• High School
• NAQT Missouri Qualifier
• 2017

2017 NAQT Missouri Qualifier Recap

30 teams attended the 2017 NAQT Missouri Qualifier at William Woods University on March 4, 2017.

The teams were originally divided into 2 pools of 8 and 2 pools of 7 for preliminary rounds 1-7.

The top 2 teams in each pool advanced to the championship tier, remaining eligible to win the tournament. The third place teams advanced to Consolation 1, the fourth place teams to Consolation 2, the fifth place teams to Consolation 3, the sixth place teams to Consolation 4, and the remaining teams to Consolation 5. Each consolation pool of four teams played a round robin in rounds 8-10, while the six team Consolation 5 pool played a partial round robin in rounds 8-10.

In the championship tier, two roughly equal pools were seeded based on the points per bonus of the top team from each preliminary pool, with the corresponding second place teams advancing to the same pool. This resulted in two parallel pools consisting of the first and second place teams from two of the four pools. Each of these pools played a crossover playoff, with games in rounds 8-9 and one preliminary game carrying over.

After round 9, Washington A, Rock Bridge B, Washington B, and St. Joseph Central advanced to the superplayoffs, while the remaining championship tier teams played round 10 placement games. Following round 11, Washington A, Central, and Washington B were tied at 2-1; Rock Bridge B was 0-3 and took home fourth place. The three tied teams were seeded based on superplayoff points per game to play a two stage final. Central won the play-in game 320-200 over Washington B to give Washington B 3rd place. Central advanced to play Washington A in the championship game, which Washington A won 410-220 to take home the 2017 NAQT Missouri Qualifier title!

For the small school title, Hallsville A finished in eighth place overall and Louisiana finished in eleventh place. The separation of only three places resulted in an advantaged final between Hallsville and Louisiana, with Hallsville holding the advantage. Hallsville won the first game of the final 285-115 to claim their fifth consecutive NAQT Missouri Qualifier small school title!

The top 15% (5 teams) qualified for the NAQT High School National Championship Tournament on May 26-28 in Atlanta. Congratulations to Washington A and B, St. Joseph Central, Rock Bridge, and Savannah for qualifying at this tournament.

Of our 30 teams, we had a tournament record tying 12 small school-eligible teams, continuing Missouri's tradition of strong quizbowl participation by smaller schools. The top 30% of small school teams (4 teams) have qualified for the NAQT Small School National Championship Tournament on April 28-30 in Chicago. Congratulations to Hallsville, Louisiana, Centralia, and Pilot Grove for qualifying for SSNCT! While we consider Wellsville-Middletown tied with Pilot Grove for 17th place overall with 2-1 records in their consolation pool, it looks like NAQT may have used overall record to determine the last bid.

Since this tournament is platinum certified by PACE, the top 25% (8 teams) qualified for the PACE National Scholastic Championship in Chicago on June 10-11. Congratulations to Washington A and B, St. Joseph Central, Rock Bridge A and B, Savannah, Rolla, and Hallsville A for earning bids to NSC!

During the awards ceremony, we presented the sixth MOQBA Award for Outstanding Student Involvement to the Washington High School Quiz Bowl Team and Hickman High School Academic Team for their collaboration on the excellent Washington-Hickman Academic Questionfest set, which has been used at tournaments all over the country. We thank the Washington and Hickman teams for their hard work in making another high-quality question set available for tournaments to use, and look forward to recognizing more outstanding students in the future.

Thanks to all of our wonderful staff who made this day of 148 quizbowl matches possible, getting everyone to lunch after 7 rounds by 12:40, having most teams done by 3:30, and completing the entire 13 round tournament before 5:00! The staff who did a fantastic job running this large tournament so efficiently include Joel Doepker, Evan, Samantha, Michael, Silas, and Zach from Washington; Mercedes from Hallsville; Sydney from Pleasant Hill; Jennifer from Centralia; Scott from St. Joseph Central; Jess Wright, Chris Halsey, and Julia Halsey; coaches Scott Allen, Jon Deering, David Dennis, Ryan Kennedy, Ginger Luetkemeyer, Josh Malecki, Marcelina Powers, and Scott Walker; and fellow MOQBA members Jacob Billingsley, Brandon Daake, Stephanie Hull, Jason Loy, Sean Phillips, Kevin Stockman, and Shelley Swoyer. Special thanks go to Jacob O'Rourke for not only moderating, but also providing invoices and additional help before the tournament; Alex Smith for entering the Burton game statistics into SQBS and helping to set up and tear down game rooms before and after the tournament; and Kyle Hill for managing the Academic Building control room. With some late additions, we actually ended up overstaffed, which is always a great "problem" to have; thanks to Rock Bridge coach Greg Irwin for also being available to moderate.

We must also give a HUGE thanks to William Woods University for providing us the opportunity to use the facilities on their beautiful campus for the tournament. We could not have run a tournament of this magnitude in multiple buildings without the help of the amazing representatives from William Woods University, particularly Brenda Foster and Shaun Speers, whose advance preparation and assistance during the event were critical to the success of this tournament. Everyone there has been incredibly welcoming and accommodating, and we hope all of the teams had a great experience. We can definitely envision returning to the William Woods campus in the future.

Thank you once again for attending the 2017 Qualifier and supporting this tournament over the last ten years. High school quizbowl in Missouri has changed so much since we hosted the first Qualifier in Rolla in 2008, and we always greatly enjoy the privilege of hosting this event for so many of Missouri's brightest students. We look forward to seeing all of you return to the Qualifier many times over the next ten years and beyond!

Jeffrey Hill and Matt Chadbourne
2017 NAQT Missouri Qualifier co-directors