Academic Competition Newsletter Vol. VI issue 2 editors: Eric Owens and Gaius Stern Oct. 1999 Welcome to the second issue of the sixth year of the Academic Competition Newsletter. The primary mission of the newsletter is to spread information about QB to new players and schools. To get a free subscription (or drop it), just write the editors and ask to be (un)subscribed. When posting questions or gripes, however, please write only to the editors and not to the entire subscription list. The newsletter will endeavor to report fully on all QB events for teams West of the Mississippi or of interest to those teams, continuing the earlier policy to extend coverage towards the Midwest. As always, subscribers are encouraged to write the newsletter editors with columns, tournament invitations, opinions, corrections, and especially tournament results. Eric Owens Gaius Stern etowens@feist.com gaius@uclink4.berkeley.edu Contents: Calendar High School Tournaments list Berkeley arranges discount buzzer purchase Invitations to: Oklahoma Wichita St. Illinois Berkeley WIT Quincy Quiz-Bowl Media Page How to start a new quiz-bowl program FALL 1999 QUIZBOWL INVITATIONAL CALENDAR Oct 2 Missouri-Rolla Contact: Ben Lea Oct 9 Oklahoma Contact: Dan Beshear Oct 16 Iowa Contact: Nichol Vogeler Oct 23 Wichita St Contact: Eric Owens Illinois Contact: Subash Maddipoti Oct 30 Berkeley WIT Contact: Mike Usher Minnesota (Deep Bench) Contact: Dave Dorman Quincy Contact: Brian Dever Nov 6 TRASH Regionals at following sites: California-Irvine Contact: Willie Chen Missouri-Kansas City Contact: Amit Adhawan Texas-Austin Contact: Jeff Ford Nov 13 NAQT Conference Tournaments at following sites: Cal-Tech Contact: Chris Nolte Illinois Contact: Mike Angel Iowa State Contact: Joel Uckelman Nov 20 Washington-St Louis Contact: Roger Bhan Texas-Austin (NAQT Conference Tournament) Contact: Jeff Ford Dec 4 Washington-St Louis Contact: Ken Mitchell HIGH SCHOOL TOURNAMENTS LIST This list is provided as a guide to those tournament directors who are trying to decide dates for their tournaments, so that they might be able to schedule around dates that schools who would be likely to attend their tournament have already scheduled their high school tournaments for. These are the tournaments that the editors are aware of at this time; please feel free to notify either Eric or Gaius of other events. Oct 23 Arkansas Oct 30 Oklahoma Nov 6 California-Santa Barbara Dec 4 Berkeley Certamen -- HS Latin Bowl Jan 15 California-Irvine Jan 22 Wichita St BERKELEY ARRANGES DISCOUNT BUZZER PURCHASE The UC Berkeley Quizbowl Club and Gaius Stern have arranged a discount with the Creative Electronics Design buzzer company which manufactures the Quizwizard II system. This is the infamous "Gordian Knot" system featured on the MD Academic Club webpage. The price of the system is: $500 for 12 players, $575 for 16 players and FREE Shipping. This represents about $30 off the regular price and whatever the shipping expenses are (probably another $40). If you wish to buy this system, write to with questions and info. You need to say what size system you want and the address to ship it to. Once it arrives, send the check directly to the company. The company has a website at www.c-e-d-inc.com but it is not very helpful. You can also get a discount with the Judge, and Specialty Design Corps just by calling them and saying you read about them in the newsletter for college quizbowl. OKLAHOMA ROUTE 66 CLASSIC V The University of Oklahoma Academic Team will be hosting Route 66 Classic V: The Series, on October 9th, 1999. Matches will be played in the NAQT tossup-and-bonus format using NAQT questions, in untimed rounds. The tournament will be round-robin, with a single-elimination championship tournament to determine the winner. Teams will get a minimum of ten games, unless they leave early. The tournament will be broken up into "Open" and "Junior Bird" brackets. "Open" is open to teams whose members consist of students currently enrolled at a college or university and are not NAQT question writers (since we are using NAQT questions). The "Junior Bird" division will consist of teams whose players are first-year NAQTers, including those who have played in College Bowl's Honda Challenge. Note: the Junior Bird division will be scrapped if less than four teams indicate