Sunday 20 September 2015

What is ONQBA?


ONQBA is the Ontario Quizbowl Association, a nonprofit group that promotes and organizes quizbowl tournaments at high schools in Ontario. We run the Ontario Provincial Championship every spring.

(Quizbowl is a buzzer quiz game that's designed to encourage learning about history, science, literature, and other academic subjects. It is usually played between two teams representing different schools.)

Officially, ONQBA is run by these people:
  • President Patrick Liao (UToronto)
  • Secretary Brendan McKendy (lives in Ottawa)
  • VP Tech Joe Su (McGill)
  • Social Media Outreach Coordinator Peter Cordeiro (McMaster)
  • South Ontario Rep. Aayush Rajasekaran (UToronto)
Functionally, ONQBA is Peter Cordeiro, Patrick Liao, and Brendan McKendy for 2015-16. We have a mandate to promote high-school quizbowl in Ontario and ensure that all quizbowl events are well-run. Joe Su, Meghan Torchia, and many other volunteers also do this work outside of our ONQBA bureaucracy.


Our board circa summer 2015.

All of our board members are former or current quizbowl players who have now taken leadership roles and started organizing quizbowl tournaments. The ONQBA was founded in 2011 and was run for several years by Ben Smith.

ONQBA's operations include:
  • running our provincial championship
  • staffing and directing quizbowl tournaments at high schools and universities
  • modifiying question sets for Canadian audiences
  • occasional financial aid for some school quizbowl teams' expenses
The ONQBA is in the process of incorporating and registering as a charity. This will not change our operations -- we have always been strictly non-profit, and we have always had the same priorities. 

The ONQBA is not a governing body. We don't make or enforce gameplay rules (rules vary slightly from event to event at the discretion of the host), we don't "own" the rights to any format (quizbowl events can always exist independent of us), and teams are always free to choose what ONQBA events they do or don't wish to participate in.

In 2015-16, quizbowl tournaments were played at these schools in Ontario:
  • McMaster University (Hamilton)
  • Lisgar Collegiate Institute (Ottawa)
  • University of Ottawa
  • Carleton University (Ottawa)
  • University of Toronto
  • University of Waterloo

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