SuMO VIII at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (7/8/2023)

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TusculumPearson
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SuMO VIII at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (7/8/2023)

Post by TusculumPearson »

This is the formal announcement of and invitation of registrations for SuMO VIII: Follow The Winding Waters.

After two successful post-pandemic years at Tusculum University, and in partnership with Natural and Behavioral Sciences at Pellissippi State Community College, we’re pleased to situate the mixed-partnerships game in Knoxville at the Hardin Valley Campus of Pellissippi State, where we hope the Summer Mixed Open will find its long-term home. The tournament date is Saturday, July 8th.

Details below, or you can just go ahead and bypass the details and sign your partnership up.
<https://forms.gle/Q57G7UNmdvMUZuuA7>

FORMAT
You register as a partnership of two, not as a team of four. On the morning of the tournament, you and your teammate will be paired with another partnership, roughly based on your experience and skill level. You will play the tournament with that other partnership, two partnerships paired as a four-player team. We do this to try to build the most evenly-paired field possible; we want every game to be as competitive as possible.

We’ll establish a schedule when it’s clear how many partnerships will register; in the past, we’ve been able to guarantee nine games before playoffs.

SET
SuMO VIII will be a mirror of Harvard “Fall” Tournament XV, a high-quality set at the high school regular-plus level. We’re grateful to the Harvard Quiz Bowl Executive Board for making their set available for our unconventional-format event.

FEE
The registration fee is $50 per partnership. If at all possible, we need the registration fee in cash, because…

PRIZES
…SuMO remains a cash game, and the prizes for the top teams are cash. There’s roughly a 50/30/20 split of the tournament prize pool among the top three teams. Again, the final prize pool will be established when we get picture of the field.

The initial field cap is 20 partnerships. Our recent past has seen the equivalent of 28 partnerships/14 teams in the tournament field, so we’re quite able to extend the cap with sufficient staffing support.

TRASH
There is a Sunday trash game to serve as a counterpart to the Saturday academic game! Find out more about SuMO Trash here.

STAFF, BUZZERS
We benefit from the good quizbowl community in this region to help make this tournament work! We historically haven’t given a staff or buzzer discount for the tournament to keep the division of the funds clean, but we do want the best staff possible, and we have confidence in readers of the region to provide support. We’ve got a short registration for staffers to make sure you’re placed where you need to be <https://forms.gle/DJYgbWrtQTuKQA7T7>.

CONTACT
This is an East Tennessee Quizbowl event, and all questions and concerns should be shuttled through the East Tennessee Quizbowl email address ([email protected]). The tournament direction team is Dren Rollins (lead reader, chief of the treasury, head of protest committee) and Chuck Pearson (logistics director, stats-book wrangler).

We’re running this event in a new partnership with Natural and Behavioral Sciences at Pellissippi State; our host contact is NBS’ dean, Kane Barker ([email protected]).

REGISTER NOW
<https://forms.gle/Q57G7UNmdvMUZuuA7>

DISCLAIMERS
Some information is subject to change; if changes occur, they will be posted on this thread.

And, as always, in the words of the genial quizmaster, all decisions of the tournament director are arbitrary, capricious, and final.

Come join us at our new home at Pellissippi State on July 8th.
---
Chuck Pearson, Tusculum University, general purpose East TN/SWVA quiz flunky, [email protected].
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Re: SuMO VIII at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (7/8/2023)

Post by TusculumPearson »

Field updates for this tournament are being kept on a Google Doc.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k1D ... sp=sharing
---
Chuck Pearson, Tusculum University, general purpose East TN/SWVA quiz flunky, [email protected].
GallatinGOAT2020
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Re: SuMO VIII at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (7/8/2023)

Post by GallatinGOAT2020 »

Can we expect any music side events to be played (like last year?)
William Barnes

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Re: SuMO VIII at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (7/8/2023)

Post by TusculumPearson »

Despite my best efforts, I never seem to get this post assembled before Thursday of tournament week. Nonetheless, let’s get the information out for the world.

PARKING
On both tournament days, we expect the building to be open and available for us from 800 AM. Our mass meeting space is the main lobby of the Haslam Center on the Hardin Valley campus of Pellissippi State Community College (10915 Hardin Valley Road mapping). When you enter into the campus, you want to locate the large parking lot across from the Haslam Center, and walk from that lot to the steps up to the building’s main entrance.


Our friends at Pellissippi State have provided us a map for the purpose, which you can access behind this link. The parking lot we’re asked to use is "O9" ("where you can see the pond"); the main entrance is the north side of “HC” on the map.

