The Quizbowl Resource Center

So our team had a fairly good season last year, but we were limited by the number of tournaments we were able to attend.
This year, however, our Athletic Department has been gracious enough to count us as a sports team and fund all of our competitons.
This actually has given rise to a new quandary. Our coach wants us to compete in our area televised tournament, High-Q. We as the team leadership have no issue with this. Our problem is that she seems to want to focus on HighQ at the neglect of good qb tournaments. This is really troubling to my team and I, because we don't want to be the team known for unfulfilled potential due to a lack of tournament attendance. We'd really appreciate some guidance here.
Thanks!

JTakang21 wrote:So our team had a fairly good season last year, but we were limited by the number of tournaments we were able to attend.
This year, however, our Athletic Department has been gracious enough to count us as a sports team and fund all of our competitons.
This actually has given rise to a new quandary. Our coach wants us to compete in our area televised tournament, High-Q. We as the team leadership have no issue with this. Our problem is that she seems to want to focus on HighQ at the neglect of good qb tournaments. This is really troubling to my team and I, because we don't want to be the team known for unfulfilled potential due to a lack of tournament attendance. We'd really appreciate some guidance here.
Thanks!

Maybe you could explain politely how you're a nationally competitive team and doing well at nationals is the main goal of every quiz bowl team nationwide?

Also, you could frame it as "preparing for national quiz bowl competition is the same thing as preparing for our local TV show." As in, doing well at HSNCT helps you prep for the TV show.

Even if you do get forced into High Q (which is what a lot of GA high schools end up being forced into do anyway), remember that it's a 32-team single elim bracket. Assuming you get all the way to the finals, that's only five tapings max. No way going to tapings is going to eat up your money, and you won't be missing much because of them, so unless your coach has other things in mind (which I doubt), you might as well do what Ankit says and convince her to let you attend good QB tournaments as "TV show prep".

A few years back we at Norcross would hold two varsity practices a week. Individually we would study current events and the dates, but only a few days before the filming day. The day of filming we would test each other on This Day in History, sports, and news (as well as short buzzer race/misleading questions).
For the most part, you can do pretty well at High Q by studying for quizbowl. DON'T spend too much time on it if your main game is qb.

Most of the teams you see on the show (us, Hooch, Galloway, Walton et al.) do both and manage to do well in both. Also they tape either Tuesday or Wednesday (depending on if there are school breaks coming up), so, as mentioned above, the time to prep isn't much. Given we had a ninety minute bus ride from Athens to Atlanta, we crammed on the bus, then reviewed a little at dinner, then played. You know the results of that this past season. Granted, the "this day" stuff is gone this season, so it'll be closer to a "normal" game (see the Cedar-Prince Ave and Cedar-Pickens County games for what they looked like as those were make-up games due to snow and didn't have "this day" questions).

You could always take a page from Flowery Branch and play independent under a fake name. I'm sure the athletic department won't know the difference when cutting the checks.

We were severely limited on the number of tournaments we could attend last year. The only tournaments we went to were County, BISB, ATTACK, and State. I thought it was due to financial reasons, but we changed coaches this year and it turns out our balance was in the multiple hundreds of dollars. So I'm trying to push our team to go to at least one tournament a month, but now some of the members are telling me they can't go to that many tournaments. We got 2nd in BISB and 3rd in division for state last year, so I feel we aren't reaching our potential either. We want to get to High Q but my main goal this year is to go to much more tournaments. I would really try and persuade your coach to let you go to more tournaments. I know my biggest regret from last year is that we pulled off 2nd at BISB, a large tournament, but couldn't go to another tournament for 4 months. Our coach kept making excuses for why we couldn't go to tournaments, like saying they were too close to exams or school holidays.