Difference between revisions of "Illinois Scholastic Bowl"

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Illinois Scholastic Bowl is the high school quizbowl format used by some tournaments in Illinois. Scholastic Bowl is governed by rules and policies set forth by the Illinois High School Association (IHSA).

History

Little Quizbowl on the Prairie (1960s-1985)

Quizbowl in Illinois can be traced back at least as far back as the 1960s, and was originally more popular in Downstate Illinois than in the Chicago area. One of the first tournaments in the state to gain notability was the Senior Challenge held in Streator, which was open only to high school seniors. Questions were written by locals, and lockout systems were homemade. Local businesses sponsored the tournament, which was organized by the local Rotary Club.

Certainly, there were other tournaments, with each tournament having a unique twist to their format. This became the key thread running through Illinois quizbowl throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s: there was no universal set of rules.

The Open Era (1986-1991)

By 1985, the popularity of the activity was notable enough for numerous coaches and school administrators to petition the Illinois High School Association (IHSA) for formal recognition as a competitive activity. With recognition came a codification of the rules, and the recognition of a state champion. From 1986 to 1991, all teams competed in one class, and were placed into 16 geographic sectional tournaments. The 16 winners of those tournaments advanced to a single elimination tournament.

Two Classes (1992 - 2000)

By 1991 the growth of the competition was such that there were enough teams to split into two classes of schools. The Class A schools would consist of the smaller schools, while the Class AA schools were the larger schools.

While IMSA had already won two state titles in the Open Era, it would dominate this era, winning five Class AA State Titles in nine years.

One System (2001-present)

By 1999, two problems had evolved that could no longer be ignored.

The first problem revolved around the unified rules codified by the IHSA in 1986. While there was only one set of rules to govern Scholastic Bowl in Illinois, there had grown many regional interpretations which had, in effect, returned Illinois to a state prior to having a single set of rules. The original rules, which are fairly similar to today's Terms & Conditions, contained many details about tournament structure but little information on match mechanics such as the acceptability of certain answers.

The solution was twofold: The first response was a rewriting of the rule book, organizing it based on standard National Federation of Athletics Rule books to make them more user friendly. Even though the rule book became quite long, the new rules were a defense against coaches and officials who attempted to use minor details in rules to swing matches. The new rules put more focus on opening up game play, and started to de-emphasize behavior-oriented rules which were commonly used to penalize teams over infractions irrelevant to their knowledge. The new rules also added the first permissibility of challenges to questions and answers.

The second part of the solution was to proactively prevent another degradation of the rules into regional interpretations. An addendum to the new rule book was created: a case manual of illustration on how to properly apply rules in game situations.

The Question-Writing Cabal

The second problem to be addressed was question quality. Illinois quizbowl had, over its history, been almost exclusively tied to short "buzzer-beater" questions, with bonus questions that were often patterned and varied wildly in difficulty. Teams had learned to expect incorrect answers in packets and vague questions that led to arguments. As more and more teams began to see how quizbowl was played in other states, the demands for better questions crescendoed.

While individual tournaments could easily change their questions, the IHSA State Series was contractually tied to a question vendor which provided free questions to the IHSA in return for resale rights. Despite pleas from coaches, quality did not improve over the decade of their use, and with the IHSA run by people more interested in keeping costs low than in good quizbowl, there was little chance that these questions would change, despite numerous complaints every year to the IHSA. Because these questions were used in the State Series and were fairly repetitive, many coaches felt obliged to purchase them independently and continue supporting the vendor.

In 1999, a new proposal was made to IHSA leadership: the IHSA could hire a group of current coaches from outside the state and former coaches to write questions for a fee, while the IHSA retained the rights to the questions and their resale. Estimates showed that the program could be cost-neutral or nearly so. That, paired with the higher than normal complaints over question quality, convinced the IHSA to go in a new direction.

