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2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 7:24 am
by Jeffrey Hill
Districts are tomorrow. This thread is for general discussion of the various district tournaments. Please post any game scores, all-District teams, etc., to the Districts results thread.

IMPORTANT: Discussion of specific question content immediately after the tournament is NOT allowed in this thread this year, as Jeff Hoppes indicated in the question security reminder sticky:
bt_green_warbler wrote:This is a reminder about question security for the upcoming MSHSAA Districts, Sectionals, and State sets.

Unlike previous years, these questions are being used for later tournaments outside of Missouri.

Therefore: please do not discuss specific question content.

Once NAQT's competition year is over, I will post discussion threads here and on the national forum for specific discussion and commentary on this year's NAQT questions. (Usually this happens around the middle of June.)
However, Jeff has approved the creation of a private forum to allow for discussion of specific question content. To gain access to this forum, go to the usergroups page, find "2011 MSHSAA question discussion", select the radio button to the right, and then click the "Submit" button at the bottom to request access to the board. Jeff or a board administrator must approve your request before you will be given access to the discussion.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 8:27 pm
by socalcaptain
It was a pretty nice competition between Centralia and Fulton today. They're both some strong teams with good players. Despite the fact that Aaron and Dylan are both outstanding, the other members of their teams had some impressive buzzes as well and if they're not graduating, then look for them to stay decently strong next year.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 10:46 pm
by L-Town Expatriate
I moderated at Class 4, District 15 this afternoon. Liberty proved dominant, but there were quite a few nail-biters between the remaining teams. Excelsior Springs and Oak Park provided a decent challenge, and Liberty North even came close a couple times as a team without seniors.

(For clarification: am I allowed to bring up question placement? Because I have quite a few bones to pick with that.)

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 10:54 pm
by Charlie Dees
This set was definitely better than last year, pretty much the same way that driving a Yugo is better than riding a donkey. Make no mistakes, the speedcheck tossups, bad NAQT ideas on how to fill the really dumb MSHSAA distribution parts like communication arts/agriculture, games that are as endless as our war on terrorism, completely random scheduling, and absurd district assignments kept this tournament strongly in the usual MSHSAA tradition of sucking.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 11:03 pm
by cchval
I may be completely wrong, but I felt that the distribution was not completely consistent. That may just be because of how stuff was grouped (communication arts...) or the odd randomization. However, I still think it was a definite improvement over last year. Some of the questions were laugh-out-loud funny in their horribleness, but there seemed to be some attempts at a pyramidal style. Needless to say, it was well below the standard of good quiz bowl, but after last year's suckfest, I was somewhat pleasantly surprised.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 11:07 pm
by Mewto55555
I think one person to-be-remained-anonymous put it best when they said that the first round of the district 4 tournament could easily have been the state championship game (us v. Clayton) in a legitimate tournament format.

I remember the blight of last year, and this was certainly better (for one thing, we didn't have to lodge any protests!) However, some of the questions were downright terrible. The speedchecks had good internal pyramidality, but I think NAQT should definitely push for MSHSAA to use their 20/20 sets next year, as a good speedcheck is still terrible. Some of the answerlines were equally questionable (especially the grammar. that was terrible. NEVER AGAIN)

Also, I think the time frame of districts could be re-evaluated. Our district was very well run, and our rounds were finishing in 30-45 min. In other words, we started at 2 and could have finished easily in 5*45+break=225+awards break equals about 4 hours, to end at 6. However, one of the team's coaches had urgent reservations at Imo's for dinner, so we couldn't plow ahead, and MSHSAA rules apparently backed him up. This is just stupid. There's no reason to have dinner at 4:15 and finish at 7:45, when we could be out by 6.

This is not to disparage any of the teams we played against, who offered some exciting games, or Rosati-Kain (is that hyphenated?), who did a magnificent job hosting.

