Inspirations for this post (potentially a series of posts) include:
I've never met West Berkeley Flats (that I know of) and my knowledge of his part in qb lore is sporadic, though I've found his recent posts (and comments here) interesting.
Apparently my wife and I are minor characters in a recent work of non-fiction that I haven't gotten around to reading yet.
I realized the other day that there are people already playing college quiz bowl who weren't born yet the first time I picked up a buzzer in high school.
Since I couldn't decide which order of chronology to use, let's work inward:
I've been an NAQT member since 1999 and a writer before that. Most of my resulting time commitment involves writing questions. Nearly 100% of what I write for NAQT is tailored to the last-minute needs lists of specific packet set. For college, I read at Sectionals and at the Intercollegiate Championship Tournament (was control room at four ICTs but four is enough for me there). I'm in the control room for High School National Championship Tournaments (and in 2004 sent out the Request for Proposal that put us in touch with the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare among other hotels).
Aside from that I read for Bay Area h.s. or college tournaments when asked to (if I can make it that weekend). I sometimes write trash packs to acquire trash tournament sets (you'd think I'd do something useful with the acquired questions). I used to send a freelance pack to the ACF Nationals set editor every year, really more for the exercise of writing in that style than the packet sets themselves, but that's time-consuming enough that it's been forever since I did.
It's been so long since I played at an academic tournament that I've forgotten when or where my last one was (thus achieving a goal), though I play TRASH Regionals yearly, made it to the 2004 TRASHionals, and might make it to Trash Master some year (not 2006). Speaking of "might make it," if I ever play academic questions again then the Vancouver summer tournament is as likely a place as any (should I brush up on Canadiana?).
On the flip side: I did MathCounts as a 7th and 8th grader. In 1988 (8th grade spring) I made it onto a local newscast's weekly profile of high-achieving local kids. The week my segment was taped, the segment that aired focused on a senior from the Booker T. Washington "academic bowl" team. They showed footage of practice and it looked like fun.
In my time at BTW, our big goal each year was to attend (and excel at) the championship tournament of Questions Unlimited: New Orleans in 1989; Houston three years in a row after that. Teams I was on went a combined 20-3 (give or take a win) counting both the "guaranteed" matches (was two per year, then bumped up to three per year) and the ensuing 32-team single elimination.
Contrast that long-ago format (and QU's tournament at Oklahoma State, which as of 1989 thru 1992 was entirely a 32-team single elim) with the modern HSNCT, where 2006 was the nth year in a row that every team played 10 games Saturday and the double-elim playoffs (for every team that went 6-4 or better) gave the best teams several more games. (N.B. the intended point here is "then vs. now" rather than QU vs. NAQT. I really don't know what the former do now.)
Anyway, 50+ gamerooms running at once is pretty nifty, though it generates a whole lot of scoresheets (four full-time stat people doing data entry, plus me and two other bracketmeister types).
More some other time.
Posted by Matt Bruce at November 22, 2006 09:53 PM