Alabama 08-09

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

For what it's worth, the location of the NSC is in Fairfax, which is a lovely town but is not actually too close to downtown Washington. I would definitely think that PACE won't be as hectic as it would be if the tournament was held closer in to major tourist sites. However, DC is still accessible from Fairfax, so if your team did want to visit after or before the tournament, they could.

[AKKOLADE]

You could always accidentally go to Washington DC after the tournament, too.

[quizbowllee]

After Hoover:

ASFA = The Real Deal.

[azngod1992]

Thanks Lee,

I have to say that the questions were really suited to us. We had been practicing on similar pyramidal questions (instead of ASCA ones) since the year began. Furthermore, the distribution also suited us to an extent. I'm sure the almost complete lack of TRASH benefited our team some too. I'm afraid our performance on NAQTEEEE and ASCA tournaments will be far inferior to the performance you saw yesterday.

On another note, would anyone be interested in an ASFA-hosted tournament run on house-written mACF/NAQT questions sometimes in February or March?

[Nick15]

I agree with Lee. They are the real deal and Alvin is an absolute MONSTER!

[Golden Tiger 86]

I agree with Lee. They are the real deal and Alvin is an absolute MONSTER!

It looks like the power in quiz bowl in the great state of Alabama has shifted from Huntsville south. Springs, Hoover, ASFA?

I always figured there would be a day when the folks in Birmingham would rise, especially when one of the "big" schools down there (if you're into AHSAA football, think 6A Region 6) got a coach that cared. Add to that the consistent excellence of Springs and the rise of ASFA, and you have the makings of a damn good regional in March.

[AndyShootsAndyScores]

I'm glad we finally have more than 4 regular contributors to the Alabama thread now.

I wish I could've been there to see the new talent rising (curse you, old alarm clocks!), but I hope to see some of it at the BMHS tournament later. I'm glad Josh used a format that was similar to ASCA's while upping the question quality instead of trying to force a standard 20/20 on Alabama teams. A somewhat slow transition is what's going to get real quizbowl into Alabama, not a sudden change. Hopefully, the high schoolers playing now will be able to experince it before they move their tassel.

Congratulations to ASFA on the win.

[Nick15]

I'm glad that the quiz bowl in Alabama is finally taking this step forward towards more in-depth questions. I hope the full transition completes before I graduate (fingers crossed). I feel that the level of Alabama Quiz bowl has been raised thanks to Mr. Rutsky, and on another note, ran a great tournament Saturday! Looking forward to this weekend... who will be attending the tournament at Ole Miss?

[azngod1992]

ASFA would love to go out of state for tournaments, unfortunately, our school will only provide transportation to in-state tournaments. Ferrying ourselves to out of state tournaments have so far proved impractical, but hopefully, we would venture out of state starting next semester. I guess I shall see everyone either at Buckhorn in 2 weeks or Brindlee Mountain in 4 or 5 weeks (can't remember the exact date).

[quizbowllee]

Hoover Stats: http://results.scobo.net/HooverHighSchool.

Interesting stats... Thanks for posting them. I learned a lot from them.

ASFA truly dominated more than I realized. We were beating them at the half, but we came up empty on the lightning round and let them get 8 questions (to our 2) in the 4th quarter. They crushed us in the playoff, though.

I'm surprised to see Jacob Morgan so high up on the individuals. I knew he played well, but he was the top JV scorer and 7th overall - and he's in the 8th grade. If he keeps this up, he's going to be a game-changer for us in high school.

I was glad to see Brindlee Mountain A's individual stats were much more spread out than in years past. In fact, we have had three different top-scorers in three different tournaments. This shows that this team isn't dominated by one player like we were with Andy Knowles in the past. I think this bodes well for us as this team continues to learn and grow. I have pinpointed some very specific weaknesses that I think I can address before some of the bigger tournaments next semester.

Congrats again to ASFA on a great performance. I had Indian Springs picked to win this tournament, and you guys blew them away. It will be interesting to see how you fare against Hoover on some good questions.

See most of you at Buckhorn on the 15th!

[AndyShootsAndyScores]

who will be attending the tournament at Ole Miss?

University of Alabama will be, but this is due to them running ACF Fall the next day and giving us a discount for participating in the NAQT one. Nick, you guys from Russellville should go ahead and take advantage of both the discount and the opportunity to play in a very freshman-friendly tournament.

