Impressions from the First Year (Part I)

I too have watched the recent discussion about
ACF, the Fall Tournament, and what seems to be the
fairness of quiz bowl as a whole. Let me first begin by
saying that my opinion is my own and not that of my
team. DePauw, and our founder Stan, has taken quite a
beating over the last two days due to the comments he
made about the ACF Fall Tournament. Yes, DePauw sent
two teams, and both of them had losing records. (One
team beat the other giving one a 2-12 record, and the
other an 0-14 record.) And yes, we don't like
losing...does anyone? However, what I think has not been
mentioned, or at least has not been emphasized enough was
that both of our teams learned things (academic and
otherwise) from the Fall Tournament. And our teams are
improving with each tournament we attend. It was brought to
my attention at our most recent practice that one of
the goals of DePauw B was to score 100 points in each
round. With the exception of a few, they succeeded, and
I am very proud of them for that.

I must say
that I have not been doing this whole quiz bowl thing
for very long, and thus do not know many of you, the
animosities that seem to constantly be brewing between so
many of you, or the many technicalities that seem to
be behind quiz bowl, ACF and otherwise. For the most
part my experience has been good, regardless of the
format I have been playing. I personally like science
questions (but not physics) and therefore would love to see
more science in packets. I also realize that science
is not all there is in the world and therefore I
can't have a packet full of all biology and no history.
I have noticed, however, that ACF tends to be very
heavy on Classics, of which I have very little
knowledge (I'll stop all of you who want to tell me that I
should study that stuff if I want to be an effective
quiz bowl player. I realize this, thank you.). Any
special reason? I have also noticed that the same topics
come up over and over again, in differently formatted
questions, yes, but basically the same stuff. I can't tell
you how many times we have come across the same
answers in practice multiple weeks in a row. Hopefully by
now myself and the rest of my team knows these things
backwards and forwards! This is a good way for us to learn,
but it always seems like there is something missing.
I was priveleged to have my mom (Don't anyone laugh
at that, she came all the way from Hawaii to visit
me and I wasn't about to leave her in Greencastle
and be gone all day. Besides, she wanted to know what
it was that was taking up so much of my time and
that I always talked about with such excitement.)
accompany us to the ACF Fall Tournament this past weekend,
and she noted something I've been thinking about for
a long time. Why such little variation in
questions? By this I mean, there is so much more in the
world than people write questions about on a consistent
basis. I know in the few questions I have written since
starting quiz bowl last semester I have attempted to write
about different things than I have ever heard in a
question. Granted, I don't always succeed in picking
something that I think few people know about, but hey, I
try. Why not include a few different topics (like
Hawaiian History! :)) that haven't had many questions
written about them rather than sticking to the same old
stuff that every quiz bowl veteran knows? You all keep
talking about bringing in new blood to the circuit...I
think this is another good way to mix things up a bit
and get more people interested. (By the way, I'm
partial to Hawaiian History because I grew up in Hawaii,
but there are many topics that I've noticed never get
asked about.)

More to come in the next post (I
guess I'm too long-winded)

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