Hey Allison! We've had IM tournaments for about three years now at Furman, and we've tried everything, some of which works better than others. We had a one-day tournament the first year, where we got 9 teams, 8 of which actually showed up on tournament day. It worked well, all things considered, for our first try, but the fact that it was one day kept a couple of teams of people who were interested from being able to participate. The second year we put our event out through intramural sports, having a game or two each week. The only problems here were that we had to separate men's, women's, and co-rec teams into their respective brackets, and most of the teams were fraternities and sororities who were playing simply to get points for the intramural sports trophy (we had one team, on NAQT IM questions, score 100 points total in 3 games). The third year we de-affiliated with IM sports but had two games each week before having a playoff. We got 10 teams and had our most competitive tournament ever. So what's my advice? Keep your timing of it consistent (I recommend the fall when people usually aren't as busy and freshmen are still excited about doing something new), and seriously consider having it spread over a period of time to allow people to make their own schedules for matches. Advertise it well--we had signs and banners all across campus advertising our tournament weeks in advance, which got us at least half the teams we did. And don't run it all yourself! I made that mistake my junior year with the result being reading for every match of the tournament (52 all total) at some times that weren't exactly convenient. Even one person makes a big difference. Anyone else have opinions to offer? I'm especially curious if most other programs run a one-day tournament or spread it out over several weeks--I think the latter option will help allow more teams to participate. David
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