Region 15 SCT: Caltech 2/5/11

[alanlin]

Caltech is hosting Sectionals for Region 15 (Nevada, California, Hawaii, Australia, and the territory of Guam).

DATE: Saturday, February 5th, 2011

LOCATION: Baxter Hall

PARKING: FREE in the Michigan Lot of Caltech

SCHEDULE:
7:30 A.M. – 8:30 A.M.: Registration Period (All teams must be accounted for by 8:30 A.M. PST)
8:30 A.M. – 9:00 A.M.: Rules Meeting / Moderator Meeting
9:00 A.M.: Tournament Play

FOOD:
Breakfast: We will feed you.

Lunch: Lunch is available at Lake Avenue.

FORMAT:
We will be playing timed twenty minute rounds on NAQT SCT packets.

ELIGIBILITY:
The tournament will probably be divided, as in the past, into two divisions with Division II designed for newer players.
Please check the NAQT site regarding Division II eligibility rules: http://www.naqt.com/college/division-ii.html

PRICING STRUCTURE:
Team Discounts
Base fee = $120 for the first team from a school, $100 for every subsequent team
-$30 for a moderator or staff member
-$10 for a fully-functional buzzer system (Must have four working buzzers on both sides)
-$5 for a functional clock
Minimum fee = $50

School-wide Discounts (applied to each team)
-$20 New School Discount (Minimum fee = $30)

If you have difficulties paying for the tournament, please contact me. Also, please make all checks payable to “Caltech Quiz Bowl”.

REGISTRATION:
The TD for NAQT SCT 2011 is Alan Lin ([email protected]).
If you are planning to come, please e-mail me with:
1) Your school's name
3) The number of teams you are bringing (and what division they will be competing in)
4) The number of buzzer systems and any other discounts you wish to validate
Registration will close one week before the tournament.

If you have any questions, please e-mail us or visit the NAQT SCT site at: http://www.naqt.com/.

[Sun Devil Student]

Just a heads-up, you might be getting up to 3 Division II teams from ASU if the planned Region 13 SCT at Univ. of Arizona falls through. We don't know if this will happen (hopefully not) but if it does, the three ASU teams are going to be dumped on you at the last minute with potentially less than 48 hours' notice, so if you could have extra rooms/buzzers/staffers prepared that would be much appreciated.

I appreciate your hosting of so many ASU teams in the last two years and wish I could offer you more than a reciprocal invitation to ACF Regionals at ASU in return. When Region 13 finally becomes a self-sustaining quizbowl circuit, we wil all owe you a great deal of thanks for having kept Region 13 alive (through ASU) long enough for that to happen.

Also: Pending NAQT permission, I will be bringing a Division I team (so that Region 13 can be a D2-only SCT), so there will be no need to scramble for a fourth D1 team this year as I have seen in the past two years.

[Golran]

Registering 2 div II and 1 div I team as soon as I can figure out my username and password to NAQT's site (who do I contact if I can't?)

[MattyJ]

UCI will be there with a Div I and a Div II

[Important Bird Area]

Registering 2 div II and 1 div I team as soon as I can figure out my username and password to NAQT's site (who do I contact if I can't?)

Write to Chad Kubicek (chad [at] naqt [dot] com).

[MattyJ]

Are you going to need moderators? We have 2 members (Ray and Marcus) who are ineligible to play but would still like to come.

[Important Bird Area]

Are you going to need moderators? We have 2 members (Ray and Marcus) who are ineligible to play but would still like to come.

I can't speak for Caltech, but in general it is always a good idea to bring experienced moderators.

[Sun Devil Student]

Good news for your Div. 1 teams, I've been officially allowed to join your field, so you have your fourth Div. 1 team from ASU. At the moment, it looks like there will be a Div. 2 SCT at Tucson after all, so ASU's Div. 2 teams will be staying home to help build that circuit. Thanks for hosting, see you in a few weeks!

[Auroni]

I don't think Chris has signed us up yet, but we'll have 1 D1 team for sure and 0-2 D2 teams (probably just 1)

[Important Bird Area]

I don't think Chris has signed us up yet, but we'll have 1 D1 team for sure and 0-2 D2 teams (probably just 1)

Chris signed up the DI team a few days ago. I look forward to seeing the DII team's registration, since it will prevent combined field scenarios. (key to all SCT field updates)

[Golran]

Just fyi, we did it on NAQT's site, but we're down to 1 DII. I'll also bring my computer that has a large clock as an app. Can that count as a clock discount?

[Golran]

Quick results:
Div I:
UCSD: 10-2
UCLA: 9-3
UCI: 8-4

Div II:
Stanford 10-1

Individuals:
Div I:
Dwight, UCI
Mik, UCLA
Stephen, Chapman

Div II:
Sam, Berkeley
Jerry, UCLA B
Alejandro, Claremont A

[cchiego]

Heck of a tournament overall. Between Irvine, LA, and SD, the University of California (Southern Branch) has some of the most intense quizbowl tournament to tournament that I've ever seen. Fortunately, this includes a great group of gifted players that are always fun to see and play against. And props to Chapman for seeing that they're trying to get a team going and ASU and Stanford for driving all the way out for some intense competition.

There were some short-staffing issues and we never got past 22 TUs in a regular match, but it was a good time and the Caltech folks got better as they warmed up. Considering how few available hosts there are in the region, it's nice that people were willing to step up.

Also, I believe Auroni was probably in the top individuals for DI, but they didn't give him a book award because he already got one as part of the team. That may also be the case with someone from Stanford for DII. We'll see for sure when we the stats get put up.

[Auroni]

Combined stats for both fields can be found here

[uclajerry]

I really hope our loss against a team that had a 3.64 ppb in the round while ours was 18.00 is some sort of record.

[Sun Devil Student]

Not to be picky about it, but we're Arizona State (as in Sun Devils), not Arizona (as in Wildcats). If you can correct the mix-up so people don't think it was our great rivals who came to this instead of us, that would be much appreciated.

Otherwise, can't really complain about the tournament. Rounds went slowly and it's distinctly possible that un-understandable moderating cost us the last match against Stanford and nearly did against Chapman, but I know some moderators vanished the day of the tournament so we were lucky to have enough moderators at all. We were very fortunate that the room we got stuck in for all 10 of our preliminary rounds was the one moderated by Faith Manary of Caltech, whose moderating I will praise publicly.

I got an impression that a lot of the bonuses had no discernible easy part, and I seem to be distinctly cursed in NAQT tournaments such that any time a game is close, the bonuses both teams know go to my opponent and the bonuses neither team knows go to my team, but given that we were heavy underdogs to begin with I can't say the final standings were unfair, even if Lady Luck was. I suppose the means might justify the ends when it comes to making sure the best team wins no matter how fluky or inconsistent the questions. UC-Irvine and Stanford should thank the quizbowl gods for keeping their prestige intact.

In any case I look forward to (hopefully) seeing some of you at ACF Regionals, which will hopefully be a more tightly controlled and well-written question set.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Is Chapman really an undergraduate team?

[Golran]

They shouldn't be, as they have Steve Katz, who I'm pretty sure is in Law school