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(Late) tournaments preparing teams for MSHSAA districts

Discussion of quizbowl topics not related to specific tournaments
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L-Town Expatriate
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(Late) tournaments preparing teams for MSHSAA districts

Post by L-Town Expatriate »

Split from here -- jmh
logic2718 wrote:no bounce backs....frustrating.
Bouncebacks can be frustrating for the one stat guy.

However, no bouncebacks in the last tournament before a district tournament whose format uses bouncebacks is a bit disconcerting. Again, to each his/her own.

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Charlie Dees
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Re: Ladue Invitational Spring Tournament (LIST) - 4/2/2011

Post by Charlie Dees »

However, no bouncebacks in the last tournament before a district tournament whose format uses bouncebacks is a bit disconcerting. Again, to each his/her own.
This is a silly, old school way of thinking. Ladue is the best program in the state, so they rightly don't care at all how MSHSAA quizbowl is run because MSHSAA quizbowl is bad quizbowl. Many of the teams enrolled in this field (Rock Bridge, Jefferson City, Tuscumbia, Oakville, Clayton, Parkway West, Savannah) also are programs that take good quizbowl seriously and as a consequence won't care enough about how the MSHSAA format is run to have this event's choice to not use bouncebacks be any kind of serious problem. The idea that local quizbowl should be a tool to prepare you for MSHSAA districts, especially in the late spring, has been blown to pieces this season, and LIST is obviously an event at the cutting edge of that movement. Their tournament is going to prepare teams for how to play top notch quizbowl, and not how to win a meaningless trophy in a joke format.

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Re: Ladue Invitational Spring Tournament (LIST) - 4/2/2011

Post by L-Town Expatriate »

ashkenaziCD wrote:
However, no bouncebacks in the last tournament before a district tournament whose format uses bouncebacks is a bit disconcerting. Again, to each his/her own.
This is a silly, old school way of thinking. Ladue is the best program in the state, so they rightly don't care at all how MSHSAA quizbowl is run because MSHSAA quizbowl is bad quizbowl. Many of the teams enrolled in this field (Rock Bridge, Jefferson City, Tuscumbia, Oakville, Clayton, Parkway West, Savannah) also are programs that take good quizbowl seriously and as a consequence won't care enough about how the MSHSAA format is run to have this event's choice to not use bouncebacks be any kind of serious problem. The idea that local quizbowl should be a tool to prepare you for MSHSAA districts, especially in the late spring, has been blown to pieces this season, and LIST is obviously an event at the cutting edge of that movement. Their tournament is going to prepare teams for how to play top notch quizbowl, and not how to win a meaningless trophy in a joke format.
Local tournaments have been preparing teams for MSHSAA districts for years because, until recently, it was the only trophy worth competing. ADs spend $65/year for their school to compete for it, and thus ensure their kids' eligibility to play in any tournament.

Until advocates of good quiz bowl make an effort to at least make contact with all 430+ quiz bowl sponsors in the state, rather than just stick to an elite circuit among teams in St. Louis, Mid-Missouri and KC North/St. Joe, a "joke format" remains the statewide standard. Hopefully this time next year we can start talking about the good quizbowl circuit expanding deeper into the Bootheel, Green Hills, and Ozarks.

I intend on making contact with several coaches in Barry County during the off-season to get a feel for where we can improve. I suspect a tournament in Cassville or Neosho in the spring could attract a lot of interest, not only from this part of the state but also teams in Northwest Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma. And although I've been more of a Jake-braking Menshevik here, rest assured my aim will be nothing less than the conversion of conference-only duel seasons to a vibrant circuit with teams traveling to Springfield, Rolla and hopefully CoMo and NKC.

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Charlie Dees
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Re: Ladue Invitational Spring Tournament (LIST) - 4/2/2011

Post by Charlie Dees »

Until advocates of good quiz bowl make an effort to at least make contact with all 430+ quiz bowl sponsors in the state, rather than just stick to an elite circuit among teams in St. Louis, Mid-Missouri and KC North/St. Joe, a "joke format" remains the statewide standard. Hopefully this time next year we can start talking about the good quizbowl circuit expanding deeper into the Bootheel, Green Hills, and Ozarks.
Do you honestly think this is not what happens? That MOQBA just is an organization that runs tournaments for the same elite teams over and over again? Of course we do everything in our power to contact as many active teams as possible for all our events. Who do you think the teams are who show up to our events infrequently and/or don't make the playoffs routinely, and who come from all over the state to our events? (Also, your 430+ sponsors is a false picture, in reality nowhere near that many teams ever play anything all year, including districts, and lots of those registered teams don't have any kind of quizbowl program at all.) I don't know that I can think of one tournament all year that didn't include teams that could in no way be considered elite or especially active in the high quality circuit, and/or teams from well outside the areas MOQBA is currently entrenched in. We don't have anywhere near universal participation, I know this, but damn, we're doing a whole lot better than you're giving us credit for. We can't be everywhere, and we can't fix everything in only 3 years. Given that we didn't exist when I was in high school, and almost nobody anywhere really cared about good quizbowl, the speed at which MOQBA has caught on is in fact something really mindblowing. Sorry we can't be omnipotent, but I don't appreciate your attitude about us on this issue.

