Monday 14 December 2015

2016 ONQBA Provincials Annoucement

The Ontario Quizbowl Association, in collaboration with the University of Toronto quizbowl team, is pleased to host the 2016 ONQBA Provincial Championship. It will be held at the University of Toronto, St. George Campus on Saturday March 26, 2016. This tournament will be the premier high school quizbowl event in Ontario, serving as an opportunity to bring competition from all active regions in the province. This tournament is also an opportunity for teams to qualify for the NAQT High School National Championship Tournament (HSNCT) and the PACE National Scholastic Championship (NSC). More information on this can be found here. It will take place in Sidney Smith Hall (100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON) and will run from the morning to mid-late afternoon.

The tournament director, Patrick Liao, can be reached by email at patrick.s.liao – AT – gmail.com. Registration emails should be sent to him at the above address and contain the number of teams registered, and what discounts will be claimed. Invoices will be sent to teams via email. Posts in the comments or messaging him on Facebook do not count as official registrations, though he is available for questions through both of those mediums. He will be assisted in tournament direction by Meghan Torchia, the President of the University of Toronto quizbowl team, especially on issues concerning logistics, transportation, and food.

We have applied to NAQT to be the "state" championship for Ontario and use the accompanying question set. In the unlikely event that the ONQBA bid fails, we will obtain an alternate source of regular difficulty questions. Assuming the use of NAQT questions, the games will be timed and calculation questions will be removed. We also expect to be able to include approximately one tossup and bonus per game of Canadian content. Games will follow NAQT rules.

We tentatively have a field cap of 20 teams, though we can likely find resources to handle more teams given enough notice. For a field of 12 teams or fewer, there will be a full round-robin plus additional playoff rounds to get all teams to at least 8 or 9 games. For fields greater than 12 teams, there will be preliminary pools followed by playoff tiers.

The tournament fees are as follows:
* $90 for the first team from a school
* $70 for the second team from a school
* $50 for each additional team from a school beyond the second
* $5 discount for fully working buzzer systems (to be tested day of)
* $5 discount for trained staff
* $10 discount for travel over 200 km
* Other discounts for activity on the Ontario circuit (see below)
* Other discounts at the discretion of the ONQBA board for exceptional circumstances (e.g. travel over 400 km, single person teams, etc.)
Minimum total fee: $20 (per team)

To encourage more activity in the high school circuit during the year, the ONQBA is also offering participation discounts. A school that participated in an ONQBA-certified event can claim up to ONE of the following:

* $40 for hosting an ONQBA-certified event
* $10 for attending at least two non-provincials certified events
* $10 for winning a certified event
* $5 for attending one non-provincial certified event

To promote healthy communications practices, any team that from this post onwards changes the number of teams registered attending any high school quizbowl tournament in Ontario with less than 24 hours notice to the tournament director(s) will not be eligible for any discounts (including for additional teams) and will be given the lowest priority if they end up on a waitlist.

At this stage, all academic quizbowl events intended for high school teams with at least one Ontario team in attendance will count as certified. History Bowl events in Canada count; "Reach-style" events or SchoolReach regionals do not.

All teams from Ontario are welcome and encouraged to attend. No prior qualification or experience is necessary, although it is recommended that you become familiar with NAQT rules and try practicing on a few quizbowl packets, of which many similar non-NAQT formats are available online.

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