I think Ross raises some important points, many of which have specific relevance to the west coast and some of which may be interesting to the rest of the country. I'll respond and elaborate on those I find particularly important (so as to keep this somewhere short of gargantuan). > While not having seen the composition of every club at every school > on the West Coast this year, it seems to me that again the strongest > clubs in terms of ability to reasonably compete in a national > tournament reside in the 650 and 510 area codes. I am uncertain as to > the strength of the CalTech club but with the recent departure of > nearly 100% of graduate students I'd say it is in question. Similarly > with UCLA, a club which has plenty of up and coming undergraduate > talent (Matthew and Charles) and at least one experienced graduate > student (Steve). After a few years of absence it's nice to see signs > of life at USC. UC Irvine, HELLO, where are you? After a few years of > activity at Scripps and Harvey Mudd that duo has gone into hiding. I > know of at least 2 bay area students who now go to Pomona college > (also part of the Claremont Colleges) and were active participants in > the Bay Area High School circuit. There was hope that someone would > poke their head above water at UCSD but that's still waiting to > happen. I hope someone from UC Davis reads this because you guys > really suck for going to one tournament and then playing CBI only. > Not to mention the 0 penetration Quiz Bowl has with the 23 campus > CalState system, the founding campus (SJSU) within stone's throw of > Stanford. > The strength of the west coast circuit is indeed in the north. That being said, I see no reason to call out programs publicly, such as the comments made about Irvine and especially Davis in the third paragraph of Ross's post. If the goal here is to increase participation I can't imagine this will achieve it. Also, Ross is plain wrong on the state system comment as Fresno State was active last season. > To further that thought, I'd also like to mention something I don't > feel certain clubs may understand about quizbowl. We are actively > funding each other's ability to participate in the circuit. Ross's reciprocity argument is a powerful one. In west coast terms this boils down to Northern California teams (especially Berkeley) regularly sending multiple teams to Southern California tournaments and then having trouble getting a critical mass of teams in order to hold solid tournaments up north. I have some opinions as to why this occurs but its not particularly germane to the point being made. Basically I agree its bad form to hold college tournaments and then not reinvest the proceeds into attending other tournaments within the region. That practice is a sure way to kill a circuit. Ross then goes on to additional bashing of the Irvine club without making clear that his polemic is directed at them. I don't really believe that will serve to build region wide consensus and harmony and thus I will refrain from commenting further than to say that tournaments should be well run. Ross follows with questions about the effect of the proliferation of NAQT junior bird tournaments on the college circuit. I would suggest anyone interested in a fairly good discussion of this very topic take a look at hsquizbowl.org under "Collegiate Qui zbowl"-"Discussion". My feeling is that these central source tournaments are good for new players, or players who like easy tournaments, but they are not a very good substitute for an ACFish packet submission tournament. There should be room for both varieties, but I fear on the west coast there may not. The fact that people don't have to write questions for NAQT JBs doesn't bother me at all, since there should be room in the game for casual players, as well as for small teams that don't have the capacity to write and edit their own questions at a high quality level. > I also believe that if ends like this are to be achieved, it would be > beneficial to a circuit to have some sort of meeting to coordinate > goals and expectations. To echo Ross's general sentiment, I think the west coast circuit is a disaster right now. In 2003, ACF regionals had seven teams—three Berkeley, three Stanford, and one from southern California. That's alarming. Stanford held a mirror of Wildcat. It drew six teams—three Berkeley, one Stanford, and two from southern California (including one team that averaged 11.5 points per game). That's alarming. Stanford held a FUCT mirror. It had four teams. Stanford held a Buzzerfest mirror, it drew five teams—three Berkeley, one Stanford. USC announced Ghetto Warz a few months back and had to cancel due to lack of teams. Berkeley is hosting WIT in a few weeks, and I gather they have very few confirmed participants. This is a problem. People are doing two things out here. First, they are not traveling to tournaments. Second, they are not bothering to gauge interest before announcing new tournaments. This leads to very poorly attended tournaments that wind up draining the funds of those teams that do travel, without delivering a satisfying tournament in return. Something does need to be done about this, and I commend Ross for suggesting some sort of meeting of the minds among various club leaders in the west. For lack of a better idea, I suggest that anyone on this coast, or anywhere else if you're especially interested, who wants to work on this send me an e-mail at this yahoo address. I'll try to get an e-mail list going of interested people. Steve Kaplan despite the handle, of UCLA berkeleykaplan at yahoo.com
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