Ithaca Spring Tournament IV (formerly BrainBusters Spring) @ Ithaca, NY (4/18/20) [RAFT] - CANCELLED

[mrkirkmath]

The Ithaca High School Quizbowl team will be hosting the fourth annual Ithaca Spring Tournament (formerly "BrainBusters Spring") on Saturday, April 18, 2020 at IHS in Ithaca, New York. Registration for the teams participating in the tournament will commence at 7:45 with staff and player meetings at 8:30. We plan to start the first round no later than 9:00.

Set Used
We will be using the Regular Academic Fall Tournament (RAFT) question set at this tournament. This set was written by several members of the Quizbowl community, and its difficulty will be comparable to NAQT Invitational Series sets. We expect it will provide excellent preparation for NAQT's SSNCT the following weekend. Click the link for more details about the set and its topic distribution.

Registration
Please complete this form to register. We are setting a soft cap of 24 teams for bracketing purposes, but that can be expanded if there is enough interest. Registration will close on Friday, April 10th.

Fee Structure
The base price is $80 for the first team and $70 for each additional team. We are also offering the following discounts:
-$5 per functional buzzer system, capable of support four players per side (please bring extension cords if you have them!)
-$10 per staffer provided by the school
-$10 per 150 miles traveled to IHS (one way, according to Google Maps).
-$20 for any new school/program (a school that has never played at a quizbowl event at Ithaca High School before)
The minimum fee per team is $50, and we will send an invoice upon your registration. Checks should be written to "Ithaca High School Brain Team" and mailed to Ithaca High School, 1401 N Cayuga St, Ithaca, NY 14850 or brought with you on the 18th of April

On-site Contact Information
The tournament director is IHS Quizbowl team coach and faculty adviser Benjamin Kirk, who can be reached for questions at [email protected], or by department phone at (607) 274-2191. An emergency cell phone contact will be provided to registered teams, or to those who request it via email.

Lunch
As they have in previous years, the IHS International Club will be offering a pizza or sub sandwich lunch and ala carte International Tasting Bar on-site for lunch in the IHS Cafeteria. We recommend staying at the school for lunch or bringing your own, since the nearest restaurants are 2+ miles away in heavy and unpredictable Ithaca weekend traffic. You may leave for lunch at your own risk, but with the warning that we will restart the tournament promptly at the announced restart time, and will start reading packets to whomever is in place at that time.

Tournament Format
Games will consist of 20 tossup/bonus pairs, read in untimed matches. Unlike at our fall tournament, we will be using NAQT's rules regarding timing: three seconds to buzz in after a tossup is done, two seconds to start an answer to a tossup after buzzing in, and five seconds (with a prompt after four) after a bonus is finished to give an answer. The exact bracketing format used will depend on the final number of registered teams, but we expect to run a quasi-seeded round robin format in the morning, followed by a rebracketing and another round robin after lunch, with a single final match to determine tournament champion if needed.

We anticipate platinum certification from PACE, so the top several finishers will qualify for the 2020 PACE National Scholastic Championship in Chicago, IL. As this tournament will not use an NAQT Invitational Series set, there will be no automatic qualification for their High School National Championship Tournament. However, we anticipate strong performance at this tournament could be used for wildcard registration.

Field List (Teams/Buzzers/Staffers) - Soft cap of 24 teams
Chittenango (1/2/1)
Cooperstown (2/2/1)
Geneva (2/2/1)
Greene (1/1/1)
Total: 6/24


We look forward to hosting this tournament, and we hope to see a great turnout of local and regional teams!

[mrkirkmath]

Due to schools being closed at least through April 15th, we will be cancelling this tournament.

We encourage anybody who was hoping to play at this tournament to sign up for the online RAFT mirror being hosted on the same day as ours was scheduled, April 18.