I am pleased to announce that Liberty is planning to host a mirror of the Dunbar Academic Fall Tournament on October 31, 2009. More details in the official announcement below.


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Competition/profile/88961/'>U. Lou Sthagaim</a>, Sep 11 2009, 06:57:32 PM.</div>

The Liberty High School Scholar Bowl team is pleased to announce the Liberty Scholar Bowl Invitational Tournament on Saturday, October 31, 2009. This tournament will be a mirror of the Dunbar Academic Fall Tournament being held in Lexington, KY.

Each round will consist of 20 tossups with rebounding bonuses. The field is limited to the first 24 teams to register and will be divided into preliminary round-robin pools, with the results in each pool determining placement in the playoff rounds. While the exact format of the tournament will be determined by the final field size, each team will be guaranteed at least six games.

Registration is set at $70 per team, while additional teams from a school are welcome at a base fee of $65 each. Teams may deduct the following discounts if applicable:
· $5 for supplying a working buzzer system
· $5 for coaches who are MACA members
· $5 for every 100 miles your team travels to the tournament (one-way, as determined by Google Maps).
The minimum fee for each team is $50.

This tournament has been certified by the Missouri Quizbowl Alliance, an organization dedicated to providing high-quality quizbowl tournaments to all Missouri teams. Visit http://www.moqba.org for more information.

Pending affiliation, this tournament will be a qualifier for the Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence National Scholastics Championship, to be held in June 2010 at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Top-finishing teams will automatically qualify for this national tournament, which regularly features many of the nation’s top teams.

Interested teams should contact Rosemary Camp () with the following information in order to register:
· School Name, Mailing Address, Phone Number, and Fax Number
· Coaches’ Name, E-mail Address, and Cell Phone Number (in case of emergency)
· Form of payment? (Purchase Order or School Check payable to Liberty Scholar Bowl)
· Buzzer system?
· MACA membership?

A list of teams that have signed up for the tournament can be found on the Missouri Academic Competition Message Board (http://www.moquizbowl.com) and will be updated regularly by Jeffrey Hill. Additionally, if you would like more practice material similar to the questions we will be using, we recommend that you visit http://quizbowlpackets.com, an archive of high school packets free for practice use. The questions used in this tournament will be posted to that website once all mirrors have concluded.

We hope to see your team in Liberty on October 31!

Registered teams as of 10/21/2009. The field has reached the 24 team maximum.

Barstow
Benton
Blue Springs
Blue Springs South
Cameron A
Cameron B
Glasgow
Hickman Mills
Holden A
Holden B
Lee’s Summit North
Lee’s Summit West
Lee's Summit
Lexington
North Kansas City
Oak Park
Park Hill South
Pilot Grove
Raymore-Peculiar
Raytown South
Savannah
Smithville
St. Pius X
William Chrisman


Edited by U. Lou Sthagaim, Oct 21 2009, 10:41:37 PM.

I know for a fact that the Truman marching band (and Chrisman's for that matter) will be in a parade in the morning. This could be why Truman is not signed up yey. I will email Tarvin and check if he knows about this or not yet. My guess is he does though.

I think Park Hill South will be signing up for this tournament.


-Sam Parrilla

Field has been updated. Only 5 spots left.

Our coach signed up for this (Park Hill South)... but as far as I know, he never got a reply...

Can someone clear this up?

Thanks ---

Sam P.

Yes, Park Hill South is on the latest list I received from Camp (see full field in post #3 above).

The field has reached the 24 team maximum.

Barstow
Benton
Blue Springs
Blue Springs South
Cameron A
Cameron B
Glasgow
Hickman Mills
Holden A
Holden B
Lee’s Summit North
Lee’s Summit West
Lee's Summit
Lexington
North Kansas City
Oak Park
Park Hill South
Pilot Grove
Raymore-Peculiar
Raytown South
Savannah
Smithville
St. Pius X
William Chrisman

Predictions?

NKC, by a knockout.

Teams who want to succeed at this tournament should REALLY read old college packets. This is a very tough set.

Make that 2 knockouts, then.

This means that schools are not going to be divided by school size, correct?

Correct. All schools are playing in a single division.

I will be posting live updates throughout this tournament to my Twitter account: http://twitter.com/mchadbourne

Twitter is taking over the world.


Cool idea!

Don't forget--I think there are still mirrors of this happening later, so don't give away question specifics.


Edited by Charbroil, Oct 29 2009, 01:43:03 PM.