So I suppose my general take on this is: better than QG, but worse than good quizbowl. It'd be really nice if NAQT could use some degree of leverage that they have to persuade MSHSAA to switch to 20/20 or something, but I don't forsee that happening.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 11:10 pm
by L-Town Expatriate
cchval wrote:I may be completely wrong, but I felt that the distribution was not completely consistent. That may just be because of how stuff was grouped (communication arts...) or the odd randomization. However, I still think it was a definite improvement over last year. Some of the questions were laugh-out-loud funny in their horribleness, but there seemed to be some attempts at a pyramidal style. Needless to say, it was well below the standard of good quiz bowl, but after last year's suckfest, I was somewhat pleasantly surprised.
It was not consistent. Annoyed the heck out of me and at least one coach I was speaking to before the playoffs.

And it did feel weird having only two bonus parts. "Here's a bonus, here's another bonus, tossup." Yeah, definitely flows better with three parts, even four if enough old farts were to clamor for a return to the previous setup & get their way.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 11:12 pm
by CentraliaCoach
Time wasn't really an issue either; our longest match was maybe 40 minutes, and we heard pretty much every bonus. But we had some good readers.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 11:16 pm
by cchval
And it did feel weird having only two bonus parts. "Here's a bonus, here's another bonus, tossup." Yeah, definitely flows better with three parts, even four if enough old farts were to clamor for a return to the previous setup & get their way.
Yeah, I'm also not a big fan of the 15/10/15/10, especially with the ridiculously easy bonus parts. It's like making two rounds with tossups worth 10 and two rounds with them worth 30. It also meant that I cost my team 20 points in the championship game when I interrupted my teammate's buzz with "It's a bonus" because it was tossup 2 of the 3rd round.

But, thinking about it, having 3 bonuses in the current format would only exacerbate the problem. I doubt there would be a significantly harder 3rd part, making the 15-tossup rounds even more meaningless. Maybe back to the four 5-point bonuses? I don't know. Or 20/20? That sounds good.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 11:18 pm
by Mewto55555
Or how about we move to 20/20, eh?

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 11:36 pm
by L-Town Expatriate
Mewto55555 wrote:I think NAQT should definitely push for MSHSAA to use their 20/20 sets next year, as a good speedcheck is still terrible. Some of the answerlines were equally questionable (especially the grammar. that was terrible. NEVER AGAIN)



So I suppose my general take on this is: better than QG, but worse than good quizbowl. It'd be really nice if NAQT could use some degree of leverage that they have to persuade MSHSAA to switch to 20/20 or something, but I don't forsee that happening.
This may shock some people: I agree wholeheartedly.

For this to work, though, there would have to be a sledgehammer taken to the rules. And good chance there are still counties in this state where the kids have never heard of NAQT, PACE or ACF. We've seen Ladue, Mizzou, Jeff City, and others host excellent tournaments that bring in nearby teams as well as the power-hitters; we need to look to introducing tournaments in other parts of the state to fuel the fire.

Certainly the advisory committee should discuss the prospect and begin transitioning the state to a 20/20 format that ensures that teams in a district/sectional/state play each other once before going to a knockout/repechage. But unlike this erratic nutter who wants to see more action/advocacy/defiance and see it ASAP, it probably will take a few years. And it will require the best and the brightest to sow the seeds and fuel the fire in far-flung parts of the state. We are going to need to get invitationals going in Neosho, Bethany, Palmyra, Plato, Clopton, Adrian. We're going to need to work with MACA, MOQBA and even MSHSAA to come up with a standard addressing intricacies of the 20/20 game at the district/sectional/state level (bouncebacks, OT, negs/powers, etc.)