The question-writing cabal remains secretive; even those inside it are deliberately kept as in-the-dark as possible. After the questions for 2009 were particularly awful, Jonah Greenthal explored several channels to find out as much as he could about it; what he discovered is documented here. Writers who have outed themselves include Greenthal, Matt Laird (beginning 2010), Trygve Meade, and Kelly Tourdot; while self-outed former writers include Tom Egan, Donald Taylor, and Matt Weiner.

This change eventually resulted in somewhat more pyramidal questions in some categories of the State Series, though the IHSA questions vary widely in pyramidality because many writers appear uninterested in pyramidality, the Terms & Conditions only specify that pyramidality is "preferred", and the head editor does not keep up with modern quizbowl standards. While there were complaints about question length and difficulty from some schools, the effect was to push for more tournaments with more pyramidal questions, and to better introduce Illinois teams to quizbowl beyond the State, though the bonus format most commonly used remains incompatible with standard packets. Progress is uneven, since question choices are left to individual tournament directors. Since 1999, more and more Illinois teams have been attending out-of-state tournaments and hosting tournaments in nationally accepted formats, bringing Illinois into the greater circle of national quizbowl.

Match Format

Teams can have five players active at a time instead of four. IHSA rules require that a team have five eligible players to start a match, though virtually no tournaments in Illinois enforce this during the season.

In the IHSA State Series, matches are untimed, and consist of 30 toss-up and bonus questions. During the regular season, few tournaments use more than 20 questions in a round, and some use only 16.

The IHSA distribution (for rounds of 30/30) is as follows:

6/6 Science
- 2/2, 2/1, or 1/2 each of biology, chemistry, physics
- 1/1 taken from two different ones of astronomy, earth science, general science, health
6/6 Mathematics
- 2/2 each of algebra/precalculus, geometry/trigonometry/analytic geometry
- 1/1 calculus
- 1/0 or 0/1 combinatorics/probability/statistics
- 1/0 or 0/1 of either general math or number theory
6/6 Social Studies
- 2/1 or 1/2 each of US and world history
- 2/2 from at least two different ones of geography, current events (within the past year), government (US or comparative; not Illinois)
- 1/1 from two different ones of psychology/sociology, religion, economics, philosophy/political science
6/6 Literature and Language Arts
- 2/1 or 1/2 each of US and British literature
- 1/1 world literature
- 1/1 mythology
- 1/1 taken from two different ones of grammar/usage, spelling, speech, vocabulary
4/4 Fine Arts
- 2/2 art history
- 1/1 classical music history
- 1/0 or 0/1 of either opera, jazz, musical theatre
- 1/0 or 0/1 of either music theory or art theory
2/2 Miscellaneous
- 1/1 interdisciplinary
- 1/1 taken from two different ones of journalism, sports, technology, agriculture, family and consumer science, driver's education, industrial arts, pop culture, consumer education

There must be at least five computational math tossups, no more than one computational science tossup, and no more than six computational tossups total per round. There are no restrictions on computational bonuses. Tossups and bonuses are paired and never come from the same major category. The last three tossups and bonuses may not include any questions from the Miscellaneous category.

Ties are broken by complete tossup-bonus cycles.

All tossups are worth 10 points, with no powers or negs. Bonuses have either three, four, or five parts worth a total of 20 points each. Three-part bonuses earn teams six points for the first part they get correct, 13 points if two are answered correctly, or 20 for all three; four-part bonuses are worth five points per part; five-part bonuses are worth four points per part. People seem to think this is okay because "it helps prevent ties" and "three-part bonuses' parts are harder than those of four- or five-part bonuses, while five-part bonuses' parts are easier than those of three- or four-part bonuses", even though the first reason is silly and the latter is nonsensical since it's unrealistic for anyone to modulate the difficulty of their questions that precisely. Teams have 30 seconds (which they may end early) to work on all the bonus parts at once; parts not answered correctly by the controlling team rebound to the other, which has no additional conferral time.

