SCT
NAQT Sectionals (also known as SCT or the Sectional Championship Tournament), is an annual collegiate tournament run on NAQT questions and rules hosted at many different colleges throughout the United States (and occasionally Canada).
Like many NAQT tournaments--although unlike almost all other college tournaments--Sectionals makes use of timed rounds.
Sectionals also divides teams up into Division I and Division II brackets, provided there are enough teams, and awards recognition for the top undergraduate team playing in Division I.
Sections (to 2009)
- Canada
- Northeast
- Mid-Atlantic
- Mideast
- Great Lakes
- Southeast
- South
- Southwest
- Midwest
- North
- Northwest
- West
History
In November 2009, NAQT announced a partnership with ACUI. As part of this deal, the section format used by NAQT was dropped in favor of ACUI's regions. As a result, a few site choices in 2011 were met with confusion, notably SUNY-New Paltz for Region 2, Moravian for Region 4 (3 was tacked on when it was clear no site would be held for it), and East Carolina for Region 5. This may have had more to do with NAQT trying to collect bids in August, a full 6 months before the tournaments and while virtually all clubs were on break.
Reception
The 2007 Sectionals was generally better received than in previous years, thanks to the efforts of Andrew Yaphe editing the tournament.
However, some players continue to criticize Sectionals for its use of the timed format (often combined with bad moderators), a distribution that is heavy on trash, current events and geography, and repeated occurrences of badly written questions.
In response to these criticisms (and of criticisms of the ICT), NAQT released surveys following the 2006 and 2007 ICTs. The lack of significant changes to Sectionals and the ICT following these surveys have led some players to view them as window dressing or otherwise problematic. See the NAQT page for more information on this subject.