The Quizbowl Resource Center

Culver Academies are proud to announce our 2011 High School Quizbowl Tournaments! The Seventh Annual Culver Academies Varsity Invitational and Sixth Annual Frosh/Soph Tournament will be held on January 29, 2011, and we hope your school will be able to send one or more teams to compete in our tournaments!

These tournaments, using NAQT IS-101A, will feature two or three separate divisions:

I. Varsity AA: Large Public and Private Schools
II. Varsity A: Small Public Schools (if there are enough Varsity teams to have a separate division for small schools... if not we will play off a small school champ HSNCT style)
III. Frosh/Soph

If there is a second Varsity division, Large Public and Private Schools will have the option of entering B or C teams in the Varsity A division as exhibition teams (i.e. they will be ineligible for the championship bracket). Tiny private schools might be allowed to play in the Small School Division at the Tournament Director's discretion.

Field size is limited to 32 Varsity and 16 Frosh/Soph teams for a total of 48 teams. Assuming we have 16 teams in a division, we will divide teams into two balanced eight team round robins, and then re-bracket for the afternoon in to a Championship and a Consolation bracket of eight teams each, with everybody playing four more games after lunch against the teams they have NOT faced in the morning, which would result in eleven games for all teams. After the Championship round robin is finished the top two teams would face off in a (potentially) advantaged final.

Each team will be guaranteed a minimum of eight games, with round robins being held in the morning and playoff round robins being held in the afternoon. The Registration Fee is $60 per team, with a discount of $10 available if you bring a buzzer system, a $10 discount/team if your school is more than 150 mi from Culver, and a $20 discount per team if your school is more than 300 miles from Culver.

To guarantee your spots, please post here or e-mail Phil Blessman at blessmp [at] culver [dot] org by January 15 2011, indicating your school's enrollment and the number of varsity and/or Frosh/Soph teams you would like to bring. We look forward to welcoming you to Culver Academies for our Quizbowl tournaments! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at any time!

P.S.: We have substantial housing available at the campus motel at a cost of $20 per two-person room. Lunch in our dining hall is pretty good, AYCE, and only $5 per person. Breakfast and dinner are also available to teams staying overnight at a cost of $4 and $6 per person respectively.

Field Update (as of 1/24):

Varsity:
Culver A
Culver B
DCC B (MI)
Kalamazoo Christian (MI)
Marion
North Miami
North White A
North White B
Novi A (MI)
Novi B (MI)
Novi C (MI)
Pioneer
Riley (South Bend)
St. Joe's (South Bend)
White Cloud (MI)
Winamac

Frosh/Soph:
Culver
DCC A (MI)
DCC B (MI)
Kalamazoo Christian (MI)
Marion
North White
Novi A (MI)
Novi B (MI)
Pioneer A
Pioneer B
Riley (South Bend)
St. Joe's
St. Viator (IL)
White Cloud (MI)

We're looking for experienced moderators for this tournament. Compensation is as follows:

$5 per match read
Motel room provided for Friday night
Breakfast and Lunch provided on Saturday

Please post here or email me to express interest.

Manual is interested with at least a varsity and fresh/soph team

Seems like a good time to remind people about our tournaments.

We'd like to use a different (more challenging) set for the top division... any non-NAQT suggestions?

This is me expressing moderating interest.

TIT or Penn Bowl?

Penn Bowl would be sweet

SoLegit12 wrote:Penn Bowl would be sweet

Isn't this the same day as Governor's Cup District?

Hilltopper22 wrote:

SoLegit12 wrote:Penn Bowl would be sweet

Isn't this the same day as Governor's Cup District?

I care about Governor's Cup because?

SoLegit12 wrote:

Hilltopper22 wrote:

SoLegit12 wrote:Penn Bowl would be sweet

Isn't this the same day as Governor's Cup District?

I care about Governor's Cup because?

I was actually thinking more along the lines of the Manual team as a whole. I take it that you all are planning to divide your teams between this and GovCup?

Nope if it is true that it's Gov Cup, I will try my best to come solo. Or let the fr0sh/soph go to the fr0sh tourney

Penn Bowl sounds like an interesting option... couple questions:

1. Would out-of-state teams be interested in coming to Culver on 1/29 to play this set? The difficulty level would obviously be upped substantially, so we would need a decent sized group from the surrounding states to want to partake, otherwise this would be a hard to pull off... there are probably five teams in Indiana (if that many) who would want to play this set.

2. Who do I contact about Penn Bowl? I couldn't find a posting. Are there other Midwest mirrors planned?

It is my guess that most Illinois teams will be playing Huskie Bowl that day.

pblessman wrote:Penn Bowl sounds like an interesting option... couple questions:

1. Would out-of-state teams be interested in coming to Culver on 1/29 to play this set? The difficulty level would obviously be upped substantially, so we would need a decent sized group from the surrounding states to want to partake, otherwise this would be a hard to pull off... there are probably five teams in Indiana (if that many) who would want to play this set.

