June 13th, 2013 by Mike Bentley
Here are some photos from the 2013 NSC.
NSC 2013 Champions Ladue
NSC 2013 2nd Place Team LASA
NSC 2013 Finals Match
Some of the 2013 NSC All-Stars
PACE News
June 11th, 2013 by Sarah
Thank you to everyone who attended the 2013 NSC! All statistics from this tournament can be found on its entry on the Quizbowl Resource Database.
Full standings are listed below. I know in some cases the standings are otherwise than the stats indicate; I’m happy to make any corrections sent to me if I miss an instance of that.
1 Ladue
2 LASA A
3 Loyola Academy
4 Paul M. Dorman A
5 DCC A
6 LASA B
7 TJ A
8 Montgomery Blair
9 Maggie Walker A
10 “Robert E. Lee”
11 Cistercian
12 IMSA A
13 Hunter A
14 Dorman B
15 High Tech A
16 Richard Montgomery A
17 Ridgewood
18 Raleigh Charter A
19 Belvidere North
19 Northmont
21 Norcross
22 Torrey Pines
22 Stevenson A
24 Carbondale
25 Auburn
26 DMHS
27 Dunbar A
28 Olmsted Falls
28 LASA C
28 DCC B
31 Detroit Country Day
31 Oakland Mills
31 Hickman A
34 High Tech B
35 Wilmington Charter A
36 Mountain Lakes
37 Pikeville
38 Richard Montgomery B
38 Kellenberg
40 High Tech C
41 Metea Valley
41 Manheim Township
43 Maggie Walker B
43 Centennial
43 St. Anselm’s
46 Gonzaga
47 Sidney
48 Blacksburg
49 Raleigh Charter B
50 IMSA B
50 Bergen
52 Wilmington Charter B
52 Hunter B
54 AMSA B
55 Walnut Hills
55 Hanover
57 George Mason
58 Dublin Scioto
59 Stevenson B
59 Harmony
61 Summit North
61 Lisgar
63 Bloomington
63 AMSA A
65 TJ B
66 Norman
67 Dunbar B
67 Sharon
69 TJ C
69 Hickman B
71 Divine Child
72 Fort Osage
June 9th, 2013 by Mike Bentley
Here are the seeds for the 2013 superplayoffs.
Full stats are at http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/1431/stats/2013_nsc_playoffs/.
A1 Ladue
A2 Montgomery Blair
A3 Maggie Walker A
A4 Dorman B
A5 High Tech A
A6 Richard Montgomery A
B1 LASA A
B2 LASA B
B3 Thomas Jefferson A
B4 Robert E. Lee
B5 Hunter A
B6 IMSA A
C1 Paul M. Dorman A
C2 Loyola Academy
C3 DCC A
C4 Cistercian
C5 Raleigh Charter A
C6 Ridgewood
D1 Torrey Pines
D2 Carbondale
D3 Olmsted Falls
D4 DCC B
D5 Mountain Lakes
D6 Wilmington Charter A
E1 Northmont
E2 Stevenson A
E3 Auburn
E4 LASA C
E5 David H. Hickman A
E6 High Tech B
F1 Belvidere North
F2 Norcross
F3 DMHS
F4 Paul L. Dunbar A
F5 Detroit Country Day
F6 Oakland Mills
G1 Pikeville
G2 Richard Montgomery B
G3 St. Anselm’s
G4 Sidney
G5 Hunter B
G6 W. Charter B
H1 High Tech C
H2 Metea Valley
H3 Centennial
H4 Gonzaga
H5 Raleigh Charter B
H6 Bergen County Academies
I1 Manheim
I2 Kellenberg
I3 Maggie Walker B
I4 Blacksburg
I5 IMSA B
I6 AMSA B
J1 Walnut Hills
J2 Dublin Scioto
J3 Summit North
J4 AMSA A
J5 Sharon
J6 Thomas Jefferson C
K1 Hanover
K2 Stevenson B
K3 Lisgar
K4 Norman
K5 David H. Hickman B
K6 Divine Child
L1 George Mason
L2 Harmony
L3 Bloomington
L4 Thomas Jefferson B
L5 Dunbar B
L6 Fort Osage
We’ll see everyone at 8:15 in the round 13 room scheduled for your seed tomorrow morning!
