Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

Yeah, congratulations to Maggie Walker - again proving themselves to be quite the wrecking ball. Congratulations also to Chuhern and James Monroe for putting together this tournament, which managed to be done by 4:30 despite the delays, and to Daichi for putting up 129 PPG despite not having slept, winning the neg prize, and playing an entire tournament in a tux. HSAPQ questions were good, despite sporadic repeated answers and difficulty flux. (Is the set cleared for discussion now?)

I also want to especially congratulate St. Anselm's - you guys have put in a lot since I first saw you while reading at our tournament earlier this year, and it's really paying off. You guys have gone from a team that was about even with Sidwell to a team that was leading us at the half in the playoffs, and it's nice to see a third wheel in the Gonzaga-GDS dominated DC circuit. It was nice to meet you for real today, Aidan.

This tournament also made something else clear: if the combination of regular-level questions and high-scoring teams was a good judge, we still have no surefire way of predicting yet how Nationals will go. I saw at least five teams today that could walk away with a nationals trophy this year if they want it, and I can think of at least five more that weren't playing (including the host of this tournament). We've all pretty clearly lost and won to each other at this point, so it will be interesting to see who's willing to rise out of the field and dominate at the higher levels that PACE NSC will require next week, and that the HSNCT will require two weeks from now. We'll have to play on harder questions to see who's really at the top of the heap, and I look forward to it. Guess I should go Read a Book...
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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by intothenegs »

I have Stats for the Preliminaries, but the stats for the playoffs/consolations on a teammate's laptop, so those will hopefully be up in sometime early next week.

Prelim stats: http://results.scobo.net/jamesmonroeaqt

I'd like to extend a number of verg big thank yous: to Dan Goff and George Berry, who drove up all the way from Richmond to help moderate, and who helped us to get through 5 playoff rounds in 2.5 hours, to the teams for being prompt when we weren't, to my teammates, to the parents of my teammates, to my classmates, and to the teachers at my school who helped run this smoothly by moving quickly, to my coach Mr. Blackburn, and to everyone else I'm forgetting to mention right now- it's not that I don't appreciate what you've done, I'm just too exhausted to string together a coherent chain of thoughts.

And yeah, the final standings for this tournament were:
1. Maggie Walker
2. Gonzaga
3. GDS A
4. Walter Johnson
5. Walt Whitman
6. St. Anselm's

Maggie Walker went undefeated in the playoff round-robin and were declared champions; Gonzaga went 4-1.

GDS B, TJ A, TJ B, Chancellor, Churchill, J.R. Tucker, Maggie Walker B, and New Kent stayed for consolation matches; we kept stats for those so that will eventually go up, too.

EDIT: sorry for the extraordinarily bad spelling of names in the stats.
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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by Kouign Amann »

RyuAqua wrote:third wheel
(Insert clichéd joke about people from St. Anselm's being very socially awkward here)

But seriously, thanks. I really am pleased with both our team's progress this year and my own. We've learned a helluva lot. I think we have a chance to actually matter in the DC region within a few years.

See you on the HSAPQ DC All-Star team next year?

Side note: Did anyone else think that the bonuses seemed more easy overall than previous HSAPQ fare? When stats come out, I'd like to see what teams' conversions were.
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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

As for the miscellaneous repeats--as set editor, I'm aware of a few; I made sure (whenever I had the opportunity) to eliminate any repeated information, so you'd be identifying public figure x off facts a and b one time and c and d another time. (And there are subtler scenarios I'm aware of; in those cases, I figured that the worst thing that would happen was that in a room where a tossup would go really late, it might get converted on knowledge a team learned earlier that day, but that'd only happen in weak rooms and stuff. If there are any that you're pretty sure I didn't want in the set, feel free to email me about them; given a summer to fix the set up instead of my finals period, I'm sure I'd want to take care of them.
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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by ihavenoidea »

RyuAqua wrote:Daichi. . . playing an entire tournament in a tux.
:w-hat: I wish I was there to see this.
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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by aestheteboy »

Monroe ran a really good tournament with competent readers. I was pleased to be able to be out of the building before 4:30 after 10 rounds of quizbowl. It would have been even earlier if I didn't oversleep - sorry, guys, and thanks, Churhern, for letting me still play the first round.
I didn't think the questions were bad, but I thought the other HSAPQ sets that I played were better (which is not necessarily a criticism since I think HSAPQ has produced some of the best HS questions this year). I 0ed six bonuses yesterday - three science and three trash; I don't know if it adequately illustrates what I'm trying to say, but the set did have this distinct taste . . .

If I could, I'd come up with some non-lame excuse for losing to Gov, GDS, and Gonzaga by a combined total of about 800 points, but I can't, so I'll cry instead.
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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by Bsteckler »

A big thanks to all the teams that turned out for this. We were really appreciative of the turnout and glad that everyone enjoyed it.

Now to get down to business, stats are fully online:

http://results.scobo.net/jamesmonroeaqt
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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by at your pleasure »

I think the problem with the set was that it may have been a bit easy for a tournament with a strong field the week before nationals. Anyhow, kudos to Chuhern and James Monroe for a well-run tournament.
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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

Holy crap, St. Anselm's had more than 21 PPB for the tournament? Geez, this team is going to be pretty amazing in a few years... their top player is a freshman! Nice job guys. Great way to end the year.