2. Who do I contact about Penn Bowl? I couldn't find a posting. Are there other Midwest mirrors planned?

You could probably pull teams from Michigan, Ohio, and KY.

Penn's team can be reached at [email protected]. Nothing is up on Penn Bowl yet.

pblessman wrote:We'd like to use a different (more challenging) set for the top division... any non-NAQT suggestions?

There are lots of well-written tournaments that use a difficulty that is both harder than A-sets that aren't going to be abject disasters for a high school field the way Penn Bowl would be. Prison Bowl, Maggie Walker's tournament, Torrey Pines all fit the bill as high school tournaments that will be more rigorous than an A-set. Given the many high school appropriate options out there, it seems to me that it would be an incredibly poor idea to run a tournament in Indiana, where pyramidal quizbowl is not incredibly popular on a date when Illinois teams won't be attending, on a regular difficulty college set where you can have bonuses like the following be par for the course:

5. Answer some questions that relate to the philosophy of mind, for 10 points each.
[10] In this John Searle thought experiment, a human receives slips of paper with writing in a certain language which he does not himself understand, and follows a set of guidelines in a book for writing responses.
Answer: Chinese Room or Chinese Box
[10] Searle argues that the fact that the human in the room doesn't actually understand Chinese invalidates this hypothesis that computers can actually understand languages and perform other tasks that require understanding.
Answer: Strong AI hypothesis
[10] This philosopher made the reply by natural selection, in which a zombie is created without causal properties. His other works include one that postulates the multiple drafts model of consciousness.
Answer: Daniel Dennett

Do people honestly think this is appropriate for a high school field?

Note that otherwise regular purveyor of terrible ideas for high school quizbowl me is similarly skeptical that Penn Bowl is the best idea for a high school tournament. A college novice tournament would probably be on the hard side, really, for the field you're likely to attract.

Thanks for the input- I had a similar feeling... if we had the strongest teams from surrounding states attending (Manual, Dunbar, Northmont, DCC, Auburn, Stevenson, etc.), then a college level set might be interesting. However, with most IL teams probably at NIU and the KY teams at Governors' Cup, we are probably looking at just a couple of the top teams coming... Northmont and DCC are regular attenders at that tournament, so they'll probably be there, but it seems silly to up the difficulty level that far for a handful of teams. I'll check with the Jones's to see whether they're planning to attend and then see what kind of set they haven't played and would like to see at the tournament. Anybody else who reads this and is planning to attend can of course also give me input.

If you're not going to Huskie Bowl, you better come here.

I'm cancelling all Manual teams, sorry Blessman

No problem- you have a legit excuse! See you at Midwest!

The field is filling in nicely, with currently a total of 26 teams registered (see above for detailed field update)! We're still accepting registrations for both Varsity and Frosh/Soph, so please let me know if you'd like to add!

Quick recap:

Varsity: Novi A beat DCC "B" in the second game of an advantaged final to win the title. Culver A was third.

SS: I'm pretty sure it was White Cloud and North Miami in the finals, and two games were played. The outcome eludes me.

Fr/So: DCC A won both finals games to claim the title over Novi A.

North Miami won over White Cloud in both games in the advantaged small school final. I don't have scores, but DCC B and Novi A played three games over the course of the day and all were nailbiters.

For the games between Novi A and DCC B, scores were 355-345 in the first game, 285-440 in the second, and 365-325 in the last.

I also really liked the trash removal

The delay in stats is my fault. I forgot to save backup copies of the prelim files before setting up the carryover games in the finals.

PennySalem wrote:For the games between Novi A and DCC B, scores were 355-345 in the first game, 285-440 in the second, and 365-325 in the last.

Due to Novi's excellent performance, their loss of Emaline Maxfield appears to be negligible.
Congrats on another great tourney this year and to all the teams who performed so well! We appreciate all the hard work that goes into making this tournament so successful!

Cosima wrote:

PennySalem wrote:For the games between Novi A and DCC B, scores were 355-345 in the first game, 285-440 in the second, and 365-325 in the last.

Due to Novi's excellent performance, their loss of Emaline Maxfield appears to be negligible.
Congrats on another great tourney this year and to all the teams who performed so well! We appreciate all the hard work that goes into making this tournament so successful!

Oh yes! Novi is SOOOO PROOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!
/troll

After some hang-ups, the stats have been emailed out to the appropriate people.

Congrats to Novi and DCC for strong finishes, and for North Miami for taking the SS title.

Major props also go to Phil, who is among the most gracious tournament hosts out there.

Varsity stats: prelims playoffs overall
JV stats: prelims playoffs overall

Thanks, Donald for finishing/fixing the stats, and thanks to Jonah for posting them on the IHSSBCA site!