Looks like ASFA was clearly above every team there. I'm not sure what the point cap was, but 62 PPG above the next-highest scorer seems very impressive, which makes Alvin look to be the best player in AL this year (for pyrimadal, at least). If tournaments continue to look like this, it could just be a battle for 2nd place at NAQT State. Other than that, everything looks to remain the same. Once Jacob Morgan reaches junior or even sophomore year, though, watch out.

EDIT: Added HIT commentary.

EDIT v. 2.0: Forgot to mention the absence of Hoover. Is Hoover attending Buckhorn?

[quizbowllee]

Once Jacob Morgan reaches junior or even sophomore year, though, watch out.

Imagine a player with your talent, but with a work ethic!!! Jacob is going to be a very good player. I just hope he buckles down and powers through the preparations he will need to become one of the greats.

Is Hoover attending Buckhorn?

Yes. Buckhorn will be much more competitive than in the past.

ASFA, Hoover, ISS, Brindlee Mountain, Randolph, and Russellville will all be there. It should be interesting.

[azngod1992]

Anyone know who the question provider is for Buckhorn, and whether they will be pyramidal?

[Matt Weiner]

Anyone know who the question provider is for Buckhorn, and whether they will be pyramidal?

The tournament isn't listed on either HSAPQ or NAQT's sites, so...you're in for a long day.

[AndyShootsAndyScores]

Once Jacob Morgan reaches junior or even sophomore year, though, watch out.

Imagine a player with your talent, but with a work ethic!!!

Inconceivable!

Yeah, if I had to guess, Buckhorn will either be house-written ASCA or Patrick's Press.

[quizbowllee]

Yeah, if I had to guess, Buckhorn will either be house-written ASCA or Patrick's Press.

House written. Multimedia worksheets.

In fairness, Buckhorn usually has decent questions compared to most ASCA-style tournaments. The multimedia worksheets are cool, too.

On a tangential note, this will likely be the last tournament I will be attending with my team for a while. We don't have anything lined up after Buckhorn this semester (unless I decide to let them play in our tournament on Dec. 6, which I am mulling considering the quality of the questions). Then, my daughter will be born via C-section on January 9. I will have to cut back on traveling after that, as I will be needed at home.

The team will be traveling a lot this year with DAR's team. Hopefully I will be back with them around March or April.

[quizbowllee]

Odd stat from Hoover:

Does anyone else find it odd that Robert Vance from ISS scored no points at all? Robert has outscored Zack Martin at a few tournaments in the past couple of years, but at Hoover Zack put up 103.5 ppg to Robert's 0.

I am wondering if this is accurate. If so, what was up with that?




Edited for grammar.

[David Riley]

Best wishes Lee to you and your family on the arrival of the new baby!

[azngod1992]

Odd stat from Hoover:

Does anyone else find it odd that Robert Vance from ISS scored no points at all? Robert has outscored Zack Martin at a few tournaments in the past couple of years, but at Hoover Zack put up 103.5 ppg to Robert's 0.

I am wondering if this is accurate and if so, what was up with that?

if Robert Vance is who I think he is, then I don't think he was at the tournament the other day. The ISS team probably just put his name on the roster just in case he showed up, and he didn't (maybe due to SATs?)

[quizbowllee]

if Robert Vance is who I think he is, then I don't think he was at the tournament the other day. The ISS team probably just put his name on the roster just in case he showed up, and he didn't (maybe due to SATs?)

I thought that might be the case, but the stats say that he had 10 games played... Oh, well. You're probably correct.

[Joshua Rutsky]

This is, in fact, the case. Robert was not in attendance, but I didn't get a name update for ISS, so I didn't have a new name to assign to the player in the stats. Mac Lacasse tells me he was missing two of his starters for the tourney, so I think everyone would be wise to be prepared for ISS to be as strong as ever as the year progresses.

