MACA
The Missouri Academic Coaches Association is an association of quiz bowl coaches and other academic competition advocates in Missouri. MACA is the successor to the Missouri Academic Association, which ran the Missouri state championships from 1992-1995 before handing over hosting duties to MSHSAA.
Missouri Academic Association
The predecessor to MACA, the Missouri Academic Association, ran a state championship from 1992-1995 before MSHSAA assumed responsibility for hosting the tournament. [1]
State Championship Results
| Year | Class 3 Champion | Class 3 Runner-Up | Class 2 Champion | Class 2 Runner-Up | Class 1 Champion | Class 1 Runner-Up | Question Provider |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1992 | unknown, or division not held | Hannibal | William Chrisman | North Shelby | Palmyra | Answers Plus [2] | |
| 1993 | Liberty | Fort Zumwalt South | MICDS | St. James | Bernie | North Shelby | |
| 1994 | Savannah | Fort Zumwalt South | Bernie | Brookfield | North Shelby | Purdy | |
| 1995 | Savannah | SLUH | Cuba | Cameron | Bernie | unknown | |
Current Role
MACA runs an annual coaches conference in late September or early October, where MSHSAA provides rules updates, veteran coaches and other experienced people offer informational sessions on topics such as how to improve your team, how to run tournaments, etc., and the membership elects new officers as necessary. The conference was not held in 2020 or 2021.
MACA sponsors a Junior Varsity State tournament held in the spring.
MACA recognizes exceptional players with All-District and, until 2019, All-State medals during the MSHSAA districts/state series.
MACA and Pyramidal Quizbowl
As pyramidal quizbowl began to expand throughout Missouri around 2008, MACA continued to do many things to to discourage the growth of quizbowl in Missouri. Some of its members endorsed a state championship which uses Questions Galore packets and is 20% arithmetic questions, host and attend publicly unannounced tournaments that compete with "good" tournaments in Missouri, and actively promote bad questions, bad game formats, and bad rules in Missouri quizbowl.
Pyramidal quizbowl has become more popular since NAQT started providing the questions for MSHSAA districts and state in 2011, and all of the current officers of MACA are actively involved in hosting and attending pyramidal tournaments that follow the principles of "good quizbowl". Some coaches still resist the improvements brought by the increasing prevalence of "good quizbowl" practices and prefer tournaments to be run the way they always have been, but the prevalence of this sentiment significantly faded over the first decade of the NAQT era.
Influence
The influence of MACA on Missouri quizbowl has historically been fairly limited. The president of MACA is an ex officio non-voting member of the the MSHSAA Scholar Bowl Advisory Committee, whose eight voting members are coaches who may or may not be MACA members. The Advisory Committee has input on rule changes and the selection of a question vendor for MSHSAA's state tournament, but all recommendations must be approved by the MSHSAA Board of Directors, and a vote of all MSHSAA member schools for changes that involve amending MSHSAA by-laws.
Before NAQT became the question provider in 2011 and when NAQT was not an option for in-person tournaments in 2021, the various choices available often all had some features of bad quizbowl to varying degrees, so this choice was often between equally negative options. Similarly, while MACA and the Advisory Committee serve as the Missouri quizbowl community's collective voice, that voice is often ignored by MSHSAA, an example of which being MACA's suggestion to allow the top two teams from each district to advance to state and to drop the idea of sectionals at its 2007-2008 meeting. In contrast, MSHSAA simply decided to split districts in two and impose sectionals.
As more coaches became supporters of pyramidal quizbowl, the influence and persistence of the Advisory Committee has led to numerous improvements:
- In 2010, bonuses were changed from four parts worth five points each to two parts worth ten points each in an attempt to attract more question writers to bid for the state contract. Also, a by-law change was approved to allow schools to schedule one of their allowable tournaments after districts and before Memorial Day weekend.
- In 2011, NAQT became the regular question provider for the MSHSAA state series.
- The committee repeatedly requested an increase to the fourteen tournament limit, only to be denied each time. Eventually, in an effort to help schools with dual-heavy conference schedules be allowed to attend more tournaments, the advisory committee proposed that schools be offered multiple options for combinations of numbers of tournaments vs. duals. This proposal was finally approved by the Board of Directors and a vote of MSHSAA member schools, taking effect in the 2018-2019 season.
- In 2019, the rules were changed so that a player who has buzzed in but answers before being recognized is no longer penalized with an incorrect answer.
- In 2019, the game format changed from the traditional 50 question four-quarter format to 26 tossups with three-part-bonuses after the MSHSAA Board of Directors approved a three year trial.
