2020 Great Lakes SCT at Michigan (8 February 2020)

[CPiGuy]

The University of Michigan quizbowl team is pleased to announce that we will be hosting the NAQT Great Lakes Sectional Championship Tournament on Saturday, February 8, 2019. As is usual for Michigan tournaments, it will take place in Mason Hall and begin at 9:00 AM, with registration beginning at 8:15 AM. The tournament will be directed by club tournament director David Geering.

Question Set and Eligibility

This tournament will have two divisions, which will be played on their corresponding SCT sets. These will use rounds of 22 tossups and 22 bonuses, and will be untimed.

Eligibility rules can be found at NAQT's website. In short, players are eligible for Division 2 as long as they have not either played ICT or played on a team that qualified for ICT. All players on a team must be Division 2 eligible in order for the team to play in Division 2.

Format and Rules

The tournament will use NAQT's rules. It will likely be run using one of NAQT's approved SCT formats. More details on the format will be explained once the field is finalized.

Fees and Payment

+145: the first team (in either division)
+120: each team after the first (in either division)
-10: per buzzer system.
-20: new program discount* per team.
-40: per staffer. If you are planning on bringing staffers, please email me with the staffers' contact information so I can include them on staffing emails.

*A program is considered new if no team from its school competed in an SCT, CC SCT, ICT, or CCCT in either of the two previous full competition years.

Registration

Register at NAQT's website.

Registration closes 1 week before the tournament.

You can pay by cash or by check made out to "Michigan Academic Competitions". If you require an invoice in order to pay on the day of the tournament, let us know as soon as possible and we will do our best to facilitate it. We expect payment the day of the tournament; if that is not possible please let us know as soon as possible.

Current Field

Division 1
Michigan State A
Notre Dame A

Division 2
Case Western A
Case Western B
Kenyon A
Kenyon B
Miami A
Miami B
Michigan A
Michigan B
Michigan State B
Michigan State C
Notre Dame B
Ohio State
Pittsburgh A
Pittsburgh B
Wayne State

[CPiGuy]

Registration for this tournament is now open!

[CPiGuy]

As a reminder, registration for this tournament closes Saturday.

Barring a sudden influx of D1 teams, we'll likely be running a combined field. I'll explain the procedures for that in the logistics email, which will go out on Sunday, once the field is finalized.

[CPiGuy]

We'll be having an open practice on Friday night from 8-10pm in Mason Hall. Everyone is welcome and invited. I'll post the exact room we end up in shortly before the practice starts, but if you go to the third floor and peer into door windows until you see the nerds with the buzzer set you should find us.

[CPiGuy]

We'll be having an open practice on Friday night from 8-10pm in Mason Hall. Everyone is welcome and invited. I'll post the exact room we end up in shortly before the practice starts, but if you go to the third floor and peer into door windows until you see the nerds with the buzzer set you should find us.

This is happening in 3463 Mason Hall.

[CPiGuy]

Ohio State didn't show up to this tournament.

Nobody told me this, despite *several* phone calls to *multiple* numbers, until my text message was answered at 10:15.

This nontrivially delayed the start of the tournament and forced us to make changes to the schedule on the fly. Some teams are now only going to play 9 games on the buzzer in 12 rounds. Had I been made aware of this before the tournament started, we could have guaranteed all teams 11 games in 11 rounds, which would have been vastly preferable for obvious reasons.

Apparently the reason for this was that the driver was sick; seeing as Ohio State is three hours away, they presumably knew this by, like, 6am at the very latest.

Please, please, please tell the tournament director when you cannot attend a tournament.

[CPiGuy]

This tournament took place.

MSU A won DI outright, and Pitt A beat Michigan A in a one-game final to win DII.

Thanks to all the teams who came out, especially for their patience as we dealt with the no-show this morning and its knock-on effects on the schedule.

Stats will be forthcoming shortly.

[DumbJaques]

Ohio State didn't show up to this tournament.

Nobody told me this, despite *several* phone calls to *multiple* numbers, until my text message was answered at 10:15.

This nontrivially delayed the start of the tournament and forced us to make changes to the schedule on the fly. Some teams are now only going to play 9 games on the buzzer in 12 rounds. Had I been made aware of this before the tournament started, we could have guaranteed all teams 11 games in 11 rounds, which would have been vastly preferable for obvious reasons.

Apparently the reason for this was that the driver was sick; seeing as Ohio State is three hours away, they presumably knew this by, like, 6am at the very latest.

Please, please, please tell the tournament director when you cannot attend a tournament.

I do sincerely apologize to everyone impacted by this - it's quite unfortunate. This appears to have been the result of a series of factors - our A team going to a different site, the person coordinating the Michigan travel getting sick at the last second, and then the driver of the car getting sick (I think?) the morning of the tournament. I don't know exactly when it was decided that they were peeling off, but certainly, someone needed to have been contacted. (For the record, I did return your text right away at 9:00 - though of course, I had no knowledge of this situation, being two states away).

