University of Illinois Earlybird HS Tournament -- 10/1/2005

suds1000 <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Thu, 23 Jun 2005 00:12:21 -0000

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Academic Buzzer Team 
is proud to announce that it will host the latest incarnation of its 
now annual series of fall high school academic quiz bowl 
tournaments, the UIUC Earlybird 2005, on Saturday, October 1st, at 
the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Tournament details 
are described below. Please feel free to contact me, Sudheer Potru, 
by e-mail at potru(AT)uiuc.edu with any questions or to register 
your team. Come help us herald the return of an excellent high 
school tournament tradition to the University of Illinois. 

Time: 

The UIUC Earlybird 2005 will take place Saturday, October 1st, 2004 
from approximately 8 am to approximately 5 pm. Exact times will be 
determined by the number of teams registering and will be announced 
to all participants in advance of the event. 

Place: 

The UIUC Earlybird 2005 will be held in historic Lincoln Hall on the 
Urbana side of the campus of the University of Illinois, assuming 
that its construction schedule allows. 
http://www.uiuc.edu/navigation/buildings/lincoln.top.html contains a 
great deal of information on Lincoln Hall. The final location and 
very explicit directions to that location will be provided to all 
participants well in advance of the event. 

Format: 

The match format will be the same as last year's, a combination of 
the IHSA (Illinois High School) and ACF (Academic Competition 
Federation) formats. Rounds will consist of 20 tossup questions and 
up to 20 bonus questions, a halftime of up to five minutes after 
bonus 10 but before tossup 11, and as many tiebreaker *tossups* as 
are necessary to change the score should it be tied after question 
20. Quiz bowl competition will occur between two teams of up to four 
players with four substitutions allowed at half-time. Rounds will be 
untimed. A correct response to a tossup question earns the 
respondent's team 10 points and a bonus question, while an incorrect 
response offered before the end of a tossup question costs the 
respondent's team 5 points, which is referred to as an "interrupt" 
or "neg." Only one neg is allowed per question, so if a tossup is 
turned over, no penalty can be assessed to the team that did not 
incorrectly interrupt. Bonuses are all worth a total of 30 points 
and will "rebound". That is, if the team that correctly answered the 
previous tossup cannot correctly answer a part of a bonus, the 
opposing team will have a chance to answer it and, if they do so 
correctly, will receive however many points are associated with that 
part. 

In general, this is similar to IHSA-style events, except for the 
inclusion of negs and the four-player team structure. 

The tournament format will be determined by the number of teams 
registering, but will be structured to provide a clear, unambiguous 
order of finish for each team and to maximize the number of rounds 
that each team is able to play and the number of different teams 
that each team is able to play. 

Questions: 

The questions for the UIUC Earlybird 2005 are being produced in-
house: that is, questions will be written in their entirety by the 
members of the UIUC Academic Buzzer Team and edited by experienced 
question editors (myself, last year's editor Mike Sorice, and 
several other tenured members of the UIUC team). For any teams that 
have played at any of the PACE (Partnership for Academic Competition 
Excellence) tournaments over the past several years, the tossup and 
bonus questions used here will be similar in structure to those used 
in the third period (or "stretch round") of those matches. The 
difficulty of the questions will be similar to that of NAQT's 
invitational series of high school ("IS") packet sets. Computational 
math questions may or may not be included, and this will be decided 
closer to (but still well in advance of) the tournament. Regardless, 
there will be a maximum of one (1) computational math tossup and one 
(1) computational math bonus in any given round. 

Registration: 

The registration fee is $60 per team. A discount of $10 is available 
for providing a fully-functional buzzer system (one discount per 
team). The full set of tournament questions will be available for 
purchase for $20. Fees are due on the morning of the tournament at 
check-in. The deadline for registration is Saturday, September 17th, 
2005. To register, simply e-mail me at potru(AT)uiuc.edu stating 
your interest and including the following information: 

The name of your school or institution. 
The location of your school or institution in "city, state" format. 
The name of coach or other contact person (along with e-mail address 
and/or phone number for that person). 
The number of teams that you will bring. 
Whether or not you will be bringing a functional buzzer system. 

Thanks for reading, and we hope to hear from you soon. 

Sudheer Potru 
Chief Editor and Tournament Director, UIUC Earlybird 2005 
potru(AT)uiuc.edu