- In 2022, the change to tossup-bonus was solidified with a further reduction to 22 cycles. While the advisory committee's persistent support of pyramidal quizbowl was a key factor in changing the format, it should be noted that the format change was also influenced by the reduced cost of obtaining questions in a standard format compared to one that required significant customizations.
Tournament Calendar
Since the 2004-2005 season, MACA's website has hosted an upcoming tournaments list, but it has never been used consistently. Around 2009, many tournaments in Missouri were not announced on either the MACA list or on the Missouri Quizbowl Message Board, which inevitably led to unnecessary animosity between competing tournament hosts when the existence of an upcoming tournament became known months after another tournament on the same day had been publicly announced. This typically affected tournaments hosted by colleges like the University of Missouri-Columbia and Missouri S&T [3] who weren't usually included on tournament announcements sent by mass email. This was detrimental to quizbowl in Missouri, particularly in the 2008-2009 season because all known tournament dates for that season were compiled at the MACA Convention in Fall 2008, yet this list was never made available publicly, leading to several conflicts with Missouri Quizbowl Alliance certified tournaments. [4]
Examples of scheduling conflicts
- January 24, 2009: The Washington HS tournament was not known until after Missouri had already scheduled the Tiger Bowl for that date (distance of separation: 93 miles) [5]
- February 21, 2009: The Warrenton HS tournament was not publicly known until February 11, even though the date for the 2009 NAQT Missouri Qualifier was tentatively announced on July 3 and officially announced no later than November 7, explaining why so few St. Louis teams had signed up for the tournament analogous to a state championship in other states when Warrenton's existence was posted to the Missouri forum. (distance of separation: 99 miles) [6]
- March 7, 2009: The Missouri S&T Spring Tournament has been held on the first or second weekend of March since 2005, and was officially announced no later than November 7, yet two other tournaments within 100 miles were scheduled on the same day:
- Rock Bridge High School in Columbia hosted its unannounced tournament on March 7 (distance of separation: 93 miles) [7]
- Waynesville, who has even attended the Spring Tournament in the past, scheduled its tournament on the same day. [8] This was particularly notorious because Waynesville is 35 miles away from Rolla. Even more surprising is Waynesville posted its tournament to the MACA calendar, which probably already had the Missouri S&T tournament listed when it was posted. The scheduling conflict appears to be the result of a first-year coach apparently not being aware of the other nearby tournaments. Due to the proximity of the more established S&T and Rock Bridge tournaments, the Waynesville tournament was canceled due to low registration.
- Both Rock Bridge and Waynesville have since hosted multiple "good quizbowl" tournaments.
Because of the numerous problems with scheduling conflicts in the 2008-2009 season, Missouri-Columbia announced its 2009-2010 tournament dates on February 23, 2009 [9]; Missouri S&T followed suit on March 2 [10]. Additionally, a list of all known tournaments in Missouri for each season was maintained on the Missouri Quizbowl Message Board for several of the following seasons, to increase the visibility of tournaments that have been announced and to better expose scheduling conflicts.
Even with a revamped MACA website, tournaments are rarely added to the website calendar. The existence of tournaments not hosted on NAQT questions and not announced on the Missouri Quizbowl Message Board is typically only known by coaches included on email invitations or if they are well-established tournaments held around the same time every year. Fortunately, with the continued use of NAQT questions at MSHSAA districts/state and increasing popularity of pyramidal tournaments, higher-quality tournaments have much less trouble fielding enough teams, and in some cases even have lengthy waitlists. Many Saturdays now feature numerous tournaments throughout the state without severely impacting each other's fields.
Officers
| Position | 2018-19 | 2017-18 | 2016-17 | 2015-16 | 2014-15 | 2013-14 | 2012-13 | 2011-12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| President | Scott Allen (Hallsville) | Al Nicolai (Cape Central) | ||||||
| Vice President | David Dennis | Kevin Stockman (Orchard Farm) | Alex Dzurick (MOQBA) | Bob Brown (Richland) | ||||
| Secretary | Jason Loy (Sullivan, Tuscumbia) | Audrey Connor
(Marshall) | ||||||
| Treasurer | Kevin Stockman | Nick White (West Nodaway) | John Peruggia | |||||
Website
In 2010, the MACA website was migrated to a Drupal installation after many MACA members expressed an interest in creating a more dynamic website. Coaches can now log in to a personal account and post tournament announcements and quizbowl related articles. Unfortunately, the new website has not encouraged more coaches to take a more active role in open communication between quizbowl participants in Missouri, and news and other content is rarely posted to the website.