May 30th, 2013 by Sarah
This post contains important information about various aspects of tournament logistics. If any questions or concerns remain unanswered after you have read this message, please feel free to contact our tournament director, Matt Weiner (mattweiner.vcu@gmail.com).SCHEDULE OUTLINEMost importantly, the basic when and where is as follows:
All registration & meeting activities will take place in the Physics Building (http://www.umd.edu/
Instructions on accessing the Maryland campus through various means of transportation are found at the bottom of this post: http://www.hsquizbowl.
Some important information is recapped here:
For teams staying at the on-campus Marriott: You can get to the building by walking about one mile east (i.e., towards Route 1) on Campus Drive or Fieldhouse Drive. If weather or other circumstances prevent you from walking, you should drive south to the Campus Drive roundabout and turn left (north) to reach the Regents Drive parking garage.
For those staying at Route 1 hotels or traveling to the tournament from outside of College Park using the Metro system or the interstate, you will enter campus from the Campus Drive/Paint Branch Parkway/Route 1 entrance, travel straight (west) to the large Campus Drive roundabout with the M on it, and turn right (north) at the roundabout to reach the Regents Drive parking garage. Do not use the University Boulevard entrance on Route 1 if you are coming from the north; continue moving south to the Campus Drive entrance and you will have a much quicker & easier time finding the buildings from there.
The Physics building is just across the street and a few dozen feet south of the parking garage.Anyone who is staying outside of College Park and using the Metro on Saturday morning should have a backup plan. The system does not open until 7 AM on weekends. This means that your first opportunity to depart at the College Park station and walk to the campus is somewhat later than 7 AM, with how late being determined by where exactly you are coming from. If you miss the first train or there is a delay in the system, be prepared to call a cab so that you do not arrive late.Registration will begin at 7:00 AM on Saturday, June 8 and run until 8:15 AM, when the team meeting will begin. Round 1 begins at 9:00 AM. Ample time will be allotted to run the team meeting and for teams to walk to games taking place in other buildings by 9:00.
To be very clear, this means, not only, that teams need to be present in their rooms by 9:00, but that they need to get to the registration desk before 8:58–if a team shows up two minutes under the wire and finds out their building is a ten minute walk away, we will NOT hold the game for them. Teams arriving at any point after 8:15 are considered late and risk missing part or all of the prelims.
Please make sure that, if your contact cell phone number has changed since you filled out the registration form, you send us the new number. If it is past 8:00 and you are on your way to the tournament but not yet there, call George Berry at (804) 201-3213 to let us know what’s going on; we will call you using the number we have on file for your team if we don’t hear from you by 8:15. At9:00 AM, any team that has not shown up to Round 1 and has not been in contact with us by phone (either by calling us or by answering our call at the provided number) about the reasons for the delay will be replaced by a standby team, and will NOT have an opportunity to participate in the tournament even if they arrive later.
There will be a lunch break on Saturday at a time announced on-site. There are a limited number of fast food establishments in the on-campus student union that will be open, as well as many off-campus restaurants on Route 1 within walking distance during lunch. We will provide directions on-site for suggested lunch options. Saturday gameplay is expected to end by 6:30 PM with no additional meal break.
There will be no general meeting on Saturday evening or Sunday morning, and you will return directly to your scheduled Round 13 game room on Sunday by 8:15. We will begin calling after absent teams at that time; the “round starts with or without you” time is 8:30.
Please be advised that all team-provided buzzers will be available to retrieve starting at 11:30 AM in Physics. Teams remaining as participants or spectators in the superplayoff rounds and beyond may leave the buzzers with us until the conclusion of the tournament. Buzzers will NOT be available for retrieval before 11:30 AM on Sunday. Please do NOT make travel plans that depend on you picking up buzzers before this time. Teams who leave before 11:30 or forget to pick up their buzzers at the designated time before leaving will be responsible for paying the shipping on buzzers that we send back to you after the fact.
