• High School
• NAQT Missouri Qualifier
• 2015

2015 NAQT Missouri Qualifier Announcement

The Missouri Quizbowl Alliance would like to invite all MSHSAA-registered high school Scholar Bowl teams to participate in the 2015 NAQT Missouri Qualifier, which will be held on the campus of the University of Missouri in Columbia on March 7, 2015.

The Missouri Quizbowl Alliance is an organization dedicated to providing high-quality quizbowl tournaments to all Missouri teams. As MOQBA's flagship event, this tournament regularly features a diverse field of teams from throughout Missouri, creating a championship atmosphere and recognizing the state's top teams for national tournament qualification. Jeffrey Hill and Alex Dzurick will serve as tournament directors of this official NAQT event.

Format

This tournament will be run in the twenty tossup/bonus format on NAQT Invitational Series #144. This question set is not expected to be assigned to any other tournaments in Missouri, but teams are still responsible for ensuring that they attend no more than one tournament using IS-144.

As an official NAQT event, this tournament will use untimed NAQT rules only modified where necessary to comply with MSHSAA requirements. Games consist of twenty tossups worth ten points each followed by non-rebounding bonuses worth up to thirty points. Tossups will feature "powers" (additional points awarded for correct buzzes early in the question) and "negs" (five point deductions for incorrect answers before the question is finished).

The top 4 teams will receive plaques, and an all-tournament team will be recognized based on individual performances in the preliminary rounds. Teams will not be divided into separate divisions based on school size, but the top small school team (by NAQT's definition) will be recognized with a plaque as the small school champion.

Schedule

Check-in on the morning of the tournament will begin at 7:45. We will have a short team meeting around 8:30. We intend to begin the first round of tournament play around 8:45.

For the preliminary rounds, teams will be divided into pools that will each play a round robin. Following the preliminary rounds, all teams will be rebracketed into championship and consolation pools, in which teams will play more games against teams that finished similarly in the preliminary rounds. The exact schedule for the tournament will be determined by the final field size, but all teams will be guaranteed at least 9 games, ending around 4:00.

Depending on the format, the top 4-6 teams should anticipate up to 4 additional games that should end no later than 6:00. If no small schools remain in contention for the overall trophies and the top two small schools are close enough in the standings, those two teams will play a small school final of up to 2 games, ending by about 5:00.

Each school in attendance will receive a copy of the questions after the tournament.

Qualifying for National Tournaments

The top fifteen percent of the field will automatically qualify for the NAQT High School National Championship Tournament (HSNCT), to be held in Chicago on May 29-31, 2015. If all teams in the top 15% already qualified at earlier tournaments, the highest-ranking team that had not previously qualified will receive a bid to HSNCT. Unlike previous Qualifiers, NAQT will no longer be reserving a guaranteed spot in the HSNCT field for the champion of this tournament.

The top 15% of small school teams will qualify for the NAQT Small School National Championship Tournament on April 24-26, 2015 in Atlanta. If all teams in the top 15% already qualified for SSNCT at earlier tournaments, the highest-ranking small school team that had not qualified at any previously-held tournament will receive a bid to SSNCT. Additionally, any small school team that qualifies for HSNCT will automatically qualify for SSNCT.

This tournament has once again received platinum certification from the Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence, so the top 25% of the field will qualify for the PACE National Scholastic Championship, which will be held in the Washington D.C. area on June 6-7, 2015.

We encourage all teams to participate even if they do not plan to attend a national championship.

Pricing

• Base fee for each team: $60
• Buzzer discount: $5 discount for each working buzzer system your school brings. Each system must be fully functional for eight players to receive the discount.
• Travel discount: $10 discount for every 100 miles your school travels to the tournament (one-way, as determined by Google Maps)
• The minimum entry fee is $25 per team, unless you intend to take advantage of the staff discounts (see below).

Staff discounts:

Please let us know as soon as possible if you will be able to provide any moderators or scorekeepers. All staffers will be needed throughout the preliminary and playoff rounds since all teams will be playing. Staffers will be provided lunch.

• You will receive a $20 discount for each competent scorekeeper your school brings.
• You will receive a $30 discount for each experienced moderator your school brings. Moderators must be able to complete a 20 tossup/bonus game in 25-30 minutes to keep the tournament on schedule. We will reserve the right to choose our moderators.
• For schools providing scorekeepers or moderators, the minimum entry fee is $0.

Field Size and Registration Procedure

We will be using an online registration form again this year; please complete this form to register for the tournament. Registrations will be processed in the order they are received through this form, and will not be accepted via any other method. This tournament traditionally fills very quickly, so we strongly recommend that you reserve your spots now.

We anticipate that the final field size will be between 30 and 36 teams, but to ensure that we continue to run an efficient tournament, the field will initially be limited to 24 teams until we have secured enough staffers to run a larger tournament in a timely manner. To give more interested schools earlier confirmation to make arrangements to attend, registrations will be handled a little differently this year.

Before January 1, 2015, only one team from each school will be admitted to the field, with one exception described below. Schools that would like to bring more than one team may indicate the number of teams they intend to bring, but any teams after the first will initially be placed on the waitlist. At 12:00 AM on January 1, teams on the waitlist will be added to the field until no openings remain or the waitlist is exhausted.

Because more moderators and scorekeepers will help us expand the field sooner, each staffer that a school provides will move the next waitlisted team from that school into the field, or, if the field is full, to the top of the waitlist. Schools that provide staff will receive a discount on the registration fee, as noted above.

• Before January 1, for each staffer that a school offers to provide, assuming space is still available, we will immediately admit one additional team to the field. For instance, a team wishing to secure spots for 3 teams before January 1 will only be given 3 confirmed spots if it commits to providing two staffers; otherwise, the additional teams will only be able to participate if there are openings on January 1.
• We expect to be adequately staffed to the point where this will not be necessary, but if one or more teams from a school are admitted to the field early by offering staff that subsequently become unavailable, we will reserve the right to drop any number of that school's teams if the tournament would be short-staffed as a result.

The waitlist will be grouped in this order:

1. Teams with a corresponding school-provided staffer (one team per staffer), ordered by the time each staffer is promised.
2. The first team from each school that registers before January 1, 2015, ordered by registration timestamp.
3. All remaining teams, ordered by registration timestamp.

Our goals with this system are to give interested schools at least one confirmed spot in the field as early as possible so that they have plenty of time to make transportation arrangements, still provide a way for schools to claim multiple spots early, and to secure more staffers sooner so that we can confidently expand the field to admit waitlisted teams to the field earlier. Additionally, if there are late openings, any waitlisted teams at that point should mostly be from schools that already have a confirmed spot in the field rather than from new schools who would then need to make last-minute travel arrangements.

Tournament information, including a list of registered teams and current staff counts, will be updated regularly on the Missouri Academic Competition Message Board.

We hope to see you and your team in Columbia in March and wish you the best of luck as you compete this season. If you have any questions about the tournament, don't hesitate to ask us at qualifier@moqba.org.

Sincerely,
Jeffrey Hill and Alex Dzurick
2015 NAQT Missouri Qualifier Co-Directors