Dear Quizbowl Coach,

You are invited to attend the inaugural Spirit of St. Louis Warm-up on November 21, 2009 at Parkway Central High School in Chesterfield, Missouri in west St. Louis County. I, Paul Nelson of the Missouri Quizbowl Alliance, will be running this event. The field will be capped at 16 teams unless staffing levels allow us to increase the field size.

This tournament will operate on NAQT set IS-89A. The question format will be standard NAQT rules—pyramidal questions (though the questions will be shorter and slightly easier than most NAQT sets), neg-5’s for incorrect early buzzes, 15 points instead of 10 for correct early answers, and 30-point bonuses with no rebounding. The Missouri Quizbowl Alliance has certified this event as one of more than a dozen tournaments across Missouri as being representative of good quizbowl.

The tournament field will be broken into two brackets of eight teams for preliminary rounds, with a round robin in each bracket, for seven prelim rounds total. After lunch, teams will be broken up into four groups of four based on record and total points for pool play. Final placement will be determined by results against teams in the same playoff pool. I expect the tournament to conclude around 4 P.M. or slightly earlier, which should be very reasonable for most teams, but this also guarantees ten rounds for every team.

Since this is an official NAQT tournament, your team can earn a berth into NAQT’s high school nationals (called the HSNCT) at this event. The top 15% of the field inclusive will automatically qualify (if we have 16 teams, the top three finishers will qualify) for NAQT’s high school nationals in Chicago on May 28-30, 2010.

Entry fees will work on the following schedule:

First team base fee: $60
Second (and subsequent) team fee: $55
Buzzer discount: -$5
Distance discount (for teams traveling more than 200 miles one way): -$10

To register, please email me at penforprez@gmail.com with your school name, the number of teams you are entering and your contact information. Teams are already signing up, so you should reserve a spot immediately. If you have any questions before registering, please let me know. Tournament updates will be emailed to entered teams and will be posted on my Twitter quizbowl page: www.twitter.com/PaulQB.

We look forward to seeing all of you at Parkway Central on November 21 for some fun early-season quizbowl!



<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Competition/profile/89050/'>PenforPrez</a>, Sep 21 2009, 11:31:34 AM.</div>

Man, wish I could be there. . . . : (

I wish you could come too. It would be a blast!

Field update (as of 11-20)

Villa Duchesne (1)
CBC (1)
Monroe City (2)
SLUH (2)
Parkway West (2)
Parkway Central (1)
Francis Howell Central (1)
Rockwood Summit (2)
Priory (1)
Eureka (2)
Troy Buchanan (1)


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Competition/profile/89050/'>PenforPrez</a>, Nov 20 2009, 07:20:34 PM.</div>

I coach for Oakville High School in Oakville, MO (south St. Louis county). We are a new quiz bowl team. If I can scrounge up enough players to form a team for that weekend, we will definitely be there. I will be contacting you this week!

Please do! I love seeing new teams on the circuit, and this will be a great event for a new team.

What's the play-off format? The same one you mentioned to me a month ago?

- 2 pools of 8.
- Round robin within pools.
- Seed each team 1-16.
- Top 4 seeds (seeds 1 & 2 from each pool) play round-robin, and rankings after that determine final ranking (trophies)
- Remaining 12 teams are split into 4-team pools of similar strength, and play round robin, just for kicks.

With some adjustments, that is the rough plan, except for the 1-16 seeding (pool play doesn't really work that way). Chadbourne explained some things to me I was sadly unaware of with this format.


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Competition/profile/89050/'>PenforPrez</a>, Sep 28 2009, 09:26:59 PM.</div>

The field is filling up very quickly. I've picked up six teams since Sunday, so I'm very pleased. We're now at around 12 teams total; the full field has been posted further up in this thread. A waitlist will be kept once we get past the announced field of 16 on a first-come, first-served basis.

Christina, I am going to hold a slot for Oakville for you since you did express interest in coming. If you have any questions, please let me know.

I'm hoping to post a detailed update for entered teams tomorrow.

No reply from Eureka?

I don't think anybody has heard from them this year, as far as I know. It is still early.

Both of Eureka's coaches were at the MACA convention.

They're bringing 2 teams to the MFAT on October 10.