In any case, your response to me is a complete non-sequitur. What does it matter if MSHSAA districts is what the majority of teams in the state are preparing for? That doesn't change that the format is a joke (not a "joke," in quotes, but a bona fide disaster that would be even funnier if not for how horribly it's ruined our circuit), and that Ladue is a team that understands that fact and is doing everything they can to run a tournament that is not a joke. I think rebounds are good, and non-rebounds are also good, but whether or not one is better than the other, what MSHSAA thinks about this does not even enter the equation to a TD who really cares about making their event the best it can be, because what MSHSAA thinks about quizbowl is something that is easily dismissible out of hand. Preparing teams for MSHSAA play is not a priority here, and you should have had enough sense to figure that out when you saw that the tournament was using the 20/20, 30 point bonus format with powers and negs, and not anything close to the MSHSAA format to begin with.

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Re: Ladue Invitational Spring Tournament (LIST) - 4/2/2011

Post by L-Town Expatriate »

(Topic split seems inevitable at this rate, might as well title the split thread "Expat lacks Tiger Blood & Adonis DNA, duh.")

What I consider elite is the same cadre going to the same tournaments where the same teams are competing. Of course: 1) these teams WANT to compete at this level, and they deserve every pat on the back we can give them and 2) these tournaments are run by this passionate and skilled cadre, and they too deserve every pat on the back we can give them.

Unfortunately, MSHSAA has the tendency to cater to the lowest common denominator. All it takes are a few ADs from far-flung corners of the state to complain about certain teams competing in "new-fangled" formats (I'm speculating their words) cleaning up, as Chuq put so eloquently, "meaningless trophies in a joke format", for something to happen that could either go against MOQBA's progress or to the point where outstate schools lose interest in competing altogether. Let's not forget: outstate schools created academic competition as we knew it until a few years ago. They can't be blown off, and when it comes between launching superstars and keeping things level for lackluster programs from schools in counties that are lucky to still have 1,000 people living in them, MSHSAA historically sides with the latter.

Changing the format at the district and state level will not come by NAQT arm-wringing MSHSAA, but by a vast majority of coaches, concurring ADs, and advocates doing the arm-wringing. And this can't just come from schools within 20 miles of the river. It might take awhile, but hopefully this wildfire will consume the state, and we'll see (all hypothetical locales and pairings) Jason & Sean coordinating a tournament in Sikeston on the same day Jeff & Chuq are running one in Nevada, with Sam & Alex pulling one off in Bowling Green.

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Re: Ladue Invitational Spring Tournament (LIST) - 4/2/2011

Post by Mewto55555 »

Primarily our motive in not having bouncebacks was that it would have a non-neglible effect on gameplay time, and Haohang and I were still figuring out the basics of SQBS. We've never run a tournament before, and ending it in a timely manner was a top priority (an ending time of 4:30 for non-finals teams seemed to me to be pretty reasonable, and everyone seemed to appreciate getting out then). To my knowledge, no one complained about not having them.

Plus, its not that hard to make the switch in strategy/general gameplay from "I played a tournament without bouncebacks" to "Now I am playing a tournament with bouncebacks" (as none exists).

EDIT: Doing what Ikshu tell me to.
Last edited by Mewto55555 on Sun Apr 03, 2011 3:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

logic2718
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Re: Ladue Invitational Spring Tournament (LIST) - 4/2/2011

Post by logic2718 »

Mewto55555 wrote:Aside from Ikshu's brief comment on the forums, no one complained about not having them.
Just want to clarify that I wasn't really complaining about not having them, but merely expressing a very slight frustration at not having them. I might also say that I am "frustrated" by ancient history questions purely because I realize I know nothing about ancient history. Now, that doesn't mean I believe that one should get rid of ancient history. I was just expressing a personal preference that has no impact on what I think are legitimate/non-legitimate ways to play the game. So I would be fine if you amended your statement to "No one complained about not having them."
Again, I think the tournament was excellently well run and I have barely any complaints about the whole thing.

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Re: (Late) tournaments preparing teams for MSHSAA districts stuf

Post by cchval »

To go off what Ikshu said, I very much prefer having bouncebacks because it rewards a team with more knowledge if they make a couple costly mistakes or if there are a few weird tossups. However, I also see the importance of tossups to quiz bowl, which is a valid reason for no bouncebacks. So, like Ikshu, I find no bouncebacks frustrating, but I also fully understand why a tournament may not have them, especially considering it was Ladue's first tournament. I also think that in this tournament it made little difference, especially in the afternoon, because of how the difficulty of bonuses were formatted.