Rules of Interest

The following rules are rather unique to play in Illinois.[1] '*3-E-2' Players may not call time outs, but may quietly signal their coach to call one.

4-B-1b Players who give correct answers, but do so without being recognized, by name, by the moderator, earn only five points for the toss-up instead of the ten points. (This is a change from the rule which, until roughly 2004, forced moderators to rule the answer as incorrect.)
4-B-8 If a required form or constraint for an answer is specified in the question, answers in a different form should be ruled incorrect with no prompting, unless the alternative form is specified as "accept also" along with the answer on the question set. If the answer is given after an early buzz, before the required form or constraint is specified, and it meets the intent of the entire question and the answer given is justifiably equivalent to the printed answer but does not match the required form or constraint (e.g. decimal instead of fraction, noun instead of adjective, singular instead of plural, etc), then it should be ruled correct.
4-I-2 Players may not file protests. Only coaches can.
All team members must have "similar" uniform tops to play, and they must be tasteful and appropriate. Of special note is the final case listed in the case manual, specifically forbidding prison jumpsuits, (the "Decatur-MacArthur case"). This particular case was ordered included from the then Executive Director H. David Fry after the team from MacArthur High School, protesting the new uniform rule, arrived at State in orange prison jumpsuits stenciled with "IHSA Department of Corrections".
IHSA By Law 5.340[2] limits Scholastic Bowl teams to competing on no more than 18 dates between late August and early March, and no more than 1 date outside that time frame. Scholastic Bowl is the only activity with such a restriction, though it is common for sports. Until 2005, this also barred off-season practice and competition, though a proposal made at that time permitted off-season contact and very limited participation. Fortunately, only five-on-five matches count towards these restrictions.
Another controversial rule is the IHSA policy of advancing geographical representatives to their athletic and activity State Championship Tournaments, meaning that the final eight teams at that tournament are not intended to be the best eight teams in the state.
At State, teams are randomly divided into 2 pools of 4 (for each class). This can lead to one extremely difficult pool and one easy pool, such as at the 2007 IHSA State Championship Tournament.

Notable annual tournaments

A complete list of tournaments in Illinois can be found on the IHSSBCA's site. Notable recurring tournaments include the following:

Earlybird - October - Formerly a housewrite by UIUC and now using questions from HSAPQ, this tournament is usually the first tournament of the season and lately uses the (new as of 2010) PACE format.
Ultima at Loyola Academy - formerly held in October but now moving to January, which used to use the format of the Panasonic Academic Challenge and now uses mACF format
IHSSBCA Kickoff - mid-November - hosted in several locations across the state, this tournament used to mark the "start" of the season, but several tournaments have arisen prior to its usual date. Combined across sites, it has the largest turnout of any tournament except for the IHSA and Masonic series.
Scobol Solo - mid-November - hosted by New Trier, it is a solo contest attracting over 100 top players each year.
The Decemberist - early December - Held at Rock Valley College (except in 2009, when it was hosted at Maine South), this tournament uses mACF format.
HFT mirror - at Auburn
New Trier Varsity - last Saturday before Winter Break - Started in 2005 by Carlo Angiuli and Nick Matchen, this marks the first tournament written by current students. The success of this tournament led to the beginning of Aegis Questions, and since 2007 has used mACF format.
Wildcat - Held at Northwestern, this tournament used timed NAQT format through 2008, and for much of that time was the only NAQT tournament in Illinois. It used to have was over 40 teams coming from as far as Michigan, but attendance has dropped precipitously since.
Masonic tournament - mid-February - many sectionals are held across the state, followed two weeks later by the state finals. This used to be in IHSA format, but now uses a format unique to itself featuring bonuses that are not bonuses.
NAQT State - late February
UIUC Solo - late February - held in conjunction with the NAQT State Tournament starting in 2008
IHSA State Series - early to mid March. Single-elimination regionals are held at 32 sites per class across the state, with the winners advancing to round-robin sectionals at 8 sites per class, the winners of which go on to State.

