I've always been curious about how intelligent, knowledgeable people
with no prior experience would react to the shape of the quizbowl
canon. This is an interesting data point. I'd be curious to hear
about how your players react to packets from different tournaments and
their reasoning for their preferences.
Non-scholastic quizbowl is a rarity. "Master's" tournaments are
populated almost exclusively by people still in college or those who
played in college, although I have occasionally played with/against
newbies at master's competitions.
I'd be incredibly curious if you challenged other similar
institutions, perhaps the staff of other Science Bowl hosts in the
surrounding states. I'd also be curious as to what people think would
be an appropriate difficulty academic set for such a competition,
assuming no prior qb experience for players.