Obviously, this was the result of a group of inexperienced players not communicating either with Michigan or with any of the OSU club officers. Since you're aware this was the OSU DII team, I'm not sure what all is gained by putting these people on blast (but then, when do you ever bother to ask that question?). I suppose it feels worth it to you, though.

[Also, maybe I'm not understanding things correctly, but I'm not sure why a team no-showing to a 16-team tournament (with two house teams) should mean that some teams will play 9 games in 12 rounds?]

[CPiGuy]

I do sincerely apologize to everyone impacted by this - it's quite unfortunate. This appears to have been the result of a series of factors - our A team going to a different site, the person coordinating the Michigan travel getting sick at the last second, and then the driver of the car getting sick (I think?) the morning of the tournament. I don't know exactly when it was decided that they were peeling off, but certainly, someone needed to have been contacted. (For the record, I did return your text right away at 9:00 - though of course, I had no knowledge of this situation, being two states away).

You don't owe anyone an apology, Chris, and I'm sorry if you felt like I was blaming you -- that certainly wasn't my intention, and I appreciate your quick reply and the help you were able to give. Nor do your teammates owe an apology for the fact that they couldn't attend the tournament -- unfortunate circumstances happen, and I have no doubt that they wanted to play and were disappointed about not being able to.

Obviously, this was the result of a group of inexperienced players not communicating either with Michigan or with any of the OSU club officers. Since you're aware this was the OSU DII team, I'm not sure what all is gained by putting these people on blast (but then, when do you ever bother to ask that question?). I suppose it feels worth it to you, though.

I did this for a few reasons:

1) There seems to be a general and accepted trend of putting even very inexperienced teams on blast for leaving a tournament early. Given that we couldn't change the schedule before starting the tournament -- since that would really suck if it turned out they just overslept a bit or there was an unexpected traffic issue and they were only an hour late, and maybe the contact person was driving -- I thought this was at least as disruptive as leaving early (since it's, like, leaving the tournament after zero rounds, I guess?)

2) I think one of the reasons 1) is generally accepted is because people think it's important to establish norms publicly, because it will make it easier for teams to know them. I thought that mentioning this would maybe prevent it from happening to some other TD at some other tournament.

3) I really don't think you have to be inexperienced to understand that not telling anyone you're showing up to a tournament is bad. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but it seems like a reasonable expectation of any sort of scheduled activity. I would have the same expectation of, like, a DnD group or a department poster session.

4) I was aware this was the OSU DII team, yes, but I was also aware that at least one player on the roster (I won't name names) is an upperclassman who is pretty active in playing tournaments and has been for a few years, so I was pretty confident that this wasn't a case of "three people have never been to a tournament before and don't know how they work".

I certainly don't think anyone involved acted in any sort of bad faith or malice or anything of the sort, and sincerely hope I didn't come across as alleging that. I think it's appropriate to post "this happened, this was bad, here is an explanation of why it was bad, here is a request for teams in general to not do the thing that made it bad".

Again, I'm really sorry if people were hurt or offended by this post. I thought it was reasonable, justified, and would have something between zero and positive effect. I didn't fire it off in a fit of rage (as you can see, the timestamp is something like two hours after this all happened) or for the glee of knowing I've publicly shamed three random quizbowlers; I am, like most people, not a cartoon caricature of an impetuous man-child -- although some of my more regrettable posts might give one a justified impression that I am, so I don't blame you for jumping to that conclusion; it's not unfounded, and I wanted to take the time to write a response explaining myself precisely because I have such a reputation.

[Also, maybe I'm not understanding things correctly, but I'm not sure why a team no-showing to a 16-team tournament (with two house teams) should mean that some teams will play 9 games in 12 rounds?]

So, I think NAQT struck OSU from the registration when I told them about this, so the field size listed on their website is not inclusive of OSU. It was actually a 17-team tournament, for which we were using a 5/6/6 --> 9/8 bracketing (which I felt was strongly preferable to starting out 9/8 and having one prelim bracket last two more games than the other one, and which NAQT approved). This format left some bottom bracket teams playing 10 games in 12 rounds, which was mildly annoying but, again, better than the alternative 17-team formats (which also involved multiple byes for some subset of teams).

Solutions like "change the format to a convenient 16-team tournament schedule" and "split our house team into two" were confounded by the fact that -- as mentioned above -- because we didn't know whether OSU would show up, we weren't willing to just cut them out of the tournament right away. We probably could have done a better job for everyone else if we'd been more aggressive but I think it was the right call to wait. If it had reduced teams to 8 games played, I probably would have made a different call, fwiw.

In the interest of contributing to general discussion, I think this is a pretty good potential lesson for a lot of more established teams (which OSU certainly is) -- if you're going to have some subset of your less-experienced players going to a tournament alone, make sure they know what to do if something goes wrong. It's not something that would necessarily occur to do right away but it could save people a lot of hassle. I, for one, might not have thought to do so if some of our new players were to go to a tournament (something which is pretty likely to happen with SUN this year, actually), but will definitely do so now that it has happened.

[CPiGuy]

Stats will be forthcoming shortly.

Staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaats.

And on NAQT's website, should you prefer that format.