I too have watched the recent discussion about ACF, the Fall Tournament, and what seems to be the fairness of quiz bowl as a whole. Let me first begin by saying that my opinion is my own and not that of my team. DePauw, and our founder Stan, has taken quite a beating over the last two days due to the comments he made about the ACF Fall Tournament. Yes, DePauw sent two teams, and both of them had losing records. (One team beat the other giving one a 2-12 record, and the other an 0-14 record.) And yes, we don't like losing...does anyone? However, what I think has not been mentioned, or at least has not been emphasized enough was that both of our teams learned things (academic and otherwise) from the Fall Tournament. And our teams are improving with each tournament we attend. It was brought to my attention at our most recent practice that one of the goals of DePauw B was to score 100 points in each round. With the exception of a few, they succeeded, and I am very proud of them for that. I must say that I have not been doing this whole quiz bowl thing for very long, and thus do not know many of you, the animosities that seem to constantly be brewing between so many of you, or the many technicalities that seem to be behind quiz bowl, ACF and otherwise. For the most part my experience has been good, regardless of the format I have been playing. I personally like science questions (but not physics) and therefore would love to see more science in packets. I also realize that science is not all there is in the world and therefore I can't have a packet full of all biology and no history. I have noticed, however, that ACF tends to be very heavy on Classics, of which I have very little knowledge (I'll stop all of you who want to tell me that I should study that stuff if I want to be an effective quiz bowl player. I realize this, thank you.). Any special reason? I have also noticed that the same topics come up over and over again, in differently formatted questions, yes, but basically the same stuff. I can't tell you how many times we have come across the same answers in practice multiple weeks in a row. Hopefully by now myself and the rest of my team knows these things backwards and forwards! This is a good way for us to learn, but it always seems like there is something missing. I was priveleged to have my mom (Don't anyone laugh at that, she came all the way from Hawaii to visit me and I wasn't about to leave her in Greencastle and be gone all day. Besides, she wanted to know what it was that was taking up so much of my time and that I always talked about with such excitement.) accompany us to the ACF Fall Tournament this past weekend, and she noted something I've been thinking about for a long time. Why such little variation in questions? By this I mean, there is so much more in the world than people write questions about on a consistent basis. I know in the few questions I have written since starting quiz bowl last semester I have attempted to write about different things than I have ever heard in a question. Granted, I don't always succeed in picking something that I think few people know about, but hey, I try. Why not include a few different topics (like Hawaiian History! :)) that haven't had many questions written about them rather than sticking to the same old stuff that every quiz bowl veteran knows? You all keep talking about bringing in new blood to the circuit...I think this is another good way to mix things up a bit and get more people interested. (By the way, I'm partial to Hawaiian History because I grew up in Hawaii, but there are many topics that I've noticed never get asked about.) More to come in the next post (I guess I'm too long-winded)
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