The Quizbowl Resource Center

Congratulations to the Ladue Horton Watkins HS A team for being ranked number 1 in the 2012-13 HSQB Mid-Season Poll! Ladue's A team recieved 10 of the 16 first place votes. Dorman A (SC - 2 first place votes), LASA A (TX - 1 first place votes), Bellarmine A (CA - 2 first place votes), and St. John's A (TX - 0 first place votes) rounded out the top 5. Cistercian (TX) received the remaining first place vote. LASA B was the only B team to be voted into the Top 25. Three top 10 teams: Bellarmine (2 ballots), Loyola (2 ballot) and Cistercian (1 ballot) were left of a ballot. Ballots were submitted by: Myself, Jacob Reed, Morgan Venkus, Rohan Nag, Max Schindler/Siddhant, Richard Yu, Scott Blish, Sameen Bal, Ian Drayer's Computers, Sam Deutsch, Collin Parks, Thomas Gaddy, Nicholas Wawrykow, Nathan Weiser, Vimal Konduri, and Adam Kalinch.

HSQB Mid-Season Top 25
1. Ladue A (MO) - 391 pts.
2. Dorman A (SC) - 370 pts.
3. LASA A (TX) - 347 pts.
4. Bellarmine A (CA) - 333 pts.
5. St. John's A (TX) - 326 pts.
6. DCC A (MI) - 305 pts.
7. Cistercian A (TX) - 285 pts.
8. Loyola A (IL) - 256 pts.
9. IMSA A (IL) - 248 pts.
10. Blair A (MD) - 240 pts.
11. LASA B (TX) - 210 pts.
12. Thomas Jefferson A (VA) - 195 pts.
13. Belvidere North A (IL) - 193 pts.
14. Richard Montgomery A (MD) - 192 pts.
15. Hunter A (NY) - 185 pts.
16. East Chapel Hill A (NC) - 152 pts.
17. Maggie Walker A (VA) - 148 pts.
18. Macomb A (IL) - 117 pts.
19. Northmont A (OH) - 98 pts.
20. Arcadia A (CA) - 86 pts.
21. DCD A (MI) - 84 pts.
22. Early College at Guilford A (NC) - 66 pts.
23. Wilmington Charter A (DE) - 50 pts.
24. Chattahoochee A (GA) - 43 pts.
25. Wayzata A (MN) - 34 pts.

Ballots can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... xNnc#gid=0

Given the relative success of this year's Pre-Season HSQB Top 25 poll, I have decided to run a Mid-Season poll as well. The rules are all the same and can be found below. There will not be a podcast.

What? – This poll is meant to rank, in order, the top 25 HS teams in the country before the season starts. It is peer-driven.

How? – If you’d like to participate then send me your ballot at waddle2357[AT]gmail[DOT]com. Please format your ballot in such a way that I can easily tell who you think the number one team is, the number two is, the number three team is etc. If you don’t I will get angry at you and demand a new ballot.

Who? – YOU!

When? – You have two weeks plus a little to cull together a top 25 ballot. This means that voting closes on January 14th. Ready! Set! GO!

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I edit my ballot once it is submitted? –Yes, yes you may, as long as it is before the deadline. If it is a minor change then just email a short explanation of what you want changed. If it is a major change then just submit an entirely new ballot with a little note reminding me to delete your old one.

Can my ballot be rejected? – Yes, yes it can. If you submit a highly questionable or incomplete ballot, then I reserve the right to reject it. Fear not though, I will ask for clarification before doing so, and, if you can provide a reasonably intelligent rationale for your rankings or complete your ballot, then I will feel compelled to accept it!

If you have any other questions, then feel free to email me with them (provided that they aren’t about who you should rank where and what not) or post here.

I have received 8 ballots for this so far. I'd love to have more though! Remember, you have until the 14th of January 2013 to fill one out!

Remember that today is the last day that ballots for this will be accepted.

I should be getting my ranks in tonight.

I am almost ready to posts the results for this, but I am waiting on someone to get back to me about a repeat on their ballot.