[azngod1992]

I assume congratulations are in order for Hoover, who probably won the Buckhorn tournament today (unless Russelville managed to pull off an upset). I'm going to have to smack the question writers of that tournament over their heads for making such terribad questions (jk, but the questions were rather bad). I have finally been reminded of how bad ASCA questions (at least written in non-pyramidal style) were after being spoiled by pyramidal questions since last April. Our dismal performance shows how bad we are at non-pyramidal speed packets (perhaps time to dig up old ASCA packets and start practicing on them). I'm actually quiet surprised at our lack of common knowledge in several subject areas (i.e we were totally stumped on insect orders and geological time periods ect), and I think this tournament showed us areas where we need to improve in (in order to be competitive for the state championship). We had to sit out one of our best pyramidal players out after half the tournament, since the heavy math distribution called for another math specialist. That teammate had a fit after we lost in the playoffs and I was rather disappointed that I was forced to do this in order to remain more competitive in Math Computation questions.

Of course, I am looking forward to Brindlee Mountain tournament in 3 weeks, with their awesome HSAPQ packets. I certainly hope more schools than those signed up now would attend.

On an another note, utterly demoralized by the quality of the questions at Buckhorn (and undoubtedly other future ASCA tournaments), I and other team members of the ASFA scholar's bowl team have tentatively (of course, this is if we get school administration's approval) decided to host a tournament in 100% ASCA format on FEBRUARY 28th, 2009 with the best pyramidal questions you will have ever seen in an 100% ASCA format tournament, The packets would be house-written, and I will be the head editor of the tournament. My expectations will be something like this:

First and foremost - No math computation!!!!!

Quarter 1: Our questions will be similar to NAQT A-set ones, between 3-5 lines worth of clues.
Quarter 2: Our questions will be similar to NAQT IS-set ones, between 4-7 lines worth of clues.
Quarter 3: Category based worksheet
Quarter 4: Our questions will be similar to NAQT IS-set ones, between 4-8 lines worth of clues.

The distribution will be something like this, out of the 30 tossups
7 - History
6 - Lit
6 - Science (along with non computational math)
4 - Fine Arts (Art History + Music)
3 - RMP
2 - Misc ACADEMIC stuff (econ, psychology)
2 - Trash

Answer selections will be such that even the worst of the teams at the tournament should be able to answer the majority of the questions after the give-away clue, but I fully expect top teams to answer them halfway or near the beginning of each question.

P.S If possible, could anyone send me the contact lists for the Alabama Scholar's bowl teams and coaches to [email protected]. Our former coach forgot to give us the contact information before he left.

EDIT: GRAMMAR and adding what my dream distribution would look like...

[Mechanical Beasts]

Our dismal performance shows how bad we are at non-pyramidal speed packets (perhaps time to dig up old ASCA packets and start practicing on them).

The thing you really should do is go with your heart. You know that speed questions aren't good quizbowl and aren't worth it, so don't care about "dismal performance" that obviously don't reflect your actual ability at quizbowl. And never practice on packets that encourage you to learn useless stuff.

[azngod1992]

Our dismal performance shows how bad we are at non-pyramidal speed packets (perhaps time to dig up old ASCA packets and start practicing on them).

The thing you really should do is go with your heart. You know that speed questions aren't good quizbowl and aren't worth it, so don't care about "dismal performance" that obviously don't reflect your actual ability at quizbowl. And never practice on packets that encourage you to learn useless stuff.

Of course, you make a very valid point Andy; however, in order to be competitive at the state level in Alabama, one must be able to perform well in non-pyramidal questions and speed packets. I completely agree with you that non-pyramidal questions do not necessarily measure one's quizbowling abilities; however, such questions could be educational (in the sense that it reinforces binary knowledge and requires you to think faster than you would in on a pyramidal question). Of course, our main practice questions will still be mainly packets off of the stanford packet archive and the high school quiz bowl archives; but I think a packet or two of ASCA or NAQT speed packets will go a long way in helping us to be more competitive in ASCA tournaments.

[AndyShootsAndyScores]

Quarter 1: Our questions will be similar to NAQT A-set ones, between 3-5 lines worth of clues.
Quarter 2: Our questions will be similar to NAQT IS-set ones, between 4-7 lines worth of clues.
Quarter 3: Category based worksheet
Quarter 4: Our questions will be similar to NAQT IS-set ones, between 4-8 lines worth of clues.

I appreciate your zeal in wanting to bring better quizbowl to Alabama, but I would highly advise against doing this. This tournament will run well into the night, even if you happened to have very experienced readers in every room and you don't have any of the regular tournament screw-ups (rescheduling, late teams/staff, etc.). However, even the best-run tournaments have problems, so you probably won't be able to avoid that.

