National Quizbowl Awards 2013: Congrats to the Recipients!

[Great Bustard]

NHBB is happy to sponsor the second edition of the National Quizbowl Awards for the 2012-2013 season. We once again will provide $1500 in prize money and plaques to recognize the nation's top students and coaches at the middle and high school level. Beyond that, though, I would like to open up a discussion for how people think this should be structured. Some things to consider are what awards are offered, how the nomination/voting process works, where the awards are handed out, how the prize money is divided, etc. Some people had spirited opinions on these matters last year, so rather than announce how it will work in year 2 right off the bat (though we'll make the final decision on how it's structured), I figure it makes more sense to open this up for discussion. So, forthwith, discuss.

Edit 6/16 - Winners Posted!

Congratulations to the 2013 National Quizbowl Award Winners! Thanks again to everyone who voted and to everyone at NASAT for being flexible regarding my travel plans and the pursuant need to move up the award ceremony. National A Team members are listed in order in terms of total number of voting points.

National Middle School Player of the Year: Pranav Sivakumar, Barrington Station, IL
National 9th Grade Player of the Year: Ethan Russo, LASA, TX
National 10th Grade Player of the Year: Sam Blizzard, Northmont, OH
National High School Player of the Year: Max Schindler, Ladue Horton Watkins, MO
National High School A Team (includes National Player of the Year):
1. Max Schindler, Ladue Horton Watkins, MO
2. Sameer Rai, Bellarmine, CA
3. Morgan Venkus, Loyola Academy, IL
4. Carlo De Guzman, St. John’s, TX

National Middle School Coach of the Year: Jeff Price, Barrington Station, IL
National High School Coach of the Year: Jason Flowers, LASA, TX

Edit 6/16 - Nominees Posted!

Congratulations to this year's nominees for the National Quizbowl Awards! The nominating committee consisted of Matt Jackson, Matt Weiner, Jeff Hoppes, and myself. The vote totals of the nominating committee will remain confidential, so as not to exert undue influence on the actual vote. All nominees for the specific awards are listed below in alphabetical order - do not read anything into the order in which they are listed here. If you are interested in voting, please note the voting procedure:

Voting Procedure
Voting will only be open to those who have experience with quizbowl on a national level. High and middle school players may not vote. Coaches may vote, including for students on their team, though coaches who are nominated will not have their votes counted for Coach of the Year in the level at which they coach. Those who wish to vote must do so by (edit) 9:00 am EDT on this coming Thursday (June 13), either by sending me a private message here or emailing me at [email protected]. Everyone who votes will select only 1 player/coach for each category, except National High School Player of the Year - for that, select 4, and label them in order. They will be ranked 7-5-3-1 with the top overall vote getter being the National High School Player of the Year, and the next 3 highest scorers being on the National A team.
If you are voting, you may leave a category with which you are unfamiliar blank (edit - or vote for only 1-4 people in a given category) That is indeed preferable than casting an uninformed ballot. Voters are encouraged to review performances of those who are on the ballot - more weight of course should be given to recent National Championship performances than other results. Also, the nominating committee reserves the right to disallow ballots if we have reason to suspect that you are unfamiliar with the high school/middle school quizbowl community. We may also contact you to clarify this, if there is reason to suspect your awareness of quizbowl at a national level. Note that this does not mean that only people who organize on a national basis can vote, but rather that we want informed voters for a fair vote.

Also, in the interest of time, I am not going to be able to go through and post individual statlines, but I strongly encourage all voters to look up stat reports when considering their votes, especially here: http://www.naqt.com/stats/player-search.jsp and here http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/

Top 9th grade player
1. Tajin Rogers, St. Anselm's (DC)
2. Ethan Russo, LASA (TX)
3. Corin Wagen, LASA (TX)

Top 10th grade player
1. Sam Blizzard, Northmont (OH)
2. Joe Levano, Kellenberg (NY)
3. Eric Xu, Western Albemarle (VA)

National High School Player of the Year
1. Sam Blizzard, Northmont (OH)
2. Carlo De Guzman, St. John's (TX)
3. Thomas Gaddy, Montgomery Blair (MD)
4. Sameer Rai, Bellarmine (CA)
5. Jacob Reed, East Chapel Hill (NC)
6. Max Schindler, Ladue (MO)
7. Morgan Venkus, Loyola (IL)
8. Nathan Weiser, LASA (TX)

