BrainBusters Tournaments

02/01/2019

Today (Friday, February 1) at 11:59 pm is the registration deadline for next weekend's Geneva Invitational. If you are not listed below, your school is NOT yet registered for the tournament, and you should contact me today at [email protected] to register. Logistics e-mails will be going out this weekend (most likely Sunday since my son's birthday is tomorrow).

Adirondack (2)
Belfast (1)
Brockport (1)
Cooperstown (2)
DeWitt Middle (1)
Fairport (2)
Ithaca (3)
Laurens (1)
Marcus Whitman (1)
Mayfield (1)
Moravia (2)
Mount Morris (1)
Saratoga Springs (3)
Waterloo (1)
Webster Schroeder (1)

23 teams (12 small school)

01/28/2019

Just a reminder that the Geneva Invitational quizbowl tournament registration deadline is 11:59 PM EST on Friday, February 1 - four days from now. If your school name (number in parentheses is number of registered teams) is NOT listed below, you are NOT yet officially registered- you can do so by emailing Scott Blish at [email protected] or registering on the NAQT website. Any registrations after then are not guaranteed and must be approved by the Tournament Director.

Adirondack (2)
Belfast (1)
Brockport (1)
Cooperstown (2)
DeWitt Middle (1)
Fairport (1)
Ithaca (3)
Laurens (1)
Marcus Whitman (1)
Mayfield (1)
Moravia (2)
Mount Morris (1)
Saratoga Springs (3)
Waterloo (1)
Webster Schroeder (1)

01/18/2019

Only 2 more Geneva Invitational registrations needed to surpass our field size from last year. Get those registrations in! February 1 is the deadline.

12/12/2018

Since the registrations are beginning to come in, I will use this post to update the field for the 2019 Geneva Invitational. There is a 36 team cap that will be a soft cap IF we have enough buzzers and staffers to run a larger event. We anticipate the field filling, though, so be sure to register ASAP to possibly avoid the dreaded first-come, first-served waitlist:

CURRENT FIELD (number of teams / buzzers / staffers) - ** denotes Small School Traditional Public eligibility, ++ denotes Small School Open eligibility

Adirondack (2/2/0) **
Belfast (1/0/0) **
Brockport (1/1/0)
Cooperstown (2/2/1) **
DeWitt Middle (1/0/0)
Fairport (1/0/1)
Ithaca (3/2/1)
Laurens (1/0/0) **
Marcus Whitman (1/0/1) **
Mayfield (1/0/0) **
Moravia (2/0/0) **
Mount Morris (1/0/0) **
Saratoga Springs (3/1/0)
Waterloo (1/1/0) **
Webster Schroeder (1/0/0)

Total teams: 22 (12 small school)

12/07/2018

Facts to remember about the 2019 Geneva Invitational Quizbowl Tournament:

Registration site: https://www.naqt.com/registration/register.jsp?tournament_id=9904&type=TEAM

Please contact tournament director Scott Blish at [email protected] if you need help registering.

DATE: Saturday, February 9, 2019

SITE: Geneva High School, Geneva, NY

FIELD SIZE: 36 (soft cap that may be adjusted upwards with sufficient interest)

DIVISIONS: Trophies for overall tournament placing and small school division placing will be awarded. (Small schools, for quizbowl purposes, are public schools with 500 or fewer students grades 10-12, or any non-homeschool with 350 or fewer students grades 10-12).

FEES: $85 for the first team from a school, $75 for each additional team. Discounts are available for providing buzzers, providing staffers, travelling 150 miles+ one way to GHS to attend, and for new schools that have not played Geneva Invitational before.

Each participating team is guaranteed a minimum of 9 games, possibly more.

FORMAT: Untimed NAQT tossup-bonus, on regular difficulty high school IS set questions. (Modified MasterMinds, for teams that play that format.)

REGISTRATION DEADLINE: 11:59 pm on Friday, February 1, 2019.

The full tournament announcement is found in a previous post on this site, and at http://hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=22078

Logging in constitutes an agreement to NAQT’s terms of use (last updated March 5, 2018) and privacy policy (last updated March 22, 2018).

11/13/2018

The Geneva High School Quizbowl team will be hosting the second annual Geneva Invitational Quizbowl Tournament on Saturday, February 9, 2019 at Geneva High School in Geneva, New York. Registration for the teams participating in the tournament will commence at 7:45 with staff and player meetings at 8:30. We plan to start the first round of play no later than 9:00 am.

We will be using NAQT Invitational Series Packet 181 for this event. We hope that teams that attending any or all of Delaware Valley’s Tri-State Tussle, Ithaca’s BrainBusters Fall (or upcoming BrainBusters Spring), and any active upstate New York MasterMinds teams, will consider competing in this tournament, as the question set will not conflict with any of these events.