Bumped for results.

In case you post your results on the front page with an also receiving votes: it's duPont Manual.

Also: people completely omitting Bellarmine, Loyola, Cistercian is pretty ridiculous.

Fred wrote:Also: people completely omitting Bellarmine, Loyola, Cistercian is pretty ridiculous.

Although I don't necesarily agree with the decision, I can certainly understand why someone would leave Bellarmine off their ballot. Obviously leaving Loyola and/or Cistercian off a ballot is much less understandable.

The only ranking that didn't put Cistercian in the top 25 was from a computer if I'm reading the results sheet correctly...

Then a computer omitting Cistercian is completely ridiculous.

My stats have Cistercian at 19-8 for the year, with losses to Norman North B (OK) and Deer Creek A (OK), as well as St. Mark's B and St. Mark's C, pushing them down, despite their wins over LASA.

Golran wrote:My stats have Cistercian at 19-8 for the year, with losses to Norman North B (OK) and Deer Creek A (OK), as well as St. Mark's B and St. Mark's C, pushing them down, despite their wins over LASA.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and posit that that was not their actual A team.

Mewto55555 wrote:

Golran wrote:My stats have Cistercian at 19-8 for the year, with losses to Norman North B (OK) and Deer Creek A (OK), as well as St. Mark's B and St. Mark's C, pushing them down, despite their wins over LASA.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and posit that that was not their actual A team.

Max, you would be correct in saying that. Those losses were not by our A team.

Edit: clarified my earlier statement.

What I find even more surprising than the fact that Ian's computers didn't rank Cistercian is the fact that Ian's computers DID rank Bellarmine, considering Sameer has still not played anything this year. How did that happen?

MorganV wrote:What I find even more surprising than the fact that Ian's computers didn't rank Cistercian is the fact that Ian's computers DID rank Bellarmine, considering Sameer has still not played anything this year. How did that happen?

While both Cistercian and Bellarmine were shorthanded at times, my guess is that this hurt Cistercian's placement more, since the field they face at Texas tournaments is more competitive than the field Bellarmine regularly faces at Bay Area tournaments.

Tanay wrote:

MorganV wrote:What I find even more surprising than the fact that Ian's computers didn't rank Cistercian is the fact that Ian's computers DID rank Bellarmine, considering Sameer has still not played anything this year. How did that happen?

While both Cistercian and Bellarmine were shorthanded at times, my guess is that this hurt Cistercian's placement more, since the field they face at Texas tournaments is more competitive than the field Bellarmine regularly faces at Bay Area tournaments.

I think the issue with the Cistercian thing is that the computer conflated our A, B, and C teams and considered all of them one team.

Mewto55555 wrote:

Golran wrote:My stats have Cistercian at 19-8 for the year, with losses to Norman North B (OK) and Deer Creek A (OK), as well as St. Mark's B and St. Mark's C, pushing them down, despite their wins over LASA.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and posit that that was not their actual A team.

I was the monk running that little foray up to Oklahoma, and you are quite correct -- it was not our regular Cistercian "A" Team who, if memory serves me correctly, were all scrambling to get college early decision apps done; so, they stayed home.

Thanks for recognizing that situation.

Tanay wrote:

MorganV wrote:What I find even more surprising than the fact that Ian's computers didn't rank Cistercian is the fact that Ian's computers DID rank Bellarmine, considering Sameer has still not played anything this year. How did that happen?

While both Cistercian and Bellarmine were shorthanded at times, my guess is that this hurt Cistercian's placement more, since the field they face at Texas tournaments is more competitive than the field Bellarmine regularly faces at Bay Area tournaments.

While i can't make any definitive judgments about other areas of the country and their difficulty level, I'll defer to others to make that observation.

However, from the perspective of someone who's done QB since 1989 in Texas in various forms, we have NEVER had this much top level competition from such an array of schools: private schools, charter schools, Catholic schools, public schools, various forms of Magnet schools -- it is amazing!

