Difference between revisions of "Charlie Steinhice"

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Director of various tournaments and team coach at [[UTC]]. Associated with [[funn]] and [[UTC disk issues|losing stats]].
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Charlie Steinhice is a former quizbowl player at [[WUSTL]], [[Tennessee]], and [[UTC]] as well as a longtime tournament director and team coach at [[UTC]].
  
==Playing Career==
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==Early Playing Career==
  
 
Steinhice was involved in the [[WUSTL]] team that lost the [[1978 College Bowl NCT|first College Bowl NCT]] to [[Stanford]] in 1978. He later finished his education at [[Tennessee]], where he played on the team that won the [[1991 ACF Nationals|first ACF Nationals]] with [[Robert Trent]] and others, under the coaching of [[Carol Guthrie]].
 
Steinhice was involved in the [[WUSTL]] team that lost the [[1978 College Bowl NCT|first College Bowl NCT]] to [[Stanford]] in 1978. He later finished his education at [[Tennessee]], where he played on the team that won the [[1991 ACF Nationals|first ACF Nationals]] with [[Robert Trent]] and others, under the coaching of [[Carol Guthrie]].
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==UTC==
 
==UTC==
  
At some point in the 1990s, Steinhice moved to Chattanooga and became the advisor to the [[UTC]] quizbowl team (it is unknown whether Steinhice actually had a faculty position at UTC or was just an outside volunteer). Since 1998 UTC, under Steinhice's direction, has run a lengthy lineup of tournaments including the fall "Trevor's Trivia: Bob Selcer Memorial" and spring "Trevor's Trivia: Dennis Haskins Open" high school tournaments, the fall [[Center of the Known Universe Open]], winter [[Sword Bowl]], and spring [[Moon Pie]] collegiate academic tournaments, and the fall [[Big Lots Clearance Open]] and spring [[RC Cola]] trash tournaments. Other tournaments such as the "[[ACF Detox]]" trash, the [[Moc Masters]] and [[Muck Masters]] summer academic and trash tournaments, and mirrors of the [[HSNCT]] have been run irregularly. UTC was also the host for ACF Regionals in the Southeast from 2000 until 2006.
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At some point in the 1990s, Steinhice moved to Chattanooga and became the advisor to the [[UTC]] quizbowl team. UTC, under Steinhice's direction, began to run a lengthy lineup of tournaments including the fall "Trevor's Trivia: Bob Selcer Memorial" and spring "Trevor's Trivia: Dennis Haskins Open" high school tournaments, the fall [[Center of the Known Universe Open]], winter [[Sword Bowl]], and spring [[Moon Pie]] collegiate academic tournaments, and the fall [[Big Lots Clearance Open]] and spring [[RC Cola]] trash tournaments. Other tournaments such as the "[[ACF Detox]]" trash, the [[Moc Masters]] and [[Muck Masters]] summer academic and trash tournaments, and mirrors of the [[HSNCT]] were also run irregularly. UTC was also the host for ACF Regionals in the Southeast from 2000 until 2006.
  
Many people enjoyed the new opportunities to play tournaments in the Southeast, and surely the tournaments founded in the late 1990s were as good or better than other independently run events of the time. Indeed, UTC's high school tournaments are still among the best available in the region. However, their collegiate tournaments have been criticized by many for a slew of reasons: they tend to last only about 10 rounds and use anachronistic formats unheard-of in the rest of the country such as single-elimination playoffs; questions are meandering and full of unhelpful clues and non-clues such as terrible jokes in bonus leadins; each round takes about 45 minutes to run because Steinhice encourages teams to chatter between questions; and general question quality is variable, frequently spending time in the "poor" range due to wild swings in difficulty and general question structure. UTC "academic" packets contain an alarming number of trash clues, and questions don't appear to be edited after they are submitted.
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Under Steinhice's editorship and direction, UTC's collegiate tournaments anchored the Southeastern circuit for many years and Steinhice worked with teams at many local and regional colleges. UTC tournaments (which were usually edited by Steinhice himself) were, however, criticized for a number of reasons: they tended to last for fewer-than-normal rounds and used formats unheard-of in the rest of the country such as single-elimination playoffs; questions were often meandering and full of unhelpful clues and non-clues such as terrible jokes in bonus leadins; rounds were often slow and approached 45 minutes in length; general question quality was variable, frequently spending time in the "poor" range due to wild swings in difficulty and general question structure; and packets often had higher-than-usual amounts of [[Trash]]. Over time, these tournaments began to fall dormant and/or transitioned to using vendors for questions rather than being housewritten.
  