Maybe I'll actually use mine this time... I signed up for it between Lexington and State for the exclusive purpose of liveblogging tournaments but didn't do so during MSHSAA State or MFAT.

Bumping just to remind everyone to check Twitter for live updates. I believe Paul will be tweeting as well: http://twitter.com/PaulQB

Really well run tournament by Liberty. We had no real issues with moderators or questions all day.

Holden and Park Hill South were decent, which I wasn't expecting, since I had no idea what to expect from the Kansas City area this year. Savannah was competitive as always. Hopefully KC will have a bigger showing at some more statewide tournaments to come.

A well-run, punctual tournament. Kudos to all -- particularly Pilot Grove. A small school competing (and winning) against larger schools is refreshing and a poignant reminder that, yes, size doesn't matter. =]

Quick results for now. I'll post more details tomorrow afternoon.

1. North Kansas City
2. Savannah
3. Holden A
4. Smithville

We had a final field of 22 teams. Since we had between 20 and 39 teams, all four of these teams have qualified for the PACE National Scholastics Championship!

Full stats
Prelims

Thanks to all of the teams for coming out to participate and to the staff for graciously volunteering their time! Special thanks to Paul Nelson and Matt Chadbourne for traveling to Liberty to moderate. I hope everyone had an enjoyable experience.

Just a reminder: these questions are potentially going to be used at future tournaments elsewhere in the country. Because of this, discussion of question specifics is not allowed at this time. I highly encourage discussion of the questions as long as no specific details are revealed. You can find the primary discussion thread for this set here on hsquizbowl.org. If you have any question-specific concerns please feel free to email me (jeffrey AT hillonline DOT net).

EDIT 12/6/2009: The questions have been posted to quizbowlpackets.com so they are now open for discussion.

Wasn't Park Hill South pretty decent last year, too?

I remember last year they beat Truman at the Smithville tournament by 10 points. I think they placed 3rd at districts last year behind NKC and Liberty, as well as 3rd at conference behind Truman and Park Hill. They did well at quads too come to think of it, either 2nd or 3rd. I know they didn't lose many people from last year and most of the starters from that team were sophomores who are now playing as juniors.

I had a lot of fun moderating yesterday. NKC is obviously solid again this year even without Brandon, and looked very good in the four (count 'em, four) games I read for them. Didn't get a chance to see Savannah, but second place is a solid finish in this field. Holden is team I hadn't heard much about, but they clearly had a solid knowledge base and I hope to see more of them at pyramidal tournaments this season.

General comments about the questions: I thought this was a decent effort, given the circumstances (keep in mind the largest part of it was written by a single high school student). The tossups were perhaps a good bit longer than they needed to be, and often began with vague or overly difficult clues that were next to impossible to buzz on, but that happens. The third parts of several bonuses were also kind of out there difficulty-wise. Overall I was pleased to see pretty solid numbers put up on this set, because it was very challenging. The best way to improve on pyramidal questions is to play them, so I hope to see many of these teams at more pyramidal tournaments this season and beyond.

This represents a lot of my impression of the set yesterday. One thing I will add is I thought that there were too many references of an adult nature in the questions. You have to have that to an extent in any quizbowl set (especially considering Greek and Roman mythology), but some of it crossed the line to me.

Overall, the set was OK. It needed more editing than it received, and some of the wording irritated me, but nearly everything was quizbowl canon and only a handful of answers were unreasonably difficult. Teams did not seem overwhelmed by the length of the questions, which was my biggest concern. They needed to be shorter, but I didn't sense any palpable frustration on that.

I had fun yesterday too. I was very surprised with Holden's performance. Savannah looked alright; they have the makings of a good team this year. Grant from NKC was absolutely stellar; Grant put up 160 points in the first round I read for NKC, and I was like:

That's my thoughts for now.


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Competition/profile/89050/'>PenforPrez</a>, Nov 1 2009, 08:06:29 PM.</div>

Seconded. I noticed this as I was reading through the packets the week before the tournament and it bothered me as well.

Sounds like the Brandon-Grant set had a great weekend.

You know Brandon graduated right?

Yeah, Brandon was busy putting on a solo appearance at ACF Fall as "Missouri A."

It's proof of what I'd already suspected; that they are even more productive separately than together.

There was this, too. I glossed over it as much as I could without altering question flow, but other moderators probably didn't do this.

The set is now posted: http://quizbowlpackets.com/archive/2009DAFT.zip