And then we need to come up with a better playoff system. The current system sucks, but at the same time just having one open state-wide invitational (or four, if basing it on population breaks) is going to be pure chaos. And you're not going to be able to fully escape geographical restrictions; you don't want to introduce a system where one powerhouse a mile away from another is able to run off to a desolate district and clean up there so as to not create a showdown at the district level. Wrestling's found a way to do that; it's called advancing more than one team to state from a district and wrestlebacks at state. Ditto for cross country, track, tennis, etc. The districts have to remain, but creating a redundant system, introducing repechages or wildcards for playoff teams will make it less disappointing for teams who come up short or have an off-day at districts.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 11:53 pm
by Charlie Dees
I think we already created the best possible state format when we proposed to have the top 2 teams in 8 districts each advance to a 4 team sectional with their neighbor, and then advance the top 2 teams by record from there to state. It perhaps would not be perfect, since it wouldn't address districts like the one I read for today where 3 teams could all do very well at state, but this presents as good a compromise as can be made between allowing for geographical limitations on the state field and actually making sure the field contains lots of contending teams. Then an 8 team state field with a better format could easily allow for a 7 game round robin and then a finals series. However, we saw what happened when the advisory committee tried to do this exact sectional format, and it was pretty ugly, so I have no faith in this being seriously dealt with.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 12:13 am
by L-Town Expatriate
ashkenaziCD wrote:I think we already created the best possible state format when we proposed to have the top 2 teams in 8 districts each advance to a 4 team sectional with their neighbor, and then advance the top 2 teams by record from there to state. It perhaps would not be perfect, since it wouldn't address districts like the one I read for today where 3 teams could all do very well at state, but this presents as good a compromise as can be made between allowing for geographical limitations on the state field and actually making sure the field contains lots of contending teams. Then an 8 team state field with a better format could easily allow for a 7 game round robin and then a finals series. However, we saw what happened when the advisory committee tried to do this exact sectional format, and it was pretty ugly, so I have no faith in this being seriously dealt with.
I do remember that, and it was the best option thus far. Would be nice to hammer out other schemes, if only to shoot the breeze.

If they need more sledgehammers to get the sectional quads on the table again, I'm sure we'll have plenty on hand.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 1:19 am
by octo
the improvement in question quality effectively highlighted the fact that the format/distribution/everything else is broken... questions of any caliber suck under these constraints. atrocious tournaments such as these have no place deciding any sort of state champion.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 2:21 am
by logic2718
I think these boards have seen plenty of discussion, elaboration, and debate on exactly why this sort of "quiz bowl" sucks. although this was very different from last year and, in my opinion, markedly better, almost all of the old complaints apply. rather than explain this out, I think I'll just cite the hundreds of prior posts on these forums about MSHSAA atrociousness and let that be my stance.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 9:39 am
by Jeffrey Hill
Jeff Hoppes from NAQT has approved the creation of a private forum to allow for discussion of specific question content. To gain access to this forum, go to the usergroups page, find "2011 MSHSAA question discussion", select the radio button to the right, and then click the "Submit" button at the bottom to request access to the board. Jeff or a board administrator must approve your request before you will be given access to the discussion.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 3:45 pm
by Mewto55555
Also, am I the only one who thinks the recognition rules are inordinately stupid? Like, in one round (was it finals?), we had an experience where the scorekeeper literally pointed at Zev, who answered, only to be told that his name had to be said.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 3:58 pm
by socalcaptain
There are a lot of things, outside of the 50/20 game format, that can be done to streamline MSHSAA scholar bowl.

For instance, as you said, the recognition rule can be done away with. The MSHSAA scoresheet can also be streamlined and made easier to follow (right now, it doesn't follow the game straight through, which is frustrating). Rather than a strict "you must say 'defer'" rule, we could take the first answer directed on a bonus.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 4:08 pm
by octo
Yeah, between Ahsen and Hughes, the latter attending his first tournament ever, we ran afoul of the recognition rule upwards of ten times. It's incredibly frustrating when the outcome of a game is affected by anything other than, you know, answering questions.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 4:37 pm
by christino
socalcaptain wrote:the recognition rule can be done away with.
qbwiki wrote:This archaic practice is thought to be from the television days.
Is that true? Or is there another reason behind it other than being an outdated tradition?

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 8:04 pm
by scphilli
Actually qbwiki has it wrong. It's from the days of when College Bowl was on radio (Thus the viewing audience had no idea what was going on without it.) and the games were done via remote hookup. That meaning that each team was at their own campus so there was no way for anyone to follow the match at hand as it was occuring over a vast expanse of distance. This is an archaic rule, and it certainly needs to be done away with along with the ridiculous minimum of player rule which does nothing but penalize teams for no apparent reason.

Re: 2011 MSHSAA Districts Discussion

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 6:55 pm
by DeckardCain
Digression about seriousness of teams, four player rule, prom, etc. has been moved to here.