to our tournament *next* year. :-/

Robbie Ram wrote: In the meantime, if there are any *other* additional conflicts on April 25, please let me know. I obviously won't be able to accommodate *every* team from the original RAQIT field, but if *most* teams can still do April 25 *and* if we can host that day, then we'll go for it.

Otherwise... um... I hope you'll come to our tournament *next* year. :-/

HAVOC is kinda of important, but each school could still probably get a solid field for their tournament.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7008

Due to a variety of local tournament conflicts and a general lack of space availability at Robinson between now and the end of the school year, I am disappointed to announce that the RAQIT I is cancelled... at least until 2009-10.

Thanks for your support, and I hope we can make it happen sometime next year.

Teams who pre-paid: registration fee refund checks will be mailed (or sent via "PONY" to FCPS schools) by the end of this week.

Is it not possible to run it on a Sunday?

Is it not possible to run it on a Sunday?

I would love for a Sunday tournament, if it means that RAQIT could happen. A tournament we went to earlier this year happened on a Sunday, and i don't recall any travesties occurring, so if it is plausible for you guys, it seems plausible for quizbowlers, as it has been done successfully before. You should definitely try to look into it.

ImaPC wrote:

Is it not possible to run it on a Sunday?

A tournament we went to earlier this year happened on a Sunday, and i don't recall any travesties occurring,

That was the one at Maryland, the first set of HSAPQ that we saw in the year, on September 28th. And yup, Sundays certainly work for me and those that matter most on our teams.