SCHEDULE AND REGISTRATION
On Saturday we will be registering teams between 815 and 900 AM, and we will plan for our general meeting and draft of teams at 900 AM, with first games at 930 AM. Please plan to be present by 900 AM. Please remember to bring cash to register; SuMO is a cash game, and prize money is more easily divided when we have funds in cash.

We’re building a 12-team schedule for SuMO Academic; plan on five rounds before lunch with lunch break roughly at 1200-1230 PM and eight rounds (not counting group tiebreakers if necessary) of gameplay overall. We have sufficient packets for a full advantaged final if one team doesn’t manage to clear the field by two games.

We still have flux on participants and on the seeding structure; we’ll post the schedule and seedings as soon as the field settles.

Sunday is a bit more touch-and-go right now, as you might expect for a trash tournament to help the populace recover from a hard academic day. We’ve gotten enough registrants to put us over 10 full teams, but nobody is enthusiastic about the prospect of a full 11-team round robin. We may yet engage in some juggling there. Stay tuned.

MUSIC :(
With thanks to our friend William Barnes for the question: we don’t have any side events scheduled this year. If somebody wanted to whip some music foolishness up for Sunday midday or evening, we wouldn’t turn down the game. I have aged out of doing such things credibly, sadly.

THANK YOU
Once more, we offer all gratitude and thanks to Kane Barker, the dean of Behavioral and Natural Sciences at Pellissippi State. He’s helped us get oriented to what’s available to us on campus, and he’ll be our resource to help things get done over the weekend.

We look forward to seeing you this weekend for SuMO VIII.
---
Chuck Pearson, Tusculum University, general purpose East TN/SWVA quiz flunky, [email protected].
GallatinGOAT2020
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Re: SuMO VIII at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (7/8/2023)

Post by GallatinGOAT2020 »

I can guarantee you SOME of us would be enthusiastic about a 11-team full RR!
William Barnes

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Re: SuMO VIII at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (7/8/2023)

Post by jdpasspawn »

GallatinGOAT2020 wrote: Thu Jul 06, 2023 8:03 pm I can guarantee you SOME of us would be enthusiastic about a 11-team full RR!
I heartily endorse this message.

EDIT: To elaborate a little further on my point, I think with the field this year being pretty strong and playing on high school questions the rounds should go by pretty quickly (as a point of reference a KCQRL tournament I played earlier in the year that had ten rounds plus finals ended around 2 or 3 ish). So I think we should be able to pretty comfortably get a full eleven round robin in while finishing at a reasonable time.
Jack Lewis
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Re: SuMO VIII at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (7/8/2023)

Post by TusculumPearson »

GallatinGOAT2020 wrote: Thu Jul 06, 2023 8:03 pm I can guarantee you SOME of us would be enthusiastic about a 11-team full RR!
jdpasspawn wrote: Thu Jul 06, 2023 9:24 pm I heartily endorse this message.
Just to be plain: we're on a very consistent and solid schedule for SuMO Academic, one that's going to allow tiebreaks and advantaged final if we need 'em. I'm not worried about the schedule for Saturday.

I was more worried about the schedule for Sunday. But that's where I know the 11-team RR is not going to work - and I've honestly not heard a lick of 11-RR advocacy on Sunday. Last year we dispensed with the playoff and shared the 1st place prize just to allow people to get on the road, because the drives are coming from a ways around. So it's more important for us to keep Sunday compact.

(But the trash field is in flux regardless. We'll work it out.)

chuck
---
Chuck Pearson, Tusculum University, general purpose East TN/SWVA quiz flunky, [email protected].
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Re: SuMO VIII at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (7/8/2023)

Post by TusculumPearson »

Schedule and seed pools for the SuMO Academic draw:
Full link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
Shortened link: https://is.gd/SuMOVIII

This is as competitive a field as we've ever run for SuMO Academic, and I'm honestly beside myself at some of these seeds. But they're pulled from the same algorithm we've used for the last four years. At a certain point I have to trust the algorithm.

We'll see you shortly for SuMO VIII.
---
Chuck Pearson, Tusculum University, general purpose East TN/SWVA quiz flunky, [email protected].
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Re: SuMO VIII at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (7/8/2023)

Post by TusculumPearson »

Prelim stage statistics are starting to go up.
https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/8 ... s/prelims/
---
Chuck Pearson, Tusculum University, general purpose East TN/SWVA quiz flunky, [email protected].
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Re: SuMO VIII at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (7/8/2023)

Post by TusculumPearson »

Your honors and gratitude for the SuMO VIII weekend:

Congratulations to Team 1 (Champagne Poetry; Jack Lewis, Matt Lewis, Sean Higgins and Jon Vaysman), who won a one-match playoff over Team 7 (the unnamed partnership of Tracy Mirkin, Graham Cope, John Riddle and Jason Russell) to claim first prize in SuMO VIII on Saturday. Team 11 (Shanghai Sharks; Eric Mukherjee, Frederick Rudolph, Bryce Taylor, and Jonce Culbertson) finished 3rd in the championship pool.

