SAGES
| ||||
| President or CEO | Alex Dzurick | |||
| Location: | Champaign, IL | |||
| Status | Open | |||
SAGES Quizbowl Questions is a question writing company, based in Champaign, Illinois, for elementary and middle school level tournaments. SAGES may also refer to the elementary-level set produced by the company.
Origin
As a set, SAGES was born out of a writing effort for the March 2015 Elementary Knowledge Bowl hosted by the Show-Me Conference in Missouri. Alex Dzurick was approached to write new questions for this event and titled the tossups-only question set SAGES (Spring Academic Game for Elementary Students). During the spring of 2015, some of the questions were reformatted into a standard tossup-bonus format. This effort led to several other uses of the set across the country the following year. In the fall of 2015, Alex was asked if he would consider writing a middle school set as well, and given the expansion of effort, SAGES was founded as a company based in Champaign in December of 2015.
2014-2015
The first set under the SAGES banner was written by Dzurick and several other writers from Missouri. The set's inaugural use was at the March 2015 Show-Me Conference Elementary Knowledge Bowl in mid-Missouri. After having been re-formatted into tossup-bonus format, the set was then used for elementary tournaments in Connecticut and the San Francisco Bay area and for middle school events in Ohio and southern Missouri.
2015-2016
While sites were still mirroring the previous year's set, Dzurick and several writers from around the country collaborated to put together another elementary set (SAGES II) as well as a new middle school set which was named PLATO (Perfectly Likeable Academic Tournament Offering). The SAGES II set was again originally used at the Show-Me Conference Elementary Knowledge Bowl, and again was reformatted into tossup-bonus for use at other elementary tournaments. PLATO's existence meant that most MS tournaments shifted to that set instead, and it was used at several quads hosted by Hallsville, several tournaments in Ohio, and a tournament in Texas.
2016-2017
SAGES' third year included the third iteration of the elementary set (SAGES III), primarily used only at the Show-Me event. SAGES also wrote a tossups-only novice high school set for an event in Michigan which was reformulated into a MSHSAA-format middle school set used in Missouri. Instead of producing another iteration of PLATO, the company worked with the team producing the HIGS middle school set in California and arranged for its use at several middle school quad matches in Missouri. SAGES also wrote a small number of speedcheck-style questions for a Missouri conference's middle school knowledge bowl event.
2017-2018
The company plans to continue working on the elementary and middle school markets to improve question quality for younger students and encourage their participation at higher levels.