Re: High School Strength

etchuck · Thu, 09 Dec 1999 20:03:03 -0800

I think "competitiveness" is how you define it.
If you're talking about the existence of a
well-established circuit and organization, Illinois is certainly a
good state program.

However, if you want to
talk "national competitiveness" I usually want to
clarify in a number of aspects: how well do teams from a
particular area do in a "national" field? What style of
questions do those teams do well in (i.e., competition
format is important)? And how well prepared are the
students from those programs when they participate in
college qb competitions? These are three completely
different criteria that I use when I follow HS competitions
and teams. The preparation for these said
competitions is usually reflected in how well those teams do
later in the year.

In general (meaning, you can
always find some exceptions), teams that tend to do very
well at the quiz-bowl like national tournaments
(meaning, I'm excluding Decathlon and the Disney/Panasonic
stuff), school teams that play a lot of games on
competitive questions tend to do well at national
tournaments. It makes sense: experience in winning is a good
indicator of success. Experience in playing against tough
competition is also a good indicator of a team's dedication
to winning in a national field.

I know there
are caveats to this. A team from Illinois is not
allowed to travel out of state (like a few other states
that I'm aware of) until after the state tournaments
are held. In contrast, teams like State College PA,
Governor's School VA, Georgetown Day DC, Dorman SC, Rufus
King WI, and so on will be willing to make trips
out-of-state and play other nationally competitive teams to
prepare everyone for national tournaments later on.
[Equivalent to college basketball: playing a tough
"non-conference" schedule.] At the level of the traditional
match-play HS nationals, the winners have generally been
teams that have set forth a tough out-of-state
nationally competitive schedule. [Panasonic has been
somewhat aberrent because of its game format which can
result in unexpected results... the best team can hose
itself out of winning a match easily.]

Of course,
it should also be said, not too many of the DC-area
schools which I think are the most competitive in high
school quiz bowl compete anymore in Chip Beall's
Nationals or ASCN/Lake Forest, so I suppose competitiveness
also depends on a national scale for who's in your
field... but that's a different story.