National Middle School Player of the Year (there was a tie for the final spot)
1. Bryant Cong, Challenger-Berryessa (CA)
2. Patrick Doyle, St. Raymond (IL)
3. Ujwal Punyamurtula, Kealing (TX)
4. Pranav Sivakumar, Barrington Station (IL)

National High School Coach of the Year (there was a four way tie for the second place slot)
1. Matt Duckworth, New Kent (VA)
2. Jason Flowers, LASA (TX)
3. David Jones, Northmont (OH)
4. Matt Laird, Loyola (IL)
5. Gregory Schweers, Cistercian (TX)

National Middle School Coach of the Year
1. Patty Hill, Kealing (TX)
2. Jeff Price, Barrington Station (IL)
3. Ken Romeo, Middlesex (CT)

[Adventure Temple Trail]

I think these awards are a good idea, but need to be better-executed.

Standards, in terms of who can be on the committee and who is qualified to vote (public posts were saying high schoolers couldn't vote but I heard some word at NSC that they could), should be set further in advance and adhered to. It would be good to get a full committee of ten or so people established earlier in the year - by April or so. (Full disclosure: I was on the committee for this past year.)

Logistically, my primary suggestion would be to automate the tallying of ballots as much as possible. It really is not good for a person to be toiling away adding numbers back and forth from computer screens and paper during NSC when there's more important stuff going on, and even if a person who's not required staff is around to do so, why not save them the effort? It would probably require all votes to be submitted by computer to make automated tallying work, but it seems highly possible, using an interface like Google forms and someone who knows how to do Excel macro-level tech stuff, to create a digital ballot which stores point totals for each person for a given award and adds to them when each new ballot comes in.

If there are paper ballots, a box containing blank paper ballots should be prominently displayed in one location during the day, preferably just outside the opening meeting, the submission box should be just as prominent next to it, and neither should move an inch. I don't know at what point it became okay to just hand a ballot to you (Dave Madden) upon seeing you walk by, but I was told this at one point and it seems like it'd be easier to just keep the submission process wholly consistent from start to finish. It's probably best to choose only-paper or only-computer for the purposes of collecting everything in one location and counting it from there.

I also think the deadline for ballot submissions should not keep sliding forwards, but should be determined in advance and maintained. I know at least that last year the deadline of "evening of NSC Saturday" was extended into Sunday to allow for the inclusion of more NSC results in people's voting, a motivation which makes sense, but in order for tallying to start in a timely and efficient manner the tallier(s)/tallying systems need to know when to stop accepting more ballots. I think that a drop-dead submission point of 11:59 PM after NSC Saturday rounds is a pretty fair compromise to strike here, since we know now that we want to include Saturday NSC results.

Charlie and I both have concerns that the Best Subject Player awards, while well-intentioned, have a real crippling flaw: while it's possible to look at empirical statistics for overall performance, there aren't ways yet to break down a person's buzzes by subject. As such, attempting to determine the best player in subject areas incorporates a much larger amount of hearsay, bias, and limited information, particularly when specialists from faraway regions don't play each other often. For one example, I heard from James Bradbury on NSC Sunday (after votes were in) that he and Nikhil Desai, both science specialists, attended Stanford's quizbowl practice during admitted-students weekend, and James did not get a single science tossup against Nikhil during the duration of the practice. That would seem to imply, if the committee could have known about it, that Nikhil was at that point a stronger science player than James; as it turned out, Nikhil wasn't nominated for the award at all while James was. It's worth considering whether it's possible to administer the subject-specific awards fairly at all without resorting to "I hear he/she is good at quizbowl" as the sole justification, and if so it's worth talking at greater length about how to do so.

I stand by the entirety of this.

[Great Bustard]

The National History Bee and Bowl is pleased to announce the 2013 National Quizbowl Awards. These will be presented at an awards banquet following the conclusion of the 2013 NASAT on Sunday, June 16.

Nominating Procedure
I have asked 3 people who know quizbowl on a national basis extremely well to submit nominations for the following awards:
1. Top 9th grade player
2. Top 10th grade player
3. National Middle School Player of the Year
4. National High School Coach of the Year
5. National Middle School Coach of the Year
6. National High School Player of the Year

There will not be subject area awards this year. Each nominating committee member will rank 3 players in order for each of these categories except high school player of the year - for that category, five names will be submitted. Rankings will be done on a (9-7) 5-3-1 basis based in order of their ranks from each nominator. I will then tally the votes and the top 3 players/coaches for each position will be listed as names on the official voting ballot. The exception to this is the High School Player of the Year, which will have its top 8 players (or if fewer than 8 names are listed by the nominators, then however many are in fact listed) listed. The nominees, but not the vote totals from the nominating committee will be announced by 11:59pm EDT on this coming monday. Nominators will submit their ballots after NSC concludes.