Despite my preference for bouncebacks, though, I'd like to reiterate how much we enjoyed this tournament. Kudos to Max and the rest of Ladue for doing such a great job, and I hope they continue to host similarly good tournaments in the future.

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Re: (Late) tournaments preparing teams for MSHSAA districts stuf

Post by octo »

Claiming that MOQBA events are just the same elite teams playing each other over and over is laughable. At my own tournament alone, fully one third of the field consisted of teams that attended hardly any other MOQBA events all year, if any (Warrenton, Southern Boone County x2, Monroe City). Virtually every MOQBA event includes some number of teams inexperienced with good quiz bowl. You don't just get every school competing in good quiz bowl overnight. I think MOQBA is doing a good job of reaching out to a progressively larger audience--just look at the size of Tiger Bowl this year for proof that interest is growing.

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Re: (Late) tournaments preparing teams for MSHSAA districts

Post by Mewto55555 »

L-Town Expatriate wrote:However, no bouncebacks in the last tournament before a district tournament whose format uses bouncebacks is a bit disconcerting.

So why aren't you advocating that we wrote 5 packet of 50 questions per, all of which are mediocre speedchecks, 20 of which have corresponding 2-part bonuses on spelling?

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Re: (Late) tournaments preparing teams for MSHSAA districts

Post by L-Town Expatriate »

Mewto55555 wrote:
L-Town Expatriate wrote:However, no bouncebacks in the last tournament before a district tournament whose format uses bouncebacks is a bit disconcerting.
So why aren't you advocating that we wrote 5 packet of 50 questions per, all of which are mediocre speedchecks, 20 of which have corresponding 2-part bonuses on spelling?
Because it's been established that MSHSAA format is substandard. And were MSHSAA to adopt a 20/20 format, I suspect one of the conditions for it would require bouncebacks. I don't see too many coaches from least common denominator programs going for a format where there are no rebounds, and there'd be enough of a firestorm around the effort to dump the speedcheck first & third quarters.

End of the day, I probably should have made the 5½-hour drive up there to witness myself what's been pretty much defined as the invitational tournament of the decade. It's clear the circuit's skyrocketing to a national level, but until you either convert, replace, overtake or dispose of that albatross around the circuit's neck, it's still going to be dangling from Keane Street. Their competition calendar and capricious interpretation of their own by-laws remain the rule of the game in the state. Their deeming a player from Villa Duchesne equivalent to 2.7 players from Ladue will remain. And no downplaying districts, nor record number of national bids, is going to make them go away or kowtow to creating a better climate.

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Re: (Late) tournaments preparing teams for MSHSAA districts

Post by Charlie Dees »

Kyle, I don't understand what you are even arguing about. We get it, MSHSAA has the official state format and a lot of teams (notably, not many teams in the LIST field) care more about it than more standard national formats, and this won't change until we can get more teams to embrace new formats in new regions in the state. There's not anybody in MOQBA who didn't already know that abundantly well. More importantly, this has absolutely nothing to do with the contentions I've made, that it doesn't matter for Ladue's tournament what MSHSAA thinks because Ladue obviously was holding their individual event to different standards. What is your point?

Edit: I'd just also like to point out that whatever it is you think you're drawing our attention to that we somehow totally missed sight of (that lots of teams like playing a hard-to-change institutional state format) could not be a more fundamental issue to MOQBA. If we knew we could change the MSHSAA format overnight and get universal participation in high quality events, MOQBA would not exist in the first place.

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Re: (Late) tournaments preparing teams for MSHSAA districts

Post by Mewto55555 »

As I said though, switching to no bouncebacks was literally such a minor change that there was not even a single complaint. As LIST's TD, I certainly did not feel beholden to MSHSAA's format with regards to 50/20 or 20/20, so neither did I feel like I had an obligation to follow them on having no bouncebacks, which is pretty much standard of top tournaments nationwide. If we could effect some massive change to MSHSAA format, that'd be nice, but in the grand scheme of things, bouncebacks or not are largely irrelevant.

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Re: (Late) tournaments preparing teams for MSHSAA districts

Post by scphilli »

At this point, if you're going to go to a real national championship, then there is no bouncebacks, there never will be, and no one will care. One needs to just deal. End of discussion.

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Re: (Late) tournaments preparing teams for MSHSAA districts

Post by Charbroil »

scphilli wrote:At this point, if you're going to go to a real national championship, then there is no bouncebacks, there never will be, and no one will care. One needs to just deal. End of discussion.
...PACE NSC?

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Re: (Late) tournaments preparing teams for MSHSAA districts

Post by scphilli »

Ah, have never moderated that. Still, it's a legit choice.

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