Provincials 2018 -- Congratulations to UTS

This post is copy-pasted from our new website. We recommend you go there instead of here.



The UTS players above, they went 9-1 and won Provincials last Saturday. The field was pretty well balanced this year, but UTS was the clear best team.

Full stats from the tournament.
Twitter coverage of the last five rounds.
Canada questions used in the tournament.

We should have some more coverage to post soon. Peter and I both took notes during some games, and I did an interview with the second-place team from Hamilton.

Huge thanks to Meghan and to all staff, players, and coaches. The tournament was very good.

Canada questions from 2017 and before

This post is copied from our new site, which we update more reliably now. We recommend you go there instead of here.

For most high-school tournaments in Canada, ONQBA edits the question set to add in questions about Canada.

For Toronto Novice and Carleton Supermoon in December 2017, we wrote and added these questions to the set -- 18 tossups and 7 bonuses. The writers were Peter Cordeiro and me.

I removed around 75 questions from the set, many more than we added in. A few of those were math computation questions*. The rest were about American history, geography, literature, and art. The ones that weren't replaced with Canada questions were just replaced with "extra" questions from the original set. There were also a few questions about Canada or hockey in the original set, and I modified those a bit to make them harder.

I think these Canada questions were a little harder than they should have been -- they might have been more appropriate for Provincials than for a regular-season set. However, because many questions on (obscure) American topics were removed, I think the set as a whole was made easier by our edits.

I was proud of the tossup I wrote involving the French language, but the feedback I got on it was not positive, so maybe I should have found another way to write it. I think knowing French (and knowing about Quebec) is meaningful and important and is a huge part of education in Canada. I will keep trying to find ways to shoehorn a French lesson into every quizbowl tournament.

Here's a quick archive of questions we've used for Canadian editions of past tournaments:

• December 2017
• December 2016
• Fall 2015 -- BASK
• Fall 2015 -- Novice

*It's standard for quizbowl hosts to remove "math comp" questions or to instruct the moderators to skip over them. Many question providers simply don't use them in the first place. It sounds lame to be missing out on math questions, but if you heard these math questions, you'd want to skip them too.

Announced: Ontario Provincials -- March 24 at uToronto

This post is copied from our new site, which we update more reliably now. We recommend you go there instead of here.

There will be an Ontario Provincial Quizbowl Championship on Saturday, March 24, 2018, at the University of Toronto. Meghan Torchia will direct the tournament. Whoever wins will be the high-school champions of Ontario, and by default, of Canada.

Details are in my post here. It should be at least 10 rounds, on slightly tougher questions than our regular-season tournaments. The cost is between $40 and $80 for a team.

We'll be retrieving our championship plaque from Lisgar Collegiate this winter, to award again to new champions. According to known records, there have been 7 provincial quizbowl championships, and teams from