It is both exhilaring and exhausting -- every tournament is a complete 'brain-body-wallet' drain! . . .and we love it!

Thanks for the astute remarks!

MorganV wrote:What I find even more surprising than the fact that Ian's computers didn't rank Cistercian is the fact that Ian's computers DID rank Bellarmine, considering Sameer has still not played anything this year. How did that happen?

I just inserted Bellarmine as my best guess of them since I knew they are a top team, but they had no results. I'll get the Cistercian A/B/C thing changed from that Oklahoma tournament; what letter should I be giving each of the teams there?

Does somebody know - is Sameer/Bellarmine going to be at HSNCT and/or PACE NSC?

Also, what do people think of this idea: when a team goes to a tournament and its not their "real" A-team, they have the tournament director label the team as "High School B" or whatever the "true" designation is. That way people both at the tournament and in the outside world, know who is really playing.

Nick wrote:Does somebody know - is Sameer/Bellarmine going to be at HSNCT and/or PACE NSC?

I've heard enough to assume that's the case.

Nick wrote:Does somebody know - is Sameer/Bellarmine going to be at HSNCT and/or PACE NSC?

Yes.

Nick wrote:Also, what do people think of this idea: when a team goes to a tournament and its not their "real" A-team, they have the tournament director label the team as "High School B" or whatever the "true" designation is. That way people both at the tournament and in the outside world, know who is really playing.

I am pretty irritated at teams' already-extant insistence on doing this; let the people who want to make national polls or very unreliable computer rankings deal with figuring out who's who. Doing the above is just going to confuse the schedule at actual tournaments, which are more important.

Matt Weiner wrote:Doing the above is just going to confuse the schedule at actual tournaments, which are more important.

I agree with this; I should also mention my disdain for using colors instead of letters or outright lying about which team is the A team for the same reasons.

One way of solving this is ensuring that accurate individual and team roster information is kept at each tournament (i.e., no aliases, no incomplete or misleading team names).

Normally, if a team we're fielding at a given tournament isn't 3/4 of the normal composition of that team, I ask the TD to designate the team with something other than a letter. This happens to us a lot, hence Romero's penchant for giving LASA's teams color names and other random designations. At this point, I think our full A team has only played together twice this year (KABO and IFT, if memory serves), despite the number of stat lines ascribed to 'LASA A'. I'm very straightforward with TDs, both here in Texas and elsewhere, about the relative abilities of the teams we're fielding for any given tournament, and I let them seed / bracket us accordingly. It's an issue for us though - we've got lots of players (5 regular teams plus several extra players), and it isn't usually possible to get every team together for every tournament.

Cheynem wrote:One way of solving this is ensuring that accurate individual and team roster information is kept at each tournament (i.e., no aliases, no incomplete or misleading team names).

I feel like we have that conversation, at least the aliases part, every 2-3 years and it results in a lot of shouting of "You're trying to take away our fun!" As to misleading/incomplete team names, I think the only teams that generally do not compete under their school's banner are ones for whom doing so would lead to bad consequences (your Tribeca's, the team that won BHSAT last year, etc.) so I'm hesitant to ban those (though as a TD, I'd obviously prefer to privately know who the team actually is).

In regards to colors or other non-specifically ranked designations of teams from a school, the only times I've attempted to do that were early-season tournaments when I genuinely didn't know the strength of my players yet, and had no concrete basis for labeling one Bergen B and one Bergen C. On the other hand, when people change labels to duck competition (which really shouldn't happen if the schedule has been designed properly), it greatly irritates me. I am less annoyed (though I fully understand others' frustration) with strength-splitting in a way that renders team strength no longer properly ordered.

I mean, certainly teams who need to avoid pointless school restrictions on participating in tournaments should be accommodated rather than have their participation jeopardized for the sake of making some poll accurate. It seems like listing the only team from a school on the schedule as "Blargville B" because Joe Armpit isn't there doesn't do anything for that goal and in fact achieves the opposite--sacrifices the interests of people actually playing a tournament for those of Internet pundits.

jonpin wrote:

Cheynem wrote:One way of solving this is ensuring that accurate individual and team roster information is kept at each tournament (i.e., no aliases, no incomplete or misleading team names).

