Re: High School Nationals

• From: etchuck
• Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 15:26:42 -0700
• Message-ID: <000TDK812.0005CRMEU.12170551-quizbowl_at_...>

<< By the way, although the disparaging
remark about the QU staff may not be undeserved, I am
actually a QU national staff member. I read for Chip for
the first time last year and will be reading again at
New Orleans and at Washington again this summer. It
was my observations of those tourneys last year that
led me to ask this question about high school
nationals. >>

Just to make it also clear on the
record, there are a few people who have staffed for
Chip's tournaments in the past. In no way do I mean any
disrespect towards them personally. That being said, the
feedback from past participants on the tournament has been
lukewarm to negative. I grant that there is probably a
major sampling bias, but I don't see many teams who
play at the CWRU tournaments clamoring to go play at
the QU NAC... primarily because of
money.

Corporate sponsorship: I don't see it being an answer.
First of all, there must be a consensus on format, and
that is nearly impossible for the reasons stated
earlier (there are for-profit q-writing companies that
would have a stake). Secondly, I cannot identify over
the past TEN years of a corporate sponsor interested
in sponsoring a national; now I grant, there are
such companies, and they sponsor the Panasonic
tournament, so I am probably not approaching the fundraising
aspect correctly. That brings me to the third point: if
you are going for a sponsor, you will have to make a
package that is more enticing than a trip to Disney World
and all the scholarship money and trimmings PAC
offers.

Finally, and I do think you hit an important point, not
that many teams care about "nationals." It occurs
after summer starts for some schools, which is an
inconvenience for many who don't see themselves as being that
competitive in the first place; the rest don't feel that
taking their seniors out on a "trip" warrants
participation. Until there is enough interest across the board,
I don't see that anyone really gives a flip about
it. The only way I could see there be interest is in
the same vein USA Today does it for prep basketball,
football, and perhaps baseball... a "national poll". To
that end, Matt Weiner is at least making progress to
get such a poll started; we'll see whether it makes a
difference.