And one to MST Fall on December 12.

Shows you what I know.

Parkway North submitted three teams this morning, so we're up to 13 teams and down to only three slots left. If you want to sign up a team, let me know.

Paul, I spoke to the coach at Francis Howell Central, who says that she plans to come to the tourney but needs to meet with the Activities Director first to check up on logistics (since she's new to coaching). Thus, could you hold a spot for FHC?

Done.

The field for Spirit of St. Louis is officially full, but there's a lot of flexibility in this field, and I feel confident that any waitlisted teams will find their way in at this point. If you're interested, please let me know.

I'm nagging Eureka's coach by proxy, but they have a weird schedule. If there's still a possibility they can get in, I'll nag them more.

I'm curious if perhaps to alleviate this, it might be good to expand the field to 18 teams? That way you can run it with 3 pools of 6 for the prelims, have a natural break at lunch to reseed teams into 3 new pools of 6 for the playoffs, then have 2 packets left over for a final, and only have to find 1 or 2 more staffers than you already are committing to while maintaining a fair and simple format and getting a little extra money.

We actually expanded the field today to 21 teams. Four slots left! Three brackets of seven.

Eureka officially signed up today. Yay!

That's fine. Duly noted.

As of this morning, we're at 19 teams, so two slots left. Any team that wants to sign up should do so; I'm really hoping to fill the field. This is going to be a very good tournament, so don't miss it!

blecchhhh...this WOULD be the very same day as the annual debate tournament hosted at Clayton.
ugh. I am going to hate myself for missing this.

I was wondering why Clayton wasn't signed up. I may have a spot open if you guys still want to come.

Thanks, but I'm pretty sure we won't be able to make it. Skipping the debate tournament we host is considered a portent of the Apocalypse. Silly, silly debate coaches.

Oops! I neglected to notice you guys are hosting the debate tournament. My bad.

Just a notice that I'm planning on tweeting at this tournament also: http://www.twitter.com/mchadbourne

My thanks to the teams who came out to Parkway Central today for the inaugural Spirit of St. Louis Warm-up. I think most teams and players had a lot of fun today, and it was a lot of fun for me to run it. This was the first tournament I've run on my own in almost four years, so I appreciate all the help and encouragement I've received in the process of organizing this tournament, especially today. Apart from a couple of small things, the tournament went well.

Some quick results:

Prelims: In the Bo Duke bracket, Villa Duchesne went undefeated at 7-0 with SLUH A and Parkway Central B both at 5-2. The second seed from that bracket was awarded to SLUH A based on points per game.

In the Luke Duke bracket, Priory also went undefeated at 7-0 with Parkway Central A second at 6-1 and Francis Howell Central third at 5-2.

After the prelims and the afternoon rounds, Priory was 10-0 and PCH A was 9-1, requiring an advantaged final. Parkway Central A roared back from a one-game deficit, easily winning both rounds of the final against a very strong Priory team to take the championship.

First final game: Parkway Central A 275, Priory 185
Second final game: Parkway Central A 325, Priory 130

Villa Duchesne finished third in a one-game playoff against Parkway Central B. That game was for the last trophy and the last qualifying spot for NAQT's high school nationals, the HSNCT.

Third-place game: Villa Duchesne 285, Parkway Central B 230

Parkway Central A, Priory and Villa Duchesne all automatically qualified for HSNCT on Memorial Day weekend in Chicago by virtue of their finishes today. I especially wish to congratulate Duchesne, as I believe this is the first time they have qualified for a national event. Parkway Central and Priory also qualified for PACE nationals, which will be in the Washington, D.C. area the week after HSNCT.

A selection of books was offered to the top eight individuals. They were, in order:

1. Sabrina Fritz, Villa Duchesne 79.29 PPG
2. Zach Weiss, Priory 62.14 PPG
3. Richard Mazuski, Priory 55.00 PPG
4. Matt Galeski, CBC 47.86 PPG
5. Liron Ganel, Parkway Central A 47.14 PPG
6. David Shively, Monroe City A, 40.00 PPG (book not awarded)
7. Rachel Minogue, Villa Duchesne 39.29 PPG
8. Kyle Bailey, Parkway West A 38.57 PPG
9. Kefu Lu, Parkway Central B 36.43 PPG

A link to full stats will be posted as soon as possible.