Registration for this tournament will be handled through the tournament registration page on the NAQT website, found at https://www.naqt.com/registration/register.jsp?tournament_id=9904&type=TEAM

You will need to log in to the NAQT site in order to register; if you do not already have an account, you can quickly create one on that site. On initial registration, please provide a minimum of your school name, number of teams intended (this can be changed later), your name/contact information, the number of buzzer systems and staffers you are bringing, and any other information we should know. You may enter rosters at registration if you wish, and shortly before the tournament we will ask for your rosters to expedite data entry on the day of the tournament, but this information can be provided later If you don’t have it now. Payment will be due upon arrival at GHS on the 10th, but feel free to mail checks ahead of time to Geneva High School Quizbowl Team, c/o Victoria Lehman, Quizbowl Coach, 101 Carter Road, Geneva, NY 14456. Registration will close on Friday, February 1, 2019.

If you are having trouble navigating the NAQT website and wish to register, please contact Tournament Director Scott Blish at [email protected] , but the site is relatively user-friendly.

The field cap for this tournament is 36 teams. This cap may have some wiggle room if many teams bring staffers and buzzers, but we anticipate the field being around that size.

Fee Structure
The base price is $85 for the first team and $75 for each additional team. We are also offering the following discounts:
-$5 per functional buzzer system, capable of supporting four players per side (please bring extension cords if you have them!)
-$10 per staffer provided by the school
-$10 per 150 miles traveled to Geneva High School (one way, according to Google Maps).
-$10 for any new school/program (a school that did not play at the 2018 Geneva Invitational – each team from a school that qualifies may take this discount)

The minimum fee per team is $50. Checks should be made out to "Geneva High School Quizbowl Team" and mailed to Geneva High School, c/o Victoria Lehman, Quizbowl Coach, 101 Carter Road, Geneva, NY 14456.

On-site Contact Information
Longtime BrainBusters Fall and Geneva Invitational tournament director Scott Blish will be flying up from the Tampa Bay area to direct the 2019 Geneva Invitational. He can be reached for questions at [email protected] or contacted via cell phone at (607) 339-6749.

Lunch
As they did last year, the Geneva Quizbowl team will be providing lunch on site – most likely through pizza delivery, although other options may be available – we will update registered teams as the tournament date approaches. We recommend staying at the school for lunch or bringing your own - you may leave for lunch at your own risk, but with the warning that we will restart the tournament promptly at the announced restart time, and will start reading packets to whoever is in place at that time.

Tournament Format
Games will consist of 20 tossup/bonus pairs, read in untimed matches. (For MasterMinds teams new to circuit play, it is basically MasterMinds without a clock, with far more liberal recognition rules, and faster pace of play.) During play, we will use ACF five-second timing rules (five seconds to buzz in after tossup completion, five seconds to start answer to tossup after buzz, five seconds to start answer to bonus after bonus completion). The exact bracketing format used will depend on the final number of registered teams, but we expect to run a quasi-seeded round robin format in the morning, followed by a rebracketing and another round robin after lunch, with a single final match to determine tournament champion if needed.

Top finishers (the top 15% of the field, rounded up) will qualify for the 2019 NAQT High School National Championship in Atlanta and 2019 NAQT Small School National Championship Tournament in Chicago (top 30% of finishers among eligible schools, with traditional public and private/charter schools separate), and/or the 2019 PACE National Scholastic Championship in Reston, VA (a suburb of Washington, DC).

A separate small school trophy will be awarded to the highest-finishing team that qualifies as a small school by NAQT standards (a traditional public school with noncompetitive admissions that has fewer than 500 total students grades 10-12, or a magnet, charter or private school with fewer than 350 total students grades 10-12.)
Please note that small schools will compete against larger schools in this event – the small school trophy and small school nationals spots will be awarded to the highest finishers in the overall tournament among qualifying schools. Middle school teams and homeschool collectives are ineligible for the small school championship or to qualify for SSNCT.

Middle school teams are welcome to compete at Geneva Invitational, with the caveat that they will be competing against mostly high school students on high school-level questions. Homeschool collectives are also welcome to compete, as long as at least one of the following conditions are met:

All members of the team attend the same homeschool, or
All members of the team are members of a homeschool collective that exists at least in part for some reason OTHER than academic competition (socialization, arts/science appreciation, athletic competition, etc.)

We hope to see as many of you as possible on February 9 for a great, enjoyable day of quizbowl competition!