Voting Procedure
Voting will only be open to those who have experience with quizbowl on a national level. High and middle school players may not vote. Coaches may vote, including for students on their team, though coaches who are nominated will not have their votes counted for Coach of the Year in the level at which they coach. Those who wish to vote must do so by 11:59pm EDT on this coming Wednesday, either by sending me a private message here or emailing me at [email protected]. Everyone who votes will select only 1 player/coach for each category, except National High School Player of the Year - for that, select 4, and label them in order. They will be ranked 7-5-3-1 with the top overall vote getter being the National High School Player of the Year, and the next 3 highest scorers being on the National A team.
If you are voting, you may leave a category with which you are unfamiliar blank. That is indeed preferable than casting an uninformed ballot. Voters are encouraged to review performances of those who are on the ballot - more weight of course should be given to recent National Championship performances than other results. Also, the nominating committee reserves the right to disallow ballots if we have reason to suspect that you are unfamiliar with the high school/middle school quizbowl community. We may also contact you to clarify this, if there is reason to suspect your awareness of quizbowl at a national level. Note that this does not mean that only people who organize on a national basis can vote, but rather that we want informed voters for a fair vote.

Awards & Banquet
Each award winner will receive a plaque at the banquet. Each student award winner will also receive $100, with the National High School Player of the Year receiving $200. $500 will be allocated to subsidizing the food at the awards banquet (don't expect gourmet fare, but we'll do what we can) while the other $200 of the $1500 I had set aside for this will pay for my expenses to come to NASAT (as I am not staffing/coaching for it) to present the awards.

I think this method of doing things should address the things that needed fixing from last year. If people have questions/if something needs clarifying, let me know.

[Mewto55555]

Could there maybe be a small blurb released about each nominated person (just a few lines of notable tournament performances/statlines, or for coaches information on what sort of role they take in running the team, or whatever) written by the committee or someone else involved in this process? That would probably help people who are less-than-fully-aware-but-still-somewhat-aware of national goings-on cast more informed ballots?

[Great Bustard]

Could there maybe be a small blurb released about each nominated person (just a few lines of notable tournament performances/statlines, or for coaches information on what sort of role they take in running the team, or whatever) written by the committee or someone else involved in this process? That would probably help people who are less-than-fully-aware-but-still-somewhat-aware of national goings-on cast more informed ballots?

Yes, we can do this, though I'm wary of selecting information that will then influence people's voting unduly. But I can certainly recommend where people should look for performance results overall. Also, the nominating committee is Matt Weiner, Matt Jackson, Jeff Hoppes, and me, for those who are interested.

[Great Bustard]

Quick update here - I am still awaiting the nomination ballots from 2 of the 3 people I had asked; as soon as I hear back from either (or both, if they both get back to me by 2pm EDT) I will post the nominees.

[Great Bustard]

Nominees are posted - I will accept ballots received until 9am EDT on this Thursday morning (June 13), at which point I need to contact the trophy shop. Congratulations to all nominees, and thank you to the nominating committee!

[High Dependency Unit]

Just curious, what did you base the coach nominations on?

[Great Bustard]

Just curious, what did you base the coach nominations on?

I can't speak for the others, but as for my own votes, it was a combination of success in competition, commitment to developing a team, and taking a role in the community to encourage opportunities for their own students and other students to compete and improve their game. 10 people have voted so far - thanks to them for doing so, and I look forward to receiving many more ballots over the next 38 hours.

[Great Bustard]

A final reminder to vote for the National Quizbowl Awards if you haven't yet done so. 23 people have sent their ballots in so far.

[Great Bustard]

Voting is now closed - thanks to the 36 people who sent in their ballots. Winners will be announced at the NASAT awards banquet this coming Sunday, and of course, will be posted here directly afterwards.

[Great Bustard]

Winners are now posted in the first post in this thread.

[romeokar]

Congratulations to all of this year's winners. In particular, congratulations to Coach Price of Barrington Station; his team played with great skill, class, and integrity. My thanks to all of those involved in the nomination process. It was truly an honor to be recognized by my colleagues in the quiz bowl community.