interest. For more information, contact Dan Beshear at . WICHITA ST TO HOST JUNIOR TURKEY QUIZ-FEST III The Wichita State University Academic Quiz Team is pleased to announce its third annual "junior-bird" tournament, Junior Turkey Quiz-Fest III. This year's tournament will be held on Saturday, October 23, 1999, on the campus of Wichita State University. We will be playing official NAQT rules, including 9 minute halves. Eligibility for this year's tournament will be slightly different than in the past. All participants must meet ONE of the following requirements: * Meet NAQT Division II eligibility (Freshmen, first-year player, or JUCO player) OR * Attend a school that has only played in CBCI competition in the last 2 years OR * Have never averaged 15 points/game in intercollegiate competition. Obviously all participants will be on the honor system on this last point, but at least SOME checking will be done. For more info contact TD Eric Owens at . ILLINIFEST ‘99 The tournament will be held on October 22-23, 1999. Thus, it will be a Fri-Sat event beginning no earlier than 7 PM on Friday evening. Packet submission is not required. The distribution will be strict ACF distribution with an extra pop culture/sports question thrown in. Matches will consist of 21 tossups and accompanying boni. This is an open tournament, so anyone can play (bastard teams are fine as well). There will be prizes awarded to top collegiate teams. For more information, contact Subash Maddipoti at . BERKELEY TO HOST WESTERN INVITATIONAL VII "The Halley-Hermes Interplanetary Buzzer Collision" In honor of recent Berkeley Ph.D. Jeff Newman (Astronomy), the Berkeley Quiz Bowl Club is pleased to announce WIT VII: The Halley-Hermes Interplanetary Buzzer Collision, an academic competition to be held on 29-30 Oct. 1999. This name commemorates the 343rd anniversary of the birth of Sir Edmund Halley, and the survival of the planet Earth, which was nearly struck by the minor planet Hermes on October 30, 1937. Following WIT VII, we intend to run a trash tournament, Unabuzzer 9, which will be formally announced at a later date. The tournament (# teams permitting) will be divided into 2 brackets, open division and jv division. Both divisions will play untimed rounds of 20 questions. We request that each team in the Open division submit one packet of questions. This request is backed up with financial incentives. JV teams need not submit a packet (but they may). Schools are encouraged to send multiple teams but MUST keep rounds submitted by each team blind to one another. For further details please contact Tournament Praetor Mike Usher or consult the Berkeley Quizbowl webpage. QUINCY QUACK VIII Quincy University is hosting QUACK VIII on October 30, 1999 in Francis hall on the Quincy University campus. QUACK VIII will be an NAQT-style untimed tournament. The tournament is temporarily limited to 16 teams but we will accept up to 24 if there is enough interest. The Quincy University ScholarHawks reserve the right to limits the number of teams from any particular school. Teams must consist entirely of people in their first six years of higher education. "Masters" teams will be allowed only after student teams have registered. Because student teams are preferred, "masters" teams will not be eligible to win the tournament title. The registration deadline is currently set for October 9 at 11:59 p.m.. We reserve the right to extend the deadline to allow for more teams if need be. Please direct any questions and registrations to Brian Dever at . QUIZ-BOWL MEDIA PAGE Andy Goss of Duke University has launched a quiz-bowl media page, designed to increase awareness of the game. Those schools with active programs are requested to submit previews for their teams. The present version of the site is available at http://www.duke.edu/~apg/qbmedia/index.html. For more information, or to submit your team’s preview, contact Andy at . HOW TO START A QUIZ-BOWL PROGRAM Hayden Hurst of the University of Delaware has a web page that provides a good deal of useful advice for those of you who are interested in establishing quiz-bowl programs. The link is: http://members.tripod.com/~hurstrh/start.htm. Coming next month: Results of October tournaments Invites to: TRASH Regionals NAQT Conference Tournaments Washington-St Louis Until then, Eric & Gaius