Many people consider the IHSA State Series to crown the state champion. The major problems with this paradigm include a failure to assure the advancement of top teams (deferring to geographic representation), poor question quality, a poor distribution, and a poor match format. While the first of these is not likely to ever change because of the IHSA constitution, attempts are ongoing to rectify the latter three.

The Masonic, while the oldest of the four (starting in 1983), has been regarded as a lesser championship due to the smaller pool of teams playing (less than 300 teams, compared to the roughly 500 in the IHSA tournaments). The tournament has also had the same long standing problem with advancement of good teams and poor questions. The use of Aegis Questions in 2008 did a great deal to solve the problem of question quality, but the Masons regressed for the 2010 series to Questions Galore questions and a very strange new format.

Top Teams from the IHSA State Championship Tournament

Clicking on the year brings you to the article showing the full results for each year's State Championship Tournament.

State Championship Results

Three or More Top 4 Finishes

15 - The Latin School of Chicago
10 - Illinois Math & Science Academy
9 - Wheaton North
8 - Auburn
6 - Quincy Senior
5 - New Trier
5 - Carbondale
4 - MacArthur
4 - Carlinville
4 - Winnebago
3 - Joliet Catholic Academy
3 - Streator Township
3 - Hinsdale Central
3 - St. Teresa

Three or More Consecutive Top 4 Finishes

8 - Wheaton North (2001-08)
8 - The Latin School of Chicago (2002-09)
8 - Auburn (2002-09)
4 - The Latin School of Chicago (1992-95)
4 - Illinois Math & Science Academy (1996-2000)
3 - Joliet Catholic Academy (1988-90)
3 - Illinois Math & Science Academy (1992-94)
3 - Winnebago (1993-95)
3 - Streator Township (1998-2000)

Famous/Infamous collegiate players

Notable former players who are famous for something else

Kristin Castillo - Macomb - Miss Illinois, 2001[3], [4], [5]
Hillary Clinton (nee Rodham) - Maine South - US Secretary of State

External Links

IHSSBCA Web Site[6]
IHSA Scholastic Bowl page[7]
IHSA Scholastic Bowl Champions and Tournament Results [8]
For an example of why people make fun of Illinois Scholastic Bowl, try [9]

Years	AA Champion	AA Second Place	A Champion	A Second Place
1986-87	Quincy Senior	Salem
1987-88	Quincy Senior	Wheaton Central
1988-89	IMSA	Breese Central
1989-90	IMSA	Joliet Catholic Academy
1990-91	Centralia	Cary-Grove
1991-92	Hinsdale Central	Bradley-Bourbonnais	Rockridge	Harrisburg
1992-93	Quincy Senior	IMSA	Winnebago	Latin School
1993-94	IMSA	Bradley-Bourbonnais	Latin School	Brimfield
1994-95	Richwoods	New Trier	Winnebago	Latin School
1995-96	IMSA	MacArthur	Niantic-Harristown	Beardstown
1996-97	IMSA	Carbondale	St. Teresa	Byron
1997-98	IMSA	Hinsdale Central	Latin School	St. Teresa
1998-99	IMSA	MacArthur	University (Normal)	PORTA
1999-2000	Stevenson	Naperville Central	Byron	University (Normal)
2000-01	IMSA	Wheaton North	Warrensburg-Latham	Carlinville
2001-02	Wheaton North	Hinsdale Central	Latin School	Carterville
2002-03	Wheaton North	Auburn (Rockford)	Stillman Valley	Carlinville
2003-04	Wheaton North	Stevenson	Latin School	Carterville
2004-05	Stevenson	Wheaton North	Latin School	Eureka
2005-06	Fremd	Carbondale	Latin School	Illinois Valley Central
2006-07	New Trier	Wheaton North	Lutheran Schools Association (Decatur)	Columbia
2007-08	Auburn	Stevenson	PORTA	Byron
2008-09	Carbondale	Auburn	Latin	Litchfield