Steinhice does not appear to understand the way [[packet submission]] works, as his typical way of editing a tournament involves announcing the event without planning to either write it himself or require team packets, frantically demanding three weeks ahead of time that other people write his tournament for him after no packets magically appear, then shortening the tournament to 9 rounds and a tossup-only "shootout" when, shockingly, packets still do not manifest themselves from the ether. Matt Weiner's [[Chicago Open Trash Tournament|attempt]] at Steinhician packet-writing methods ended in disaster.
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A hallmark of UTC tournaments under Steinhice were events often described as [[funn]] such as throwing actual Moon Pies at opening meetings and leading chants of Steinhice's own "three rules of quizbowl" (roughly: winning beats losing, losing beats getting stomped, getting stomped beats not playing). Some teams enjoyed the local connections (such as autographed pictures provided by local actor Dennis Haskins) while others felt it detracted too much from the tournaments themselves. Hosting a post-tournament dinner at Provino's Italian was also a standard feature of UTC tournaments.  
  
UTC tournaments are also marked by doses of [[funn]] which approach the LD-50. Throwing actual Moon Pies into the opening meeting at Moon Pie and forcing teams to chant Charlie Steinhice's not-that-insightful "three rules of quizbowl" are some of the recurrent ways in which funn manifests itself at UTC.
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UTC tournaments were also notable for their abnormally late stats reports, which were often referred to as the [[UTC disk issues]].
  
Steinhice himself is known to frequently accuse ACF of being impossible and make snide remarks towards it, such as equating ACF with poision by hosting a trash tournament called "ACF Detox." Of course, ACF Detox was only possible because Steinhice's UTC club served as the southeastern host of ACF Regionals for seven straight years, a long-standing support for the format that few programs can match. Despite this, his tournaments usually advertise themselves as "[[mACF]]" despite not using the ACF format, distribution, or question style, which may explain his claim that he is a "supporter of ACF".  
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In addition to hosting tournaments, Steinhice made the UTC team a regular attendee at circuit events throughout the Southeast until the late 2000s. As of the end of the 2013-2014 season, Steinhice resigned from coaching UTC. He remains active in hosting trivia events [http://www.mensafoundation.org/about-the-mensa-foundation/leadership/board-of-trustees/charlie-steinhice/ in MENSA].  
  
For many years, criticism of the very low question quality at UTC tournaments was brushed aside by noting that it came from people who had not attended the tournaments. However, with the recent proliferation of Sword Bowl and Moon Pie mirrors everywhere, people who have paid money to play on Steinhice's questions, such as [[Jerry Vinokurov]], have targeted the packets with [http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/1086/rancor.jpg inescapable rancor]. (It should be noted that some of this is not Charlie's fault. For example, [[Penn Bowl]] 2006, a mirror outside the south that Jerry played on and later ranted about, ran on partially edited Sword Bowl questions that Charlie had sent out for repeat- and spell-checking, which shifts some culpability away from Charlie.)
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==Later Playing Career==
  
 
In Feb. 2008 Steinhice led UTC to a 4th place showing at the [[Southeast SCT]]. Steinhice was the top scorer and the winner of the Tuscaloosa Ram neg prize. He remarked that it was his first attempt at playing an NAQT tournament, as well as his first tournament period in ten years. Steinhice later led UTC to a 19th-place showing at the [[2008 ICT|2008 NAQT ICT]] in St. Louis and finished 7th in the individual rankings.
 
In Feb. 2008 Steinhice led UTC to a 4th place showing at the [[Southeast SCT]]. Steinhice was the top scorer and the winner of the Tuscaloosa Ram neg prize. He remarked that it was his first attempt at playing an NAQT tournament, as well as his first tournament period in ten years. Steinhice later led UTC to a 19th-place showing at the [[2008 ICT|2008 NAQT ICT]] in St. Louis and finished 7th in the individual rankings.
  