All-stars for SuMO Academic were Eric Mukherjee, Tracy Mirkin, Jack Lewis, Cade Reinberger, Eric Douglass, Andrew Swallom, Billy Beyer, Ramapriya Rangaraju, Chris Borglum, Seth Kendall, Connor Teevens, and Dargan Ware. The neg prize went to Ramapriya Rangaraju with an impressive 16 negs in his five preliminary matches.

Congratulations to Team 9 (ASS-L, who were, in order, Andrew Swallom, Sam Matson, Spencer Brown, and Luke Quesenberry), for playing the lobbied-for (and ultimately ill-fated) 11-team round robin perfectly and claiming the SuMO Trash crown on 10-0. Team 2 (who played under a name that was never Eric Douglass’ idea; the naming teammates were Billy Beyer, Bryce Taylor, and Jonce Culbertson) was second on 9-1; Team 11 (Fabulous Free Birds In Space; Connor Teevens, Joe Nutter, Erskine Thompson, and a total novice by the name of Brian Henegar) finished 3rd on 8-2.

All-stars for SuMO Trash were Dargan Ware, Billy Beyer, Ramapriya Rangaraju, Seth Kendall, Brian Henegar, Andrew Swallom, Eric Douglass, Spencer Brown, Caleb Bales, and Andrew Helton. Beyer left before the awarding of individuals so Jason Russell swiped the extra DVD for landing 11th in the table. The neg prize went to Griffin Elder, but again, because he left before individuals, we gave the DVD to Dargan Ware (over Rama’s objections; I believe my exact words were “You already got a neg prize!”).

The Title IX prize for outstanding women’s accomplishment both days went to Stacy Brand, which was the least we could give her for quality service on Saturday and a difficult draw on Sunday.

SuMO is reliant on its staff unlike any other tournament, and our staff put in incredible work on the weekend. The SuMO Prime staff on Saturday helped with a smooth logistical operation; that group was readers Dren Rollins, Robin Richards, Sarah Whisenhunt, Sam Amos, Sarah Mauldin, Erskine Thompson, and Chris Hale, with Caleb Bales providing scorekeeping assists and Mikey Alday, Stacy Brand, Jonathan Page, and Lee Hall serving as playing staff on the house team (“Team USA”).

And when everything started breaking on Sunday, I asked a ton of a much more limited crew of staffers, and Rollins, Richards, Whisenhunt, Mauldin, and Clete Reinberger landed the plane in one piece. Special thanks to Chris Borglum for lending is reading expertise to the early rounds before Allegiant stole him away from us. Special thanks to Sam Amos for being willing to be flexible and turning into a last-minute addition to the SuMO Trash playing field.

Thanks so much to those who have become consistent competitors in this tournament and have provided counsel, criticism and ultimately support; you know who you are, and I appreciate you more than you know.

Mitch Alday is the Father of SuMO, and Dren Rollins and I have merely inherited his tournament format and given it what we hope is going to be a permanent home. Thanks so much to Mitch and Dren for their consistent and constant counsel.

And if we do have a permanent home, it’s my old colleague and friend in academic administration, Kane Barker of Pellissippi State, who has made this home possible. Kane was a constant presence throughout the tournament weekend, far more than you’d expect of a mere faculty host, and he made sure the rooms were right sometimes before we could. I’m so grateful to him for all the support he’s provided.

Thanks to everybody who makes SuMO what it is. Until we see you again…
---
Chuck Pearson, Tusculum University, general purpose East TN/SWVA quiz flunky, [email protected].
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Re: SuMO VIII at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (7/8/2023)

Post by ValenciaQBowl »

Thanks a bunch to Chuck and Dren and all the staffers! SuMo is always a bunch of fun, and it was great seeing lots of folks in person again for the first time in a while.
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Re: SuMO VIII at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (7/8/2023)

Post by Steeve Ho You Fat »

Thanks to Chuck and the team for putting this together, including the rest of the staff - as always, it was a super fun time and a unique experience.
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Re: SuMO VIII at Pellissippi State, Knoxville (7/8/2023)

Post by Yeah, that's a thing »

This was an absolute blast!!

It takes a significant amount of preparation, effort, and mental energy to direct a tournament - *Huge* thanks to Chuck for making this a great weekend, and to all the staffers for volunteering their time.
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