Pennsylvania State Academic Competition

The Pennsylvania State Academic Competition is a quizbowl tournament held each year around May in Harrisburg, in the state House of Representatives and Senate Chambers. Each year's top three competing teams are awarded scholarships. It is run by the Chester County Intermediate Unit.

The competition is televised live by the Pennsylvania Cable Network (PCN) and rebroadcast throughout the year.

History

The Pennsylvania State Academic Competition was started in 1992 by Pennsylvania Representative Joseph Pitts. The first year contained 12 qualifying schools but has since been expanded to one school for each of Pennsylvania's 29 "intermediate units". For several years, the winning team received a scholarship to the Panasonic Academic Challenge, and its format is loosely based on PAC.

Format

Three teams compete head-to-head in each game in the tournament. The game is broken into two tossup rounds made up of 10 questions each, and two "fanfare" rounds where each table is given a series of 6 questions. Tossup rounds allow conferring before a team buzzes in, and give the team up to 15 seconds after the entire question is read to come up with an answer. One buzzer is supplied to each player. Fanfare rounds are 60 second timed affairs. Each team gets one fanfare per round. Fanfare questions are asked in rapid succession and once a team passes on a question, they are not permitted to go back to answer it.

The day's preliminary matches are followed by 3 semi-finals and final match for the top 9 and 3 teams respectively. The semi-final round was introduced at some point between 1999 and 2007. Prior to that time each team played two preliminary matches; of the teams which won both preliminary matches, the three teams with the highest points per game were selected to play in the final match.

Qualifying

Qualifying teams, usually the winners of local championships, are chosen by the various intermediate units. In addition, the previous year's champion receives an automatic bid to attend the tournament.

Questions

Question categories include Contemporary Events, World History, Literature, American History, Science, and Potpourri. Each question is rated by difficulty and questions are then evenly dispersed between teams. All answers are worth 5 points each.

Sample questions include:

Q. Written by Stephen Crane, this novel depicts the civil war by describing an individual soldier's reactions, fears, cowardice and courage in the battle zone. What is the name of Crane's novel? A. "The Red Badge of Courage"

Q. In 1963, representatives from thirty African nations met in Addis Adaba, capital of Ethiopia, and signed a charter establishing the O.A.U.. What do the letters O.A.U. stand for? A. Organization of African Unity

Q. This German physiologist was noted for his work with digestion; however, he is better known for stating the theory that all animals are made up of cells. Name him. A. Theodor Schwann

Q. In 1953 Congress pass a legislative act which extended the U.S. government's guarantee to protect the rights of workers to organize or join labor unions. Name the act. A. Wagner Act

Through years of research and the implementation of a judge whose sole responsibility it is to ensure the accuracy and applicability of questions, the Pennsylvania State Academic Competition has evolved into a program that offers students from throughout Pennsylvania the opportunity to compete in an academic competition, at no charge, with a level of notoriety that is often reserved for athletics. Additionally, the top three competing teams are each awarded scholarships to support their future academic endeavors.

This is the tournament which several years ago not only included the infamous question "What kind of colleges are best for women? Answer: Women's colleges" to begin with, but recycled it from one year to the next. Another question from this tournament was "Cetology is the study of whales. For 10 points, who wrote Moby Dick?" Looking only at tournaments with state championship implications, this one may take the crown for actually having the worst questions out of many, many bad local question writer options.

2003 was notable for having at least 4 different questions on characters from Catch-22 as tossups in different rounds, as well as at least 4 different questions on ranks in the US military in different rounds.

In 2016, the tournament adopted NAQT questions.

Winners

External Links

Chester County Intermediate Unit's PSAC Page