Congrats to MW for another dominating performance. The more i think about it, while i am clearly picking Charter to win at HSNCT, i think MW could absolutely end up victorious at PACENSC. Scares me to think how formidable they will be next year.
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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by jbarnes112358 »

Thanks for the props. But, you could probably list at least 6 teams that could win PACE NSC on a given day. I agree that Charter has an excellent shot at NAQT HSNCT. However, it is NAQT after all, with all its inherent randomness; so who knows what to expect.

As for the JM tournament yesterday, it may have been MW's best performance of the year. The questions were clearly in our sweet spot. But even so, we were a bit lucky to win it. The top three teams all came within one question of each other in that part of the playoff round-robin.

I, too, would like to commend Chuhern for one of the best run first-time tournaments ever. It ran smoothly and ended in good time. A couple of the readers had trouble pronouncing things, but generally they could be understood. I don't know if the Latin teacher had moderated before, but I thought he did an especially nice job of reading. You should get him to read again sometime.

Edit: grammar and spelling
Last edited by jbarnes112358 on Sun May 17, 2009 10:50 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by intothenegs »

I'm glad everyone enjoyed this tournament; I believe the rest of my team also enjoyed taking part in this event, and so hopefully this will become an annual thing for JM.
jbarnes112358 wrote:I don't know if the Latin teacher had moderated before, but I thought he did an especially nice job of reading. You should get him to read again sometime.
That was Mr. Blosser- he moderates for our regular season district meets for VHSL. He says he enjoyed moderating yesterday and will probably read for any future occurrences of MATT.

Maggie Walker was unbelievable yesterday, and GDS, Gonzaga, Whitman, and Walter Johnson each showed they were perfectly capable of winning either national championship. I agree that the set was slightly on the easy side for our field, especially considering 7 out of 14 teams that stayed for the afternoon rounds put up over 20 ppb; however, I thought that HSAPQ did an otherwise excellent job with the set, as usual.
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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by AKKOLADE »

intothenegs wrote:Maggie Walker was unbelievable yesterday, and GDS, Gonzaga, Whitman, and Walter Johnson each showed they were perfectly capable of winning either national championship. I agree that the set was slightly on the easy side for our field, especially considering 7 out of 14 teams that stayed for the afternoon rounds put up over 20 ppb; however, I thought that HSAPQ did an otherwise excellent job with the set, as usual.
Of course half of the field is going to score over 20 ppb; half of your field is Maggie Walker, GDS, Walter Johnson, Gonzaga, Walt Whitman and TJ A, who are all teams likely to go deep into the playoffs at whatever nationals they go to. The only one I'm even slightly surprised about is St. Anselm's, and they're a team that is quickly going up the ranks. If you don't want all of these teams to be putting up 20 ppb or more, maybe you should be running ACF Regionals or get Ryan Westbrook to write a set or something.
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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by at your pleasure »

Of course half of the field is going to score over 20 ppb; half of your field is Maggie Walker, GDS, Walter Johnson, Gonzaga, Walt Whitman and TJ A, who are all teams likely to go deep into the playoffs at whatever nationals they go to.
I suppose that's the point; a set intended for nationwide distribution may not be as suitable for a DC-area tournament held the week before NSC and two weeks before HSNCT as a somewhat harder set.
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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Anti-Climacus wrote:
Of course half of the field is going to score over 20 ppb; half of your field is Maggie Walker, GDS, Walter Johnson, Gonzaga, Walt Whitman and TJ A, who are all teams likely to go deep into the playoffs at whatever nationals they go to.
I suppose that's the point; a set intended for nationwide distribution may not be as suitable for a DC-area tournament held the week before NSC and two weeks before HSNCT as a somewhat harder set.
I doubt that's his point, unless he didn't choose the set.
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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by intothenegs »

everyday847 wrote:
Anti-Climacus wrote:
Of course half of the field is going to score over 20 ppb; half of your field is Maggie Walker, GDS, Walter Johnson, Gonzaga, Walt Whitman and TJ A, who are all teams likely to go deep into the playoffs at whatever nationals they go to.
I suppose that's the point; a set intended for nationwide distribution may not be as suitable for a DC-area tournament held the week before NSC and two weeks before HSNCT as a somewhat harder set.
I doubt that's his point, unless he didn't choose the set.
I hope my remarks weren't taken as a slight to the set itself; that's certainly not how I meant it. Rather, it's that I personally made somewhat poor judgment in not choosing a set that would've provided top teams with nationals-level difficulty a week before PACE. Admittedly, that wouldn't have been the wisest decision either, as this tournament did also include some teams that don't regularly attend circuit events; in any case, I'd like to again thank HSAPQ for providing our tournament with this excellent set.
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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by at your pleasure »

Rather, it's that I personally made somewhat poor judgment in not choosing a set that would've provided top teams with nationals-level difficulty a week before PACE.
The HSAPQ set was probably the best non-housewrite option available anyhow, unless you think that a high school Gaddis mirror would be a good idea for some reason. The real problem was that since IS-85 was apparently such an abomination, there were no good nationals-prep sets circulating during late April and early May.
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Re: Monroe Academic TournamenT at James Monroe (5/16/09)

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

Anti-Climacus wrote:The HSAPQ set was probably the best non-housewrite option available anyhow, unless you think that a high school Gaddis mirror would be a good idea for some reason. The real probem was that since IS-85 was apparently such an abdomination, there were no good nationals-prep sets circulating EDIT:during late April and early May.
Aside from that they would have removed us from competition because Ian read them to teams at William & Mary, this year's D2 Sectionals might have worked... The existence of things like leadins and 3rd parts made ACF-4 fine as a nationals warmup, though.
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