==External links==
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==Relations with the Larger Quizbowl Community==
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Though he was on the original ACF Nationals Championship team, Steinhice later had strained relations with [[ACF]], in part due to hosting a trash tournament called "ACF Detox" and voicing concerns that ACF was becoming too difficult. Criticisms of the question quality at UTC tournaments often played out in heated discussions online on the quizbowl forums. Perhaps the most severe version of this controversy erupted after [[Penn Bowl]] 2006, a mirror of UTC's [[Sword Bowl]] that accidentally ran on partially edited Sword Bowl questions that Steinhice had sent out for repeat- and spell-checking. This led to one of the more heated [http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2369 threads on HSQB].
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{{Succession_box_(Carper)
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|year = 2005
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|previous = [[Don Windham]] & [[Gaius Stern]]
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|next = [[R. Robert Hentzel]]
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| }}
  
[http://profiles.yahoo.com/steinhice Steinhice's unusual Yahoo profile]
 
 
[[Category:People]]
 
[[Category:People]]
 
[[Category:UTC]]
 
[[Category:UTC]]

Latest revision as of 00:10, 30 June 2021

Charlie Steinhice is a former quizbowl player at WUSTL, Tennessee, and UTC as well as a longtime tournament director and team coach at UTC.

Early Playing Career

Steinhice was involved in the WUSTL team that lost the first College Bowl NCT to Stanford in 1978. He later finished his education at Tennessee, where he played on the team that won the first ACF Nationals with Robert Trent and others, under the coaching of Carol Guthrie.

UTC

At some point in the 1990s, Steinhice moved to Chattanooga and became the advisor to the UTC quizbowl team. UTC, under Steinhice's direction, began to run a lengthy lineup of tournaments including the fall "Trevor's Trivia: Bob Selcer Memorial" and spring "Trevor's Trivia: Dennis Haskins Open" high school tournaments, the fall Center of the Known Universe Open, winter Sword Bowl, and spring Moon Pie collegiate academic tournaments, and the fall Big Lots Clearance Open and spring RC Cola trash tournaments. Other tournaments such as the "ACF Detox" trash, the Moc Masters and Muck Masters summer academic and trash tournaments, and mirrors of the HSNCT were also run irregularly. UTC was also the host for ACF Regionals in the Southeast from 2000 until 2006.

Under Steinhice's editorship and direction, UTC's collegiate tournaments anchored the Southeastern circuit for many years and Steinhice worked with teams at many local and regional colleges. UTC tournaments (which were usually edited by Steinhice himself) were, however, criticized for a number of reasons: they tended to last for fewer-than-normal rounds and used formats unheard-of in the rest of the country such as single-elimination playoffs; questions were often meandering and full of unhelpful clues and non-clues such as terrible jokes in bonus leadins; rounds were often slow and approached 45 minutes in length; general question quality was variable, frequently spending time in the "poor" range due to wild swings in difficulty and general question structure; and packets often had higher-than-usual amounts of Trash. Over time, these tournaments began to fall dormant and/or transitioned to using vendors for questions rather than being housewritten.

A hallmark of UTC tournaments under Steinhice were events often described as funn such as throwing actual Moon Pies at opening meetings and leading chants of Steinhice's own "three rules of quizbowl" (roughly: winning beats losing, losing beats getting stomped, getting stomped beats not playing). Some teams enjoyed the local connections (such as autographed pictures provided by local actor Dennis Haskins) while others felt it detracted too much from the tournaments themselves. Hosting a post-tournament dinner at Provino's Italian was also a standard feature of UTC tournaments.

UTC tournaments were also notable for their abnormally late stats reports, which were often referred to as the UTC disk issues.

In addition to hosting tournaments, Steinhice made the UTC team a regular attendee at circuit events throughout the Southeast until the late 2000s. As of the end of the 2013-2014 season, Steinhice resigned from coaching UTC. He remains active in hosting trivia events in MENSA.

Later Playing Career

In Feb. 2008 Steinhice led UTC to a 4th place showing at the Southeast SCT. Steinhice was the top scorer and the winner of the Tuscaloosa Ram neg prize. He remarked that it was his first attempt at playing an NAQT tournament, as well as his first tournament period in ten years. Steinhice later led UTC to a 19th-place showing at the 2008 NAQT ICT in St. Louis and finished 7th in the individual rankings.

Relations with the Larger Quizbowl Community

Though he was on the original ACF Nationals Championship team, Steinhice later had strained relations with ACF, in part due to hosting a trash tournament called "ACF Detox" and voicing concerns that ACF was becoming too difficult. Criticisms of the question quality at UTC tournaments often played out in heated discussions online on the quizbowl forums. Perhaps the most severe version of this controversy erupted after Penn Bowl 2006, a mirror of UTC's Sword Bowl that accidentally ran on partially edited Sword Bowl questions that Steinhice had sent out for repeat- and spell-checking. This led to one of the more heated threads on HSQB.

Carper Award
Preceded by
Year
Succeeded by
Don Windham & Gaius Stern
2005
R. Robert Hentzel