If you're really serious about bring better quizbowl to 'Bama, try running a house-written mACF tourney (not an NAQT one). Write the questions on an A-level difficulty and use ACF Fall's distribution. I'm kind of disappointed Lee has decided to stop doing house-written stuff for his invitational, but I can definitely understand why he's made that decision.

EDIT: Also, if you want to see ASCA disappear (or, at least diminish the frequency with which it is used in Alabama), stop playing it. Of course, it might be a huge hassle to get support from your administration, but if they can get behind it, I'd advise refusing rto participate in ASCA. If the top tier teams could all denounce ASCA, it would be a big blow to them.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Isn't there also an NAQT State tournament in Alabama? I know the last 2 years of high school I was in a pretty similar situation where I was on a team that was good at pyramidal questions but was forced to play crappy questions for state titles, and basically by the end I just kept preparing for good national level quizbowl and just played the MSHSAA stuff on the side and let the chips fall as they may there without doing any special preparation for it (granted, at that point I will freely admit I was only practicing like once every couple weeks). I think this ended up making our team better overall come nationals, and made my time seem more rewarding, so unless there are some direct monetary rewards for winning ASCA state, I might recommend a similar approach.

[AndyShootsAndyScores]

. . .so unless there are some direct monetary rewards for winning ASCA state, I might recommend a similar approach.

I know there's a free trip to Disney World for Panasonic, but if I remember correctly, that tournament may be suspended. I think there is also a certain amount of money give to the top 4, but I can't remember exactly how much. Now, if a team would win ASCA State and then refuse to go to Panasonic and try to get the money that would normally be used for Disney World used for PACE and/or NAQT, that would be great.

[azngod1992]

I appreciate your zeal in wanting to bring better quizbowl to Alabama, but I would highly advise against doing this. This tournament will run well into the night, even if you happened to have very experienced readers in every room and you don't have any of the regular tournament screw-ups (rescheduling, late teams/staff, etc.). However, even the best-run tournaments have problems, so you probably won't be able to avoid that.

If you're really serious about bring better quizbowl to 'Bama, try running a house-written mACF tourney (not an NAQT one). Write the questions on an A-level difficulty and use ACF Fall's distribution. I'm kind of disappointed Lee has decided to stop doing house-written stuff for his invitational, but I can definitely understand why he's made that decision.

EDIT: Also, if you want to see ASCA disappear (or, at least diminish the frequency with which it is used in Alabama), stop playing it. Of course, it might be a huge hassle to get support from your administration, but if they can get behind it, I'd advise refusing rto participate in ASCA. If the top tier teams could all denounce ASCA, it would be a big blow to them.

You may be right Andy, but we're probably looking at a small tournament pool of twelve or so potential teams that may come (unless more decide to come...o_O). I think 7 or 8 rounds of quizbowl running at an average of 30 minutes to an hour each is not that unbearable (having seen the Hoover tournament work just fine with 10 rounds of VERY pyramidal questions). Of course, my teammates and I have considered writing mACF sets; however, I think that might not attract as many teams as we would like to the tournament. One of our major goals is to raise money to fund a HSNCT or PACE trip this summer and other costly enterprises to out-of-state tournaments (i.e Vandy spring). I think an ASCA formatted tournament with GOOD PYRAMIDAL QUESTIONS will be a major step in promoting good Quizbowl to AL.

Of course I would love to see ASCA disappear or switch to *more* pyramidal questions (not the 3 or 4 line stuff we have for our state championship stuff). I think our school would abandon us if we decided not to compete in most of the tournaments in the state (including the state championship), and we don't have the money to go out of state to better tournaments. I think what Mr. Rutsky said earlier today about having a division I and division II in ASCA would be the best solution to the problems of Alabama.

[AndyShootsAndyScores]

I appreciate your zeal in wanting to bring better quizbowl to Alabama, but I would highly advise against doing this. This tournament will run well into the night, even if you happened to have very experienced readers in every room and you don't have any of the regular tournament screw-ups (rescheduling, late teams/staff, etc.). However, even the best-run tournaments have problems, so you probably won't be able to avoid that.

If you're really serious about bring better quizbowl to 'Bama, try running a house-written mACF tourney (not an NAQT one). Write the questions on an A-level difficulty and use ACF Fall's distribution. I'm kind of disappointed Lee has decided to stop doing house-written stuff for his invitational, but I can definitely understand why he's made that decision.