Finally, I wish to offer my thanks to a lot of people who helped make this happen. I've been in Missouri quizbowl for many years, and the generosity and kindness of most people on the circuit never ceases to amaze me. I would like to thank my friends from the Missouri Quizbowl Alliance who came to help today (in no particular order): Sean Phillips, Matt Chadbourne, Charles Hang (and his scorekeeper), and Charlie Dees. Many thanks also to John from Wash U for doing stats today and to Abdullah and Mohammed from SLU for helping me out through the process.

The Parkway Central teachers and students deserve a big hand for the effort they put forth today. I felt like I did not get to thank them enough for their fine work, and especially the PCHS coach Cheryl Zenfell, who earned my undying gratitude for hosting this for me and just being there.

Just out of curiosity, will the complete results for the tournament be posted on the forum?

I'll post a link to them when they get posted.

Final results from yesterday are now posted on the web. You can find them here:

Prelim results: http://results.scobo.net/paulnelson/sostl_prelims
Overall stats, including the finals: http://results.scobo.net/paulnelson/sostl

A couple of things to note:

Individual prizes were awarded based on standings after the prelims, and did not include the games that followed.

Parkway Central B finished 4th by losing to Villa Duchesne, not 6th as the standings file implies. Playoff rankings were determined by a team's record again other teams in the championship bracket, not overall record, hence the discrepancy.

Couple of things:
-- Prelims report is missing the round 5 Priory/Rockwood Summit game (was it accidentally entered as round 0 and not fixed until after you generated the report?)
-- For the overall, looks like you accidentally uploaded the playerdetail report in the teamdetail position so team details aren't available. To correct this you'll have to upload all of the reports again.

Fixed.

I'm not sure this is the right place to put this, but since this is the official thread for this particular tournament, we'd just like to draw attention to the fact that during the tournament, somebody from one of the teams took candy from a box meant for soldiers in Afghanistan in one of the rooms.

Please see to it that this doesn't happen again, as first, we'd like to show our support to the soldiers and second, that's really not something you should do. If it was an accident and the person was unaware that those boxes were meant for our troops overseas, as I hope was the case, then that's less of a problem, just remember that if you're unsure, don't do it.

As for the alternative, well, somebody else deals with that.

I sent a polite email to coaches about this last week. My belief and Cheryl's is that this was probably a misunderstanding. Either way, people do need to be mindful of these things at tournaments.

I'm hoping it was a misunderstanding as well. I should've figured you guys would have it covered.

(Probably not the best spot for this comment, but I noticed it at this tournament so...)

Are the NAQT questions which we used for this tournament easier than those used at HSNCT? Although my previous experience of playing on NAQT sets is limited to last year's HSNCT, it seemed like these questions had longer segments for powers and were (generally) a little easier to answer. Again, I'm not sure if this is just due to the fact that the only other time I've ever played in a tournament with NAQT questions it was against very high caliber teams, under time-limit pressure (20 minute games), and at a national level.

Yes, the HSNCT had harder questions in general. It is theoretically a national championship, you know.

Yeah, the questions at this tournament were significantly easier than those at the HSNCT--in NAQT's difficulty rating system, these questions are rated a 1 (meaning that they're the easiest questions out there and intended as an introduction to Quiz Bowl) while HSNCT is rated a 4. To put that in context, Division II Sectional questions (collegiate novice) are rated a 3 and DII National questions (collegiate varsity or "regular difficulty") are rated a 5.

Yeah, we definitely blitzed a lot of questions and powered several that we shouldn't have.

From one player to another: don't complain when you power tossups. Usually what it means if you power a tossup on a clue you think is easy is that you actually are just more knowledgable about a subject than the majority of other players. This tournament being an A-set, the tossups are supposed to be the easiest NAQT gets, so it's no surprise that a team with as much talent as yours will get a lot of powers on clues that may seem easy, that's just what comes with that kind of set. Revel in your powers, don't badmouth them.

Amen!

It's preferable to sounding like an egotistical bastard, even though that's probably what we come off as half the time. XD

Haha that's what I love about PCH quizbowl.