Keeping Score During Practices
Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2020 12:28 pm
During practices, is it beneficial to keep score if there are enough players to split into teams? Curious to see what other people's thoughts on this are. Of course, it varies on a case-by-case basis and really depends on the team(s) you are with. There is certainly a balance between having fun at practice and trying to improve to compete seriously, and I was wondering to see if other high school/college teams regularly keep score during practices.
Background
I've started coaching a high school team that is rebuilding after a faculty sponsor change. Only a few of my students have some prior experience playing at basically only VHSL tournaments. We've been able to recruit pretty successfully and have a good number of new players including freshmen and sophomores, which we have split into having their own JV practices. Since a large majority of my students are new to quizbowl, I split up practice into a "toss-up practice" portion where I write toss-ups based on Dwight Kidder's The 99 Critical Shots in Quiz Bowl and quiz my students on those. We have a competition for those questions where the faculty sponsor and I give a small prize to the student who does the best each month on those questions. I use PACE scoring (20 for power, 10 for get, 0 for neg) to try and encourage more buzzing. Then we go through 1-2 20/20 packets for our normal practice and practice as though they were real matches. I keep score while I read for them. We usually have enough students to have at least 3v3, and I split them up into roughly equal teams to help practice bonus portions since that is completely new to most of the team. While I want to certainly keep the "practice like you play" mentality, I have also started to notice some issues that arise. Both in high school and college, I've never kept score during practices, but that was more because of the team size and casual culture. However, my students are always very conscious about scoring even before I started to keep score during practices. It's certainly a good problem to have since my students want to be competitive and enjoy going against each other, but I also don't want them to be so focused on winning/losing in practice and more about improving during practice.
Pros:
- Keeps a competitive atmosphere to practice
- Forces students to not make "bad" negs (just completely guessing on the first clue with not real knowledge)
- Good practice for real match situations (knowing when a game is won)
- Teaches the importance of working with your team
- Helps students who are also trying to learn how to keep score while they play
Cons
- Can lose the casual atmosphere
- Can over-emphasize that negs are terrible (obviously negs are not good but during practices they are helpful to learn from)
- Some students become way more hesitant to buzz in since they don't want to penalize their team
I try to ground my practices with a fun atmosphere that allows for a competitive edge. Of course, I'm not quite as strict with my JV students, and those practices are much more casual. With both sets of students, I try to emphasize that having negs aren't the end of the world. It has been good at the beginning since we had several players who had a "negging issue" that have started to get out of those habits, but I am certainly starting to see a trend in my varsity students that prevents them from buzzing in for fear of negging. Should I stop keeping score or maybe change my practice format?
Background
I've started coaching a high school team that is rebuilding after a faculty sponsor change. Only a few of my students have some prior experience playing at basically only VHSL tournaments. We've been able to recruit pretty successfully and have a good number of new players including freshmen and sophomores, which we have split into having their own JV practices. Since a large majority of my students are new to quizbowl, I split up practice into a "toss-up practice" portion where I write toss-ups based on Dwight Kidder's The 99 Critical Shots in Quiz Bowl and quiz my students on those. We have a competition for those questions where the faculty sponsor and I give a small prize to the student who does the best each month on those questions. I use PACE scoring (20 for power, 10 for get, 0 for neg) to try and encourage more buzzing. Then we go through 1-2 20/20 packets for our normal practice and practice as though they were real matches. I keep score while I read for them. We usually have enough students to have at least 3v3, and I split them up into roughly equal teams to help practice bonus portions since that is completely new to most of the team. While I want to certainly keep the "practice like you play" mentality, I have also started to notice some issues that arise. Both in high school and college, I've never kept score during practices, but that was more because of the team size and casual culture. However, my students are always very conscious about scoring even before I started to keep score during practices. It's certainly a good problem to have since my students want to be competitive and enjoy going against each other, but I also don't want them to be so focused on winning/losing in practice and more about improving during practice.
Pros:
- Keeps a competitive atmosphere to practice
- Forces students to not make "bad" negs (just completely guessing on the first clue with not real knowledge)
- Good practice for real match situations (knowing when a game is won)
- Teaches the importance of working with your team
- Helps students who are also trying to learn how to keep score while they play
Cons
- Can lose the casual atmosphere
- Can over-emphasize that negs are terrible (obviously negs are not good but during practices they are helpful to learn from)
- Some students become way more hesitant to buzz in since they don't want to penalize their team
I try to ground my practices with a fun atmosphere that allows for a competitive edge. Of course, I'm not quite as strict with my JV students, and those practices are much more casual. With both sets of students, I try to emphasize that having negs aren't the end of the world. It has been good at the beginning since we had several players who had a "negging issue" that have started to get out of those habits, but I am certainly starting to see a trend in my varsity students that prevents them from buzzing in for fear of negging. Should I stop keeping score or maybe change my practice format?