EDIT: Also, if you want to see ASCA disappear (or, at least diminish the frequency with which it is used in Alabama), stop playing it. Of course, it might be a huge hassle to get support from your administration, but if they can get behind it, I'd advise refusing rto participate in ASCA. If the top tier teams could all denounce ASCA, it would be a big blow to them.

You may be right Andy, but we're probably looking at a small tournament pool of twelve or so potential teams that may come (unless more decide to come...o_O). I think 7 or 8 rounds of quizbowl running at an average of 30 minutes to an hour each is not that unbearable (having seen the Hoover tournament work just fine with 10 rounds of VERY pyramidal questions). Of course, my teammates and I have considered writing mACF sets; however, I think that might not attract as many teams as we would like to the tournament. One of our major goals is to raise money to fund a HSNCT or PACE trip this summer and other costly enterprises to out-of-state tournaments (i.e Vandy fall). I think an ASCA formatted tournament with GOOD PYRAMIDAL QUESTIONS will be a major step in promoting good Quizbowl to AL.

Of course I would love to see ASCA disappear or switch to *more* pyramidal questions (not the 3 or 4 line stuff we have for our state championship stuff). I think our school would abandon us if we decided not to compete in most of the tournaments in the state (including the state championship), and we don't have the money to go out of state to better tournaments. I think what Mr. Rutsky said earlier today about having a division I and division II in ASCA would be the best solution to the problems of Alabama.

Ah, I was not aware that getting money was one of the goals of your tournament. Having remembered this simple rule of hosting tournaments, I realize how dumb I am.

I still don't agree with trying to make ASCA pyramidal instead of just establishing a different league entirely. The latter would definitely require more work, but as someone who was aware of both the attempts made to change ASCA and the stubborness that came from the ASCA board when they were confronted with these changes, I don't have a lot of faith in ASCA anymore. Now that Josh is on the board now, though, it may only be a matter of time before this necessary change becomes a reality.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Why shouldn't people use NAQT in a circuit that seems to be lacking decent sets? Using an IS set would probably be far above the vast majority of Alabama tournaments, and allow for an extra nationals qualifier. Whether or not people like their sets, they are still certainly good high school quizbowl, even if they aren't great.

[Matthew D]

Guys we are attempting to get the better questions introduced into Alabama but what you don't see is all of the stuff we have to do to get it done. Things are changing but it is slower than most of us like but that it what we are going to have to do for the time being. EVERY tournament that has good questions brings us closer and closer to having more teams being familiar to the questions and hopefully changing their minds about what type of questions they like. I know that the contract for Questions Galore will be up next year and that should spell the end of their providing questions for the JV and middle school state.
What the players can do is talk to the other teams, not just the good ones, about NAQT and PACE so that they know that there is something outside of Alabama quizbowl wise...

[Magister Ludi]

I want to applaud Alvin Shi and ASFA for writing this tournament. Clearly Alabama teams are more likely to come to a tournament written in their local format, so I think that this tournament could be an excellent stepping stone towards better, pyramidal questions. Showing teams that don't read the boards the concept of pyramidal questions in formats they are familiair with is the first step in an evenatual move towards mACF format. It is similar to Hegel's dialectic. The terrible unpyramidal normal ASCA questions (thesis) will clash with the good pyramidal ASCA questions (antithesis). The comparison between the two would show why pyramidal questions are better and eventually result in a move towards pyramidal questions. I think people should not criticize ASFA for writing a tournament in local formats because hopefully this can be an important ggradual step in the process of bringing better questions to Alabama.

[Joshua Rutsky]

Another step in this direction would be if some of the larger tourneys from the Midwest and/or Northeast offered mirroring opportunities to states like Alabama where funding is very short and where a three-four hour trip is often required to get to a tourney using "good" questions. Not everyone can afford to travel across the country to the best tourneys (I hate you, Dorman High School ), but if some local schools were to step up and offer mirror tourneys, we might get more interest in the state in different formats. ASFA once again holding a tournament (it's been a while) is a good step forward. Now if some of the other Birmingham area schools will step up, we might see some change. It baffles me that people complain about the quality of tourneys statewide and don't offer their own; as far as I'm concerned, only the folks at Brindlee, Russellville, DAR, LAMP, and Buckhorn have a real right to make noise so far.