All teams except those in the top tier of the playoffs will be done by 11:00. All teams are invited and encouraged to watch the remainder of the superplayoffs and the finals after your own participation is complete.
We especially encourage teams to stay (or return) for the final events on Sunday: the tournament finals, the all-star game, and the NSC awards presentation. The finals have traditionally been riveting. There will also be many awards that your team members may be eligible for, and the all-star game will feature audience participation with book and gift card prizes for spectators. This proved to be a very popular and enjoyable event for the audience last year.
TOURNAMENT FORMAT
The prelim format will be 9 seeded brackets of 8, with the top two going to the championship playoff group of 18, the next two to the second playoff group of 18, the next two to the third group of 18, and the last two to the fourth group of 18. The playoff groups will each be divided into three brackets of six and play round robins. After the conclusion of the playoff round robins in round 12, teams in the second, third, and fourth tiers will play crossover superplayoffs based on whether they finished in the top two, next two, or bottom two of their playoff group, over rounds 13-16, and then those teams will be done. Teams in the top tier will play crossover superplayoffs based on finishing in the top or bottom three of their playoff group, which requires six games plus a bye and will extend to round 19 for those teams only. The championship superplayoff teams will be ranked by record against other superplayoff teams and then play an ACF-style final (clear by 2 wins outright, ahead by 1 gets advantage in weighted best-of-three, tie played off on one game).
All ties determining which playoff tier you make out of the prelims and which superplayoff group you make out of the playoffs will be played off on half packets. Ties for final placement within the top playoff tier will be played off on half packets. Only ties after prelims and then ties within the top playoff tier will be broken on half-packets; ties for superplayoff groups in tiers 2-4 will be broken on playoff PPG, and ties for final place in those superplayoff groups will stand as ties. Ties for entrance into the final will be played off on half or full packets as applicable to the size of the tie. Thus: All teams will play through round 16 on Sunday morning regardless of prelim performance. The top 18 teams will play through at least round 19. During round 20, ties for spots 3-18 will be broken.
Out of respect for both teams who were excluded from the tournament based on the field cap and your scheduled opponents, it is very important that you play out the entirety of your schedule even if you are not in contention for the championship. Please do not fail to show up on Sunday or otherwise leave early.
Please let Matt know if you have any questions about the tournament format.
ROSTERS & PROGRAM INFORMATION
If you have not yet filled out your team information form, please do so here: https://docs.google.com/
We posted the complete sub-distribution of the tournament at http://hsquizbowl.org/
There have been no changes to the tournament rules since last year. The 2012 rules and a list of major changes from 2011 can be found here: http://www.pace-nsc.org/
PAYMENT & DISCOUNTSPlease contact PACE Treasurer Aaron Rosenberg at cursednine@gmail.com if you have not yet paid for the tournament. Also, if you wish to sign up a team-provided scorekeeper for a discount (or you indicated 1 or more scorekeepers when you registered but did not follow up with their names and contact information) get in touch with staff coordinator Jacob Wasserman at jacoblwasserman@gmail.com.
We look forward to your participation in this year’s NSC. Please get in touch with Matt if you have any questions.
May 30th, 2013 by Sarah
Effective immediately, the 2013 NSC field has expanded to 72 teams. Several waitlisted teams have confirmed their entrance into the field. As of this writing, 3 spots remain and the 2 waitlisted teams we have yet to hear from (Norcross and Harmony Science) have first right of refusal. Registration is limited to those waitlisted teams and our current standby teams until 10 AM EST tomorrow, May 31, and will open to any interested teams after that point. Teams who are interested in registering should contact Aaron Rosenberg at cursednine@gmail.com as soon as they are able to commit to attending.
To clarify, the remaining 3 spots will be assigned as follows:
1) Teams currently on the waitlist who commit by 10 tomorrow.
2) Teams currently on the standby list who commit to become paying teams by 10 tomorrow, ordered within this list by what their position on the standby list was.
3) Any teams not meeting criteria 1 or 2, including waitlist/standby teams who tell us after 10 tomorrow, and teams on neither list who tell us at any time, ordered by when they e-mail us committing to attend.
