Geez: I thought the reboundable bonus issue was touchy. I know some HS coaches out there who cringed when I declared bonuses will NOT rebound at Duke AF. I have fielded their suggestions on reboundable bonuses; if you want reboundable related bonuses, go to GLRAC and PACE NSC. :) Most of what I would have said about worksheets has been stated by Andy, Anthony, and Sudheer; and even some of the arguments against I understand from Alexis and others who have piped in on this. Andy W points out there are worksheets that are used at Panasonic, and I may even dare say that their use at PAC (not to mention perhaps some screwy 60-second round topics at NAC) encouraged more use of worksheets at other varsity tournaments and state championship formats (Ohio, Tennessee, and Louisiana for examples). Brookwood's megatournament has used worksheets for a while, so it's not completely foreign to high school competition. The NKC format is strikingly familiar to Lake Forest format, which is the model for the modifications I have made for the Duke tournament. Whether the use of a worksheet is conducive to preparing students for college qb, maybe. But as Sudheer points out, there are many kids out there who know a lot of stuff but are buzzer-shy. Yeah, they should practice practice practice to get over that, but these kids do get a boost in a worksheet round where they can discuss among colleagues the answers with a different sort of pressure than the "buzz-in" coordination requires. Would I want to see a worksheet round in college qb? Probably not, but such things could be useful to encourage more kids to stick with the game while in college just to identify potential teammates who just need to develop more speed. That was what we were trying to do with College Celebrity Shoot, though at a price by making the questions too hard for High School Celebrity Shoot. The thing I most like about worksheets though is the ability to write "good" math questions and work on them the way math questions are usually worked upon: with pencil, paper, and (most importantly) enough time to work on solving the problem -- a common complaint with college-run HS comps that attempt to write math questions as tossups or bonuses. Cipher rounds in HS math comps are one thing, but speed is not usually taught in math classes... just accuracy... though again I could be wrong. [You think that's a subtle enough hint to all you potential Duke AF participants lurking out there?] I try to run tournaments that fulfill these goals: (1) encourage more teams to compete in hs quiz bowl, (2) prepare teams for regional, state, and national competitions, (3) prepare students for college play. Many of these goals will conflict; how do you get kids to play in college if they're used to consulting on tossups? What about states where the state format is not tossup/bonus but you want to prepare kids for college play? If you want to focus on preparing for regionals, states and nationals, do you alienate the local base you want to network with to compete at the tournament? It's a difficult balancing act that each TD has to decide upon, but that decision sets the tone for the level of competition each tournament will have. I just hope though that just because the game format is somewhat different from the usual college-style or even high-school-national style does not mean it is a less than worthy tournament. [Besides, if you really wanted boring, I'd point you to Decathlon. Essay writing is so thrilling... :P Trying to make that competition as exciting and interesting as I could given the constraints of the format has been a most difficult challenge.]
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