How about it, ISS? Altamont? Host a tourney!

EDIT: ASFA too, now that they're hosting.

[David Riley]

Do you get the Illinois Coaches' Association newsletter? If not send a note to me [email protected] and I can send you a list of tournament directors in Illinois whose tournaments you might want to mirror.

One step we've taken over the past few years is to host more NAQT tournaments, college-sponsored tournaments (usually NAQT or ACF) mirror tournaments, and PACE qualifiers, which has given us a better selection of tournaments to attend. Good luck!

[Sara]

How about it, ISS? Altamont? Host a tourney!

We host an 8th grade tournament, but considering we only have about 15 classrooms a full-scale tournament would be difficult.

[quizbowllee]

How about it, ISS? Altamont? Host a tourney!

We host an 8th grade tournament, but considering we only have about 15 classrooms a full-scale tournament would be difficult.

That's 30 teams, assuming no byes.

[AndyShootsAndyScores]

How about it, ISS? Altamont? Host a tourney!

We host an 8th grade tournament, but considering we only have about 15 classrooms a full-scale tournament would be difficult.

That's 30 teams, assuming no byes.

15 classrooms?! That's not bad at all. Even assuming you have to make one of those HQ, that's still 28 teams and not difficult at all. Unless you mean to say that that's all the classrooms your entire school has, which is just weird.

[Matthew D]

I hosted tournaments at Scottsboro with only 15 rooms and I think they were pretty good tournaments... 30 teams is a good haul around these parts on certain Saturdays..

[AndyShootsAndyScores]

JV Results from BMI:

1st - ASFA
2nd - Brindlee Mountain
3rd - DAR

Playoffs for varsity are taking place as I type.

[azngod1992]

I like to thank Lee for hosting such a well-run tournament - everything went by very smoothly. Of course, the part I enjoyed most were the awesome questions supplied by my new favorite question provider: HSAPQ. Although there was the occasional fluctuation in bonus difficulty, I thought the questions were very fair and very well written.

Since Brindlee Mountain is the last tournament for the year of 2008 and this semester , I think it's an appropriate time to rank the teams in the state.

1) Hoover - Although we beat half their A team today by a good margin, we haven't played their full team, which I'm sure will be much better than the half team they fielded today. Their victory at Buckhorn and close game against Dorman on an NAQT A-set at University of Alabama proves that they are really good at speed questions.

2) ASFA - I think we deserve this ranking, we haven't dropped a game this season on good (pyramidal) questions, and we been racking up respectable numbers on HSAPQ questions. Although we're probably 100ppg and 5 or 6 points per bonus away from regional powers like Dorman and other schools, I think our ppg will drastically improve as I stop caring about my final semester classes and devote more effort to studying QB. As good as we are on pyramidal questions, we suck at speed or non-pyramidal questions. We're still lacking basic knowledge into several areas, most prominently geography and non-classical physics. I think we have a real shot at winning the ASCA state championship, assuming the questions are somewhat pyramidal. Another problem we have is the fact that ASCA canon is drastically different from good QB canon. For example, all my knowledge about Japanese or African authors becomes wasted when dealing with ASCA questions, since they rarely, if ever, ask about such authors. I think one of our keys to victory so far this year is our ability to wear teams down by rangeof knowledge. That range becomes a non-factor as ASCA quizbowl is closely limited to a set canon.

3) Indian Springs - I think I over estimated their ability to play pyramidal questions earlier this year. We handily beat them at Hoover, and although we didn't face them at Brindlee today, their regular stats didn't look as impressive as I thought they would. They haven't been as dominant as they once were; however, I haven't played them yet in ASCA format, so I dunno how good they are at speed packets.

4) Brindlee Mountain - They're actually a pretty good team, and they have a lot of potential in future years (assuming they still try). They have beaten us numerous times in our specialty areas (i.e art history) with some really good buzzes, and they fought us to a close loss at Hoover (mainly caused I negged like 10 times).

5) Spain Park - they actually pulled some respectable numbers at Hoover, and they beat us at Buckhorn by a question. However, I haven't seen enough of them to give them a more accurate ranking, so I'll tentatively rank them at 5th.

6) Russelville - they beat us at Buckhorn in another somewhat close game, but other than that, I haven't seen much of them, so I can't really judge how good they are.

