Vanderbilt ABC XL: 10/29 and 10/30/10

[rjaguar3]

Hello all,

This fall Vanderbilt will be hosting the fortieth iteration of the Academic Bowl Competition. We have not decided on the questions, but we are planning to house-write and/or mirror another house-written tournament. Questions are expected to be similar in difficulty and distribution to the ABC tournaments held the past two years (examples of which can be found here); in particular, for the third straight year, there will be no math computation toss-ups. As usual, there will be optional evening rounds on Friday, October 29, for seeding, with the main tournament taking place on Saturday, October 30.

Fees are as follows:

$70 for each team
-$5 for each functional buzzer set
-$15 for each competent staffer
$35 minimum fee

Schools sending more than one team are REQUIRED to provide a competent staffer.

To register, please send an e-mail including your school's name, the number of teams you are bringing, the number of buzzer sets you are bringing, the number of staffers you are bringing, and a contact phone number where we can reach you on the day of the tournament, to joshua.r.mastin@vanderbilt.edu

Finally, since this will be taking place around Halloween, feel free to display your finest Halloween costumes.

For questions, please contact Joshua Ryan Mastin at joshua.r.mastin@vanderbilt.edu .

Thanks, and we look forward to seeing you all there.

[Scott]

We will likely be attending this tournament with 1 or 2 teams. (Can't guarantee a commitment yet though.)
The week before this is Kentucky Marching Band Regionals, so we may be slightly shorthanded if our band makes it to state...
I will know how many teams and the like in a while.

[rjaguar3]

Registration is now open; please see the first post.

To clarify the source of the questions, we and VCU will together be writing packets. The distribution should resemble the following, but this is subject to change:

4/4 Literature: 1/1 each of American, British, European, and World
4/4 History: 1/1 each of American History and World History; 2/2 of European/Canadian/Australian
4/4 Science: 1/1 each of Biology, Chemistry, Physics; 1/0 or 0/1 Astronomy or Earth Science; 1/0 or 0/1 Math or Computer Science
3/3 RMP: 1/1 each of Religion, Mythology, and Philosophy
3/3 Fine Arts: 1/1 each of Painting, Classical Music, and Other
1/1 Social Science
1/1 Geography/Trash/Other

[mkanu]

Manual is definitely coming, Is there a field update?

[rjaguar3]

Field update!

VARSITY
Apollo 1
Daviess Co. 1
Dunbar 1 (Fri)
Dupont Manual 2
Ezell-Harding 1
Farragut 2 (Fri)
Franklin Road Academy 1 (No Fri)
Franklin-Simpson 1
Johnson Central 1
Lincoln Co. 1
Madisonville North Hopkins 2
McGavock 1
Paintsville 1
Piarist 2
University School of Nashville 1
Woodford Co. 3

SUM = 22

JV
Apollo 1
Dunbar 2 (Fri)
Dupont Manual 2
Ezell-Harding 3
Forrest School 1
Franklin-Simpson 1
Johnson Co. Middle School 1
Lincoln Co. 1
Owensboro 1
Woodford Co. 2

SUM = 15

[SoLegit12]

What is the status of the questions?

[Frater Taciturnus]

Cross posted form the VCU Fall thread:

I just want to make it abundantly clear right here and now that in no way will the questions be distributed until after the mirroring of this set is concluded.

Thank you.

[ermaxfield]

My school's coach should have registered for this tournament by now--we're kind of new at this, and I didn't see our school on the field update--and we were wondering in what building the tournament will be held.
Also, is it OK to bring the money with us when we register on Saturday morning?
Thanks!

[SHM]

As a coach who attended, I would like to thank ALL of the coaches and students (Vandy and otherwise) who participated in the JV part of this tournament. Running a tournament was obviously a more daunting task than some of those who had to jump into directing it at the last minute would ever have anticipated. Unbelievable sportsmanship, great attitudes, and willingness to jump in and do whatever was needed to support them ruled the day. When I got home, I realized that something had happened that was pretty neat-every single coach and parent there was working on the SAME team-we were all trying to do whatever we could to ensure a good experience for our players and it was nice to learn what terrific people we have supporting all of our students.

The Vanderbilt Teams have consistently strived to support our efforts to play good quiz bowl and to sponsor well run tournaments for decades. This tournament obviously provided an excellent learning experience for some of their members and I am confident that this outstanding group of young men and women will use it to develop a successful model for their next event.

[Rococo A Go Go]

Are there results and/or stats from this?

[Faiyad]

Are there results and/or stats from this?

