CLARIFICATION: As this may have brought confusion in another thread, in Ontario at least, people refer to Quizbowl as the 20/20 tossup bonus format that NAQT, HSAPQ, ACF, or independent housewrites provide.
style trivia, whether run by Reach or not, is always refereed to "Reach style". I never refer to "Reach" as "bad quizbowl", even though Reach is bad, it is just referred to as "Reach". Quizbowl in this post is strictly referring to good quizbowl.
The Canadian Championship would be a great idea, but would probably have to start in Ontario and then expand outwards. I can't speak for Non-Ontario teams, though.
bt_green_warbler wrote:The only feasible way to make the set happen, in my view, would be to use a version of an already-existing set (either the last IS-set of the year, or DII SCT, or SSNCT) and then swap out questions for additional Canadian content.
This is what we would do; I didn't mean to imply that we would either write a brand-new set or send a large number of NAQT staff to Canada (think instead 1-2 NAQT staff plus ONQBA).
This is what Ben Smith has done for his NAQT tournaments over the years, in which he replaces 1/1 per packet with Canadian content. Unfortunately, for the handful of tournaments I've done, I only had time to modify, with permission, one of the sets.
In the Ottawa, region, we had 3 tournaments on recognized sets in 10/11, 4 in 11/12, 4 in 12/13, and 4 so far this year with either an IS-A or LIST IV mirror slated for April but generally are not well received except by the established teams because the questions are too long and there's not enough trash. Attendance has dipped from 10-12 to 7-9 teams. If what it takes to get more people interested is to run all of a year's novice and IS-A packets in as many places as possible, that's what it may ultimately lead to.
I think the biggest problem we have is a lack of overall effort and time form the collegiate players in general to help get the high schools interested. A lot of successful Reach players become successful in the university circuit (Not only Will Nediger). We have enough people in the province to fully staff a well run 30+ team tournament, whether this consists of current collegiate players or people who have been removed from the circuit, but not enough of those active and willing to run a high school event once every two months or so.
bt_green_warbler wrote: 2) Bigger problem: we would need outreach and qualifying tournaments outside of Ontario. Right now, a large number of the Canadian teams interested in pyramidal quizbowl are already attending the NAQT Ontario championship. Getting enough teams from other provinces to fly to a central site (almost certainly Ottawa?) would be a big challenge.
I don't think this is a big problem (yet). There are more teams with Reach teams in Ontario than other provinces combined. Having 10-12 team provincial quizbowl tournaments would be great, but getting Ontario to be as well established as second tier US states I think would be an important first step, and then the other provinces will notice and come.
When I staffed Reach Provincials last year I thought that it would be extremely beneficial if one or more people who aren't just actively involved quizbowl players, but actual executives of NAQT, PACE, or HSAPQ to be there and not only aggressively recruit teams, but also to form an unbiased opinion of the format and be able to criticize them without being a former player. It's one thing to hear Patrick Liao and myself talk to teams, but it's another if the president of NAQT was there to talk about their game. There will be 40 teams there, of which 10 or so will have some quizbowl experience, but a big enough of a market to tap into. There's enough time between games to read about 15/15 worth of a regular high school packet. On the Saturday of Reach Provincials, which will be May 10th this year, all teams will have checked in as of 2pm and done with their exhibition games by 5, which leaves 5 hours or so to try and convince teams to play a mini-quizbowl tournament "under the hood" because all teams are already there, and they'll be missing a gala dinner in which two of the the hours is spent on playing a true/false trivia game anyways. Although this would be a prime time and location to try and get new teams to test out quizbowl, it would be extremely hard to accomplish this without the Reach staff figuring out, but the advantage is that about 30 or so teams who have never played quizbowl before would be available to advertise to.
I also feel it's hard for myself to talk to the Reach staff without feeling like a victim of their actions, and an outsider would have a better chance at convincing them that good quizbowl is the way to go.
TL;DR I think a non-former reach member of NAQT, PACE, or HSAPQ should come to Reach for The top Ontario Provincials and/or Nationals and help us recruit teams to play quizbowl. I think if we were to have a NAQT championship, run by NAQT in Ontario, we would have sufficient staff willing to make minimal financial sacrifices to staff the event and help Canadian-ify the set. If dealing with the whole country is hard at first, I think there's no problem to just get Ontario under control.