Honorable Mentions:
Vestavia
Covenant Christian

[AndyShootsAndyScores]

5) Spain Park - they actually pulled some respectable numbers at Hoover, and they beat us at Buckhorn by a question. However, I haven't seen enough of them to give them a more accurate ranking, so I'll tentatively rank them at 5th.

Really? I may be way out of touch with Alabama quizbowl, but this doesn't seem accurate at all. Maybe if we're talking purely about ASCA (maybe), but they haven't shown to be a good team at actual quizbowl since I've been around. I didn't get to see of the big teams other than ISS and Hoover, and I think they both were missing a portion of their respective teams.

As far as the HSAPQ questions go, I'm split. As a player, I feel I would've enjoyed them quite thoroughly; however, as a moderator, the minor typos made them somewhat hard to read. There was even one question that was missing a very important word that made it incorrect.

[azngod1992]

Well, if you take a look at the Hoover stats, Spain Park A averaged 250.6 ppg, just 10 ppg below ISS. Their p/b was 11.21, while ISS's was 10.80., and Alex Shaw, their top scorer, racked up an impressive 108.75 ppg.

[AndyShootsAndyScores]

Well, if you take a look at the Hoover stats, Spain Park A averaged 250.6 ppg, just 10 ppg below ISS. Their p/b was 11.21, while ISS's was 10.80., and Alex Shaw, their top scorer, racked up an impressive 108.75 ppg.

Those stats are Greek to me considering I don't remember the format. I think the maximum possible score for every bonus was 20, so I guess those conversions are decent. I retract my previous statement about you putting them at 5.

[Nick15]

so... nothing is going on in Alabama?

[azngod1992]

not until school gets back i suppose

[Matthew D]

DAR has a tournament on 1/24
CCA has one on 1/10
that is about all the good ones I know about right now...

I am pretty sure that
Hoover
Brindlee Mt
DAR
Asbury
are coming

I think
ASFA
MLK
Hume-Fogg
Cullman
Catholic
Oneonta
Pellman HS
might be coming to the DAR tournament but that is all I have heard from right now

[Nick15]

I'm pretty sure Russellville plans to attend your tournament.

[Joshua Rutsky]

I was bummed to see that CCA's tourney conflicts with LAMP's event the same weekend. As much as I prefer NAQT sets to the Alabama format, and while my kids like them better too, when I offered them the choice of which event to attend, they went with LAMP because the tourney is closer, we can bring more teams (they have a JV bracket), and because LAMP historically hosts a very large tourney with good out-of-state teams attending.

On the plus side, however, how frequent has it been to find two tourneys on the same day in the state, let alone two good ones? That, at least, is good news coming.

Alvin, any word on when your tourney will be? I want to make sure I have it on our calendar.

[AndyShootsAndyScores]

. . .and because LAMP historically hosts a very large tourney with good out-of-state teams attending.

If you play said out-of-state teams on a bad format with mediocre questions though, it won't really matter much as far as gauging talent of said teams against your own.

[Joshua Rutsky]

Point taken, but LAMP's questions aren't bad, and we can use the practice on the format since it is, for the moment, one of the state tourney formats. Since CCA's set is an NAQT A set, I don't feel like the quality is a huge drop, although pyramidal is still better than partly pyramidal. The other big issue is seeing more teams; even if it isn't a great way to measure where the team is in NAQT format, it is still a good thing, I think, to play teams you normally wouldn't encounter whenever possible. Since the vast majority of the events we can attend are in-state and therefore a bit insular, any chance to play outside the "family" is a chance worth taking. That's the downside of being about two hours south of Brindlee/Huntsville--a tourney in Tennessee, SC, or Kentucky that might be doable as a day trip becomes almost impossible, since leaving at 3AM isn't usually an option for us.

I am interested in the mirroring concept, and would like to look more closely at that. If I thought we could handle hosting another tourney in the Spring as well as our fall annual, I might do it, but we also host the state middle school championship, and that takes even more effort that the fall HS tourney, so if I did run a tourney in the spring, it would probably be a very limited number, true invitational with just enough spaces to break even. If we did hold a tourney like this, it would likely be in February or March. Would anyone be interested? It would have to be either an HSAPQ set or an NAQT set unless I could get a Feb-March quality event willing to let us mirror.