03/22/2018

Congrats to both Ithaca ( #58) and Delaware Valley ( #125) for making their debuts in this season's Morlan national quizbowl rankings:

We’re getting back in the swing of things as the season closes out. I’m planning on another set of rankings next week with results from tournaments played on the FACTS set.

03/15/2018

With less than a month to go until the tournament date, this is a reminder that the Ithaca HS quizbowl team is hosting the second annual BrainBusters Spring quizbowl tournament for high schools and middle schools on Saturday, April 7. (Ithaca's A, B and C team players will be running and staffing the tournament, so the Ithaca house team will consist of younger, less experienced players.) Fill out the linked Google Form on the announcement page linked below to register for the event - the registration deadline is March 31 and there is plenty of room left in the field. The Maryland Fall set being used will be excellent preparation for teams preparing for MasterMinds playoffs, SSNCT, HSNCT and/or PACE NSC this spring.

All of the relevant information and link to the Google Form to register for the tournament is found at this site:

01/29/2018

One thing that I planned to do at the Geneva Invitational awards ceremony but that it slipped my mind to do was to announce the BRAINBUSTERS SPRING tournament that will take place at Ithaca HS on SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 2018. The tournament director for this event is Ithaca coach Ben Kirk, and the Ithaca team will NOT BE PLAYING in this event, as they will be staffing and helping to direct the tournament. (If necessary to make up the numbers, they may enter a D-team-level or middle-school-level house team, but none of their A or B team players, at the very least, will be competing). BrainBusters Spring will tentatively (subject to final confirmation) use a housewritten set by the University of Maryland quizbowl team, the Maryland Fall HS tournament. This set is expected to be about the same difficulty level, perhaps slightly easier, as the set used at Geneva yesterday. Information on the set and subject distribution can be found here (http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=109&t=19983 ).

The field cap is being set at 24 to begin, but there is room to expand that field if interest, buzzers and staffers allow.

The fee structure will be the same as it was last year:

$80 for the first team, $70 for each additional team. The following discounts apply:

-$5 per functional buzzer
-$10 per staffer provided by the school
-$10 per 150 miles traveled to IHS (one way, according to Google Maps)
-$10 for any new team (a team that has never played at either BB Fall or BB Spring in the past). Of the teams that played yesterday, I believe that Saratoga Springs, Laurens and Baldwinsville qualify for this discount.

The minimum fee per team is $50.

To register, please use the following Google Form: https://goo.gl/forms/74dvmGC3iL7Kp8uG3

Any questions about BrainBusters Spring should be directed to IHS quizbowl coach Ben Kirk at [email protected] . I will be at this tournament, but only as a reader and to assist - Ben and his players are completely in charge of the tournament and will make all relevant decisions both leading up to and on the day of it. (This differs from BB Fall, which I direct and arrange staff for, and in which Ithaca enters their full strength teams in addition to hosting.)

01/29/2018

First of all, I'd like to thank all of the players and coaches for attending - you are the ones who made the Geneva Invitational quizbowl a success yesterday. While there were minor issues throughout the day that occur in any tournament of this scope and nature, there was nothing major (we're now at 3 straight tournaments in which no protest reached the HQ room!), and at least from my perspective, the teams seemed to universally enjoy the tournament.

I'd also like to take the time to thank Brooks and Tina Sanders, Mike Manos, and the many members of the Geneva HS Quizbowl team, their parents, and community members (especially Stephanie Hesler and Mike Rusinko) for their time and invaluable help running this event. Most importantly, I'd like to thank Victoria Lehman, without whom this tournament would literally have never occurred.

The tournament championship game was not only a battle of unbeaten 9-0 teams, but the ultimate exhibition of contrasting styles: the one-man juggernaut of Alex Pyle from Troy, riding a 156 point per game individual scoring average (one of the top in the nation so far this year) into the final against Ithaca A, who had an average prelim victory margin of 527 points and, with their four players averaging 64, 52, 49 and 32 points per game going into the final, may be the most balanced team I have seen in my 30 years involved in quizbowl. Ithaca took advantage of some fatigue by Alex (there is very little or no chance to rest for a solo player in a long event like this), raced out to a 390-30 lead after 12 tossups, and won the overall championship over Troy 530-180. Both of these teams (Troy should have their full-strength team for nationals) are poised to make deep playoff runs at HSNCT in Atlanta in May, and are close to certain playoff teams at that event.

