SCT

NAQT Sectionals (also known as SCT or the Sectional Championship Tournament), is an annual collegiate tournament run on NAQT questions and rules hosted at many different colleges throughout the United States (and occasionally Canada).

Like many NAQT tournaments--although unlike almost all other college tournaments--Sectionals makes use of timed rounds.

Sectionals also divides teams up into Division I and Division II brackets, provided there are enough teams, and awards recognition for the top undergraduate team playing in Division I. Each Division I packet has 26 tossups and 26 bonuses at collegiate regular difficulty, while a Divison II packet has 24/24 and is significantly easier. Some questions written for one set will overlap with the other or have an adjusted-difficulty version in the other set in the same round.

Sections (to 2009)

• Canada
• Northeast
• Mid-Atlantic
• Mideast
• Great Lakes
• Southeast
• South
• Southwest
• Midwest
• North
• Northwest
• West

History

In November 2009, NAQT announced a partnership with ACUI. As part of this deal, the section format used by NAQT was dropped in favor of ACUI's regions. As a result, several sites in 2011 were chosen with little to no regard for quiz bowl in the area. This led to confusion and complaints about SUNY-New Paltz for Region 2, Moravian for Region 4 (3 was added as well), and East Carolina for Region 5. This may have had more to do with NAQT trying to collect bids in August, a full 7 months before the tournaments and while virtually all clubs were on break.

Reception

The 2007 Sectionals was generally better received than in previous years, thanks to the efforts of Andrew Yaphe editing the tournament. In 2009, NAQT brought on Seth Teitler to edit the SCT, a role which he reprised in 2011 (in addition to that year's ICT).

Some players continue to criticize Sectionals for its use of the timed format (often combined with bad moderators), a distribution heavy on trash, current events and geography, and occurrences of badly written questions. In response to these criticisms (and of criticisms of the ICT), NAQT has released surveys following recent ICTs. These surveys are rarely followed by a lack of significant changes to Sectionals and the ICT. See the NAQT page for more information on this subject.

In 2010 and 2011, several players criticized the DI set for being too hard for most teams, and/or significantly harder than that year's succeeding ACF Regionals.