Johnson Central beat duPont Manual in the final round by a tiebreaker tossup. I did not attend though.

[SoLegit12]

Are there results and/or stats from this?

Johnson Central beat duPont Manual in the final round by a tiebreaker tossup. I did not attend though.

Although there was an error in the answer line of a tossup that would have won the game for Manual. Can't be more specific

[AlphaQuizBowler]

Are there results and/or stats from this?

Johnson Central beat duPont Manual in the final round by a tiebreaker tossup. I did not attend though.

Although there was an error in the answer line of a tossup that would have won the game for Manual. Can't be more specific

I'm pretty sure erroneous answer lines can be protested. Or did you figure it out afterward?

[mkanu]

You can only imagine our frustration level when we found out on the way back. (Hint: It was over 9000)

[Kahloon]

In addition to that erroneous answer line which eventually cost Manual the final, the tournament was not run efficiently. The JV bracket was delayed for a long time and there was a lack of paper packets and scoresheets. Moderators had to wait for the packets to be copied or emailed to them in order to start, which caused a wait time of almost thirty minutes between rounds. Such was the organizational chaos that one moderator of ours had to take several calls in the middle of the game, and sometimes in the middle of a tossup. While I'm not trying to criticize him, since these were quite extenuating circumstances, I hope that Vanderbilt will be able to run a more efficient tournament in the future. There was also suspicion that some of the packets were created literally minutes before they were due to be played. There seemed to be an extreme amount of procrastination in the creation of these packets, as exemplified by the great number of repeats and the vague, awkward, and sometimes ungrammatical phrasing found in the questions.

[mkanu]

Also, the tiebreak system irked me (and not just because we lost as a result of it). The one tossup, winner-take-all system is a little, well...
Overall, all the Manual teams had fun and we hope next year's ABC will be better run.

[rjaguar3]

The results were the following (for Varsity):

1. Johnson Co.
2. Manual A
3/4. Manual B, Dunbar

As I said, the final did indeed come down to the tiebreaker. I am really sorry about the incorrect answer line that, in retrospect, cost one team the game. Unfortunately, this error was not brought to my attention, so there is nothing I can really do about it now. This, however, has been fixed for the mirrors.

I again would like to apologize for the logistical problems involved with this tournament (this is why I'm probably not going to post morning round results and why we don't have individual stats). We came up one room short in Wilson, so we had to move a Varsity Room to Furman, where JV was held; this caused confusion and delays, and this shouldn't have happened. As alluded to, we couldn't keep individual stats with such a large field of readers, and because we fell so far behind in the morning, we decided to abandon any unplayed morning rounds and proceed directly to the afternoon playoffs with part of the schedule unfinished. This seemed like the best way to handle a bad situation.

I also want to apologize for the question problems, which may have caused the logistical problems. Most of Ryan's and my work in the nights before the tournament was focused on assembling, compiling, and editing the questions. This was my fault due to my unrealistic expectations on what and how well the freshmen could write and my lack of direction to them. While I was mostly pleased with their writing, it also happened that many submissions (by our team members) were incomplete or otherwise unusable, so Ryan, I, and another team member (whose work was very helpful) had to step in to fill the gaps. In retrospect, we should have started our writing a lot earlier to allow for more room in case we had unusable submissions. This would have helped us make the rest of the tournament better-organized.

This week Ryan and I will be editing the set again. We will then send it to VCU for further edits.

Overall, I want to apologize to everyone who attended for the problems this tournament had. As a team hosting a tournament of such a large size (40 teams!) for the first time in two years and writing questions for the first time in three years, we have learned a lot from our mistakes in organizing and planning this tournament. This spring, we will be using a mirrored set (we will not be writing), so we should be able to make the tournament much better run; knowing all the logistical problems we had this fall, we will be more prepared to handle the tournament-day contingencies and prevent them from mucking up the tournament. I hope that you all are willing to let us show you how we can run a tournament well this spring with the humbling experience we have learned from this past Saturday.

Sincerely,

Greg

[jwoolley]

Who were the top 4 in JV?

[mkanu]

um.. I think Manual A (JV) lost to Dunbar A (JV) in the finals. IDK 3rd and 4th.

[jburnsOHS]

please set a spring date as soon as possible. We enjoy going when we can, but need as much notice as we can get.

[Scott]

We will be there if there is a spring tournament.

March 19 would be nice.
I understand if that won't work though.

[mkanu]

Will there be playoff stats?

[rjaguar3]

I can look up the scores from the scoresheets.