Cooperstown A defeated Cooperstown B 445-80 in the third place game, which doubled as the small school championship game. Ithaca B took 5th place by forfeit over Milford, who left before the playoff after securing the third SSNCT spot with their prelim performance. Ithaca C defeated circuit newcomer (and also extremely well-balanced - all SEVEN players who appeared for them averaged over 10 ppg for the event) Saratoga Springs A 260-60 for seventh place, and Geneva C wrapped up the final SSNCT berth by defeating Geneva B (who defeated another newcomer, Laurens A, in an overtime playoff for a spot in the game) 210-60 for ninth place.

The full statistics for yesterday's event can be found at http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/4932/ .

The statistics should also be posted on the NAQT website sometime within the week.

The tournament all-stars (the top 4 scorers after the prelims and the top scorers from the 4 highest ranked teams who didn't have a top 4 scorer) were as follows:

TOURNAMENT MVP - Alex Pyle, Troy
Adam Ilgin, Cooperstown B
Josh Schecter, Milford
Thom Knight, Cooperstown A
Julian Perry, Ithaca A
Aidan Uckun, Ithaca B
Jeremy Sauer, Ithaca C
Henry McCabe, Saratoga Springs A

Once again, thank you for attending the Geneva Invitational yesterday and for helping to grow and support independent circuit high school quizbowl in upstate New York.

01/26/2018

Here are the round robin groups for the Geneva Invitational quizbowl tournament on Saturday. Each team will play every other team in its division, and then play a 10th crossover game against the team in the other division that finished in the same position. Top 3 overall teams qualify for HSNCT in Atlanta, top 4 for PACE NSC in suburban DC, top 4 teams from small public schools qualify for SSNCT in Chicago. Time permitting, there will be an all-star game immediately after the final, in which the #1 overall scorer in the tournament and the top scorer on the top-ranked team without a top 4 overall scorer will draft teams from the other 6 all stars (announced before the final).

SCOTT LaFARO DIVISION
Adirondack
Baldwinsville
Cooperstown B
Geneva C
Ithaca A
Ithaca B
Laurens B
Marcus Whitman A
Saratoga Springs A
Waterloo A

TRAVVIE McCoy DIVISION
Cooperstown A
Geneva B
Geneva Middle
Ithaca C
Laurens A
Marcus Whitman B
Milford
Saratoga Springs B
Troy
Waterloo B

01/21/2018

No one signed up at the deadline on Saturday, so we've got 18 teams set to go for the Geneva Invitational next Saturday, the 27th. Here are the groups - 2 known stronger teams were seeded into each group, with the remainder of the teams randomly drawn to fill 3 six-team groups - the only restriction being that no two teams from the same school were drawn into the same AM group (there is no such restriction for the PM groups). There is no Geneva A team listed since their A team players are staffing the tournament.

BLACKWELL DIVISION
Adirondack
Geneva C
Ithaca A
Laurens B
Marcus Whitman B
Milford

LaFARO DIVISION
Baldwinsville
Geneva Middle
Ithaca B
Marcus Whitman A
Saratoga Springs A
Waterloo A

McCOY DIVISION
Geneva B
Ithaca C
Laurens A
Saratoga Springs B
Troy
Waterloo B

Each of these groups will play a 5-game, all-play-all, complete round robin, after which there will be a lunch interval, and then the teams will be rebracketed into a Championship (the #1 and #2 teams in each morning group), Second ( #3 and #4 teams) and Third ( #5 and #6 teams). Win-loss record ties will be broken in the AM groups by points per game scored over the 5 games. ALL TEAMS GET 5 AFTERNOON PLAYOFF GAMES, REGARDLESS OF AM PERFORMANCE - PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE AFTER LUNCH. Every team in the tournament is guaranteed 10 games (one, but only one, of them a repeat game from the AM) on the day,

We'll carry records over from the AM rounds to the PM and use PPG as a tiebreaker (in the afternoon, overall PPG from all 10 prelim games.)

We will not use math computational TOSSUPS, but will use computational math BONUSES (one is included somewhere in each packet). Math theory tossups are fair game, though.

The final will be one of 4 formats:

- if the #1 team in Championship Bracket is 2 or more games clear of second place, they win the tournament outright without a final being played.

- If 2 teams are tied for the top spot in Championship, they play a one-game winner take all final.

- If 3 teams are tied, we will consult 10-game PPG, with the #1 team advancing to the final and #2 and #3 playing a half-packet playoff to meet #1 in a one-game final.

- If the #1 team is one game clear of the second place team, we play an advantaged final where the 2nd place team must win two games in a row to win the championship.

If there is a W-L record tie for the final HSNCT (3rd place overall) or SSNCT (3rd place among small schools only) spot, I also want to play that off on a half-packet. We will also play a small school championship game (on a full packet) if and only if the top 2 small schools in the standings are in the same PM bracket and have the same overall W-L record, concurrent with the overall tournament final.