As to misleading/incomplete team names, I think the only teams that generally do not compete under their school's banner are ones for whom doing so would lead to bad consequences (your Tribeca's, the team that won BHSAT last year, etc.) so I'm hesitant to ban those (though as a TD, I'd obviously prefer to privately know who the team actually is)..

For the record, Hunter won BHSAT last year and was officially affiliated when it did so, though we granted a request from the 2nd place team to go by "Schindler" because of issues with a state association, after being duly informed of who would play on that team. In general, I too am generally willing to let teams play unaffiliated, provided that they have a compelling real reason to do so (i.e. so long as the team still represents people from exactly one school who could not play otherwise) and I'm informed in advance as to what that reason is. I don't think that much is particularly controversial.

I'm fine with schools naming their teams after colors or other adjectives rather than letters at a given tournament, so long as the TD allows it for a good-faith reason and knows how to seed those teams properly for the competition. I also second the opinion that people's rankings should take a far lower priority -- namely, no priority at all -- in how teams conduct their team composition on a tournament-by-tournament basis.

Golran wrote:

MorganV wrote:What I find even more surprising than the fact that Ian's computers didn't rank Cistercian is the fact that Ian's computers DID rank Bellarmine, considering Sameer has still not played anything this year. How did that happen?

I just inserted Bellarmine as my best guess of them since I knew they are a top team, but they had no results. I'll get the Cistercian A/B/C thing changed from that Oklahoma tournament; what letter should I be giving each of the teams there?

For the Oklahoma tournament,
The team that went to Edmond Sante Fe on 10/27 and lost to Deer Creek did not have any A Team members on it. None of our A team members attended that tournament. I don't think any B team members attended either.

Edit 1: Spelling Error

RyuAqua wrote:

jonpin wrote:

Cheynem wrote:One way of solving this is ensuring that accurate individual and team roster information is kept at each tournament (i.e., no aliases, no incomplete or misleading team names).

As to misleading/incomplete team names, I think the only teams that generally do not compete under their school's banner are ones for whom doing so would lead to bad consequences (your Tribeca's, the team that won BHSAT last year, etc.) so I'm hesitant to ban those (though as a TD, I'd obviously prefer to privately know who the team actually is)..

For the record, Hunter won BHSAT last year and was officially affiliated when it did so, though we granted a request from the 2nd place team to go by "Schindler" because of issues with a state association, after being duly informed of who would play on that team. In general, I too am generally willing to let teams play unaffiliated, provided that they have a compelling real reason to do so (i.e. so long as the team still represents people from exactly one school who could not play otherwise) and I'm informed in advance as to what that reason is. I don't think that much is particularly controversial.

I'm fine with schools naming their teams after colors or other adjectives rather than letters at a given tournament, so long as the TD allows it for a good-faith reason and knows how to seed those teams properly for the competition. I also second the opinion that people's rankings should take a far lower priority -- namely, no priority at all -- in how teams conduct their team composition on a tournament-by-tournament basis.

Yeah, that was obviously what I meant. We left after the first game of the final and for some reason I thought that Schindler lost the first game and won the second game rather than I guess the other way around.

Fred wrote:Also: people completely omitting Bellarmine, Loyola, Cistercian is pretty ridiculous.

This is silly. If I were running the poll, I would have replied back asking them to justify not ranking those teams.

I appreciate the comments of those who feel the need to rectify, in some way or form, omissions
like those of Cistercian "A" from some of the balloting.

That sense of fairness is something I very much appreciate.

Having said that, we at Cistercian are just enjoying the view from (relatively speaking) high on the hill.
But that, too, will change. No one ever stays in the same place. I've simply been involved in QB too long
NOT to recognize that fact.

But, thanks, all the same!

See y'all at Nationals!