Hello, As long as I'm making my first post here, I may as well make two. I'm a first-year, so I can still remember a few high school tournaments fairly well. I played for duPont Manual, a school in Louisville that a few of you may have heard of but most probably haven't. We did many in-state tournaments, but had a limited budget for out of state travel and never in recent years went to any tournament officially designated as a "national" quiz bowl tournament, with the exception of the DOE's National Science Bowl. I'm sure that isn't what you had it mind, but it was quite a nice tournament, although with a rather odd multiple-choice format on some of the questions that was hard to get used to. Still, there were a number of nice invitational tournaments that involved mainly teams from the southeast. The Gulf Coast Academic Invitational Tournament, held in Pensacola each year, was one of the best, with interesting written rounds before each half that often involved identifying artwork from photographs, or music from short audio segments. It is beginning to draw more distant teams; we played Eisenhower from Michigan in the finals. Walton and Brookwood High Schools in Georgia hosted huge invitational tournaments that were very well-organized, and drew a number of good teams. Vanderbilt had a very nice tournament that we were able to attend one year. Each of these had some variation in format. I think it would be very difficult to choose a "best" high school team, because there were several teams that were consistently very close in these competitions. Still, it's perfectly reasonable for winners of a large national competition to be designated national champions. The only "national" tournament I can recall that was not a valid title was the "National Academic League," played by teleconferencing, which was not a bad competition in middle school but which at the high school level has only had from 2 to 3 competitors for each of the past few years (we won it three consecutive times, never feeling like we deserved any title since we only had to win one game). The National Beta Club Quiz Bowl was also not truly "national," and didn't seem to have quite so many good teams as some of the invitationals. Still, all of these tournaments were nice for the exposure to different formats. Matt Reece <<I would like to get some of your opinions on the various "nationals" that are available for high school teams. I know many of us have played in one or more of them. What are some of your thoughts on the various formats and merits (or lack thereof) of each "national?" Considering the format war discussion that has been going on lately, this seems an appropriate discussion. Should there be multiple formats in high school? Would it ever be possible to unify to determine a true national champion? Jason Russell >>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:44 AM EST EST