Circuit Building and Collegiate Novice Spring Tournament

Elaborate on the merits of specific tournaments or have general theoretical discussion here.
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dreamchaser
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Circuit Building and Collegiate Novice Spring Tournament

Post by dreamchaser »

Do you have any advice on circuit building (specifically for New Mexico and West Texas, although general advice is welcome) and the plausibility of holding a collegiate novice Spring tournament at the University of New Mexico (likely in late April or early to mid May) not mentioned in the previous related thread? How have circuits in the past been successfully established? Is it too much to be considering announcing, planning, and holding a tournament in the last fourth of the school year? Regardless, how would you suggest recruiting staffing for a first-time regional tournament in an area new to quizbowl? Do you have any other tournament directing advice?
Jason Zhuang
Del Norte High School (San Diego, CA) '21
University of New Mexico '25
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cchiego
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Re: Circuit Building and Collegiate Novice Spring Tournament

Post by cchiego »

In collegiate expansion in general, the biggest challenge will be finding someone at the target school who's willing to put in the work on the ground to get a club set up and recruit. This is where having a local HS circuit would be really helpful since it would likely produce motivated students with quizbowl experience (of course, it's a chicken-and-egg issue to set up a HS quizbowl circuit where there isn't one). But in the absence of that, I would say that your goal should be to spread the message about quizbowl as widely as possible at schools with the goal of trying to get into contact with at least one person interested in getting a team established and then working to help that person establish a lasting team.

The first stage is getting the word out about quizbowl to as many people as possible at a school through carefully written and personalized (not mass BCC!) emails. Be sure to be succinct in your emails, but also be ready to provide them with a blurb or additional information that they can forward on to listservs and others at their school. Here are some potential targets, in order from what I think is most-promising to least-promising:

First, I would recommend contacting honors programs/colleges. These have the advantage of being interdisciplinary, usually having their own sources of funding for programming/events, and generally having a contact list for a large number of intellectually curious students. This was something that Matt Mitchell noted was at least somewhat effective in Colorado. Perhaps they'd even be willing to sponsor a team (that has happened at other schools), but at the very least they can pass on a message to students.

Student activities offices are another option as well, but the odds of success there seem somewhat lower. The reason intramural competitions were College Bowl's bread-and-butter was because they played to something that student activities staff can generally do: put on a one-time event each year. They don't usually advise and build a team after the tournament concludes, so that leads to the previously-noted ineffectiveness of intramurals to build lasting programs. That said, you might be able to find a sympathetic staff member who would have some suggestions of either individual students or similar clubs who might be interested and/or they might be willing to send out an email to solicit interest.

You might be able to identify an interested faculty member, but that's going to be difficult to do from the outside. Quizbowl's interdisciplinary approach actually works against academic service incentives for discipline-specific faculty (i.e. faculty are generally more rewarded for increasing enrollment and engagement among their department's majors, not so much for something that only impacts a tiny number of students among the entire school). But you still might try some. See if you can find anyone who was a contestant on Jeopardy!, mentions an interest in trivia in their bio, comes up in a search of older quizbowl/College Bowl stats, or who currently works with some kind of other academic competition in the area (e.g. moderating at Science Bowl or Ocean Science Bowl). That said, the odds of this approach working are pretty low.

Finally, you can try contacting school clubs that might be similar to quizbowl in some ways. I don't know if Beef Science or Athletic Training Quizbowlers are also interested in all-subject quizbowl, but they probably know their way around a buzzer and it's at least a lead. This is where talking to the student activities office can be helpful too as they might know an organization that, say, runs a monthly trivia night and might be willing to ask its members if they are interested.

Another chicken-and-egg issue is whether or not you send out these emails inviting them to a specific scheduled tournament or not. The advantage of having a specific date is that it's a clear message that "quizbowl is happening, you're invited to come" and that they can then make arrangements with a clear timeline in mind. The disadvantage is that you might end up with 1 or 2 interested teams by that date and then have to make a call about what to do. Plus, a specific date can sometimes be an excuse not to do quizbowl if it has an overlap with existing activities. I think overall it makes sense to frame the email around a specific event, ideally a collegiate novice tournament in the Fall. I might hedge a bit in setting a specific date, but instead include a month, e.g. the Rio Grande Collegiate Novice Event, to take place in September 2022 (date TBD). Also, people like being "invited" to things; it's a nice way to frame the email compared to "ready to spend a lot of time setting up a new student group?"

There's also, of course, the issue of cost. A small amount like $20-30 seems fair and ensures that the team actually shows up, but definitely indicate that you can work with teams on this; it's worth a small loss upfront to increase the odds that you can get a school to send a team to an event.

Once you do get some interest, this introductory tournament experience needs to be a good experience. For that reason, I would recommend not trying to rush one right now and instead focusing on offering it in the Fall. This also gives you a good excuse to send multiple emails: one right now, then one before the start of the Fall semester reminding them about it. The ideal would be to get interest now, talk to people over the summer to help guide them in recruitment and doing the paperwork needed to start a team and get funding, and then hold the first event early on in Fall to give every team a clear starting point to aim for. This also gives you some time to continue to seek out new potential contacts if you don't get early responses.

My recommendation in your case (and any other situation with very far travel distances/no public transit) would be to do the Collegiate Novice event online. Getting travel permission and funding can be an incredibly involved, difficult experience at schools. An online event--ideally a short one, maybe 4-5 hours and 6-8 rounds--also allows you to get experienced outside moderators more easily. Then, have a follow-up event like ACF Fall or another novice-level event later in the semester that is ideally in-person.

Finally, I'll just include here some links to in case anyone browsing this discussion hasn't yet seen them:
The classic 2020 post from Matt Mitchell about lessons learned in trying to set up a circuit in Colorado and the "Problem of the West" in quizbowl
A 2016 discussion from Colin McNamara on the challenges of setting up a collegiate circuit in Idaho
A 2018 discussion of small colleges (LACs) and setting up lasting teams that includes some discussion of outreach issues and advising challenges
I did a post in 2019 on some of the logistical issues to starting a new college quizbowl team that inspired a bit of discussion
I would also encourage looking at the example of UK Quizbowl in expanding quizbowl to colleges across the UK; I thought I saw a thread about that at some point, but I can't find it now. It's not a perfect comparison, but it's probably the best recent example of successful coordinated collegiate circuit expansion
Chris C.
Past: UGA/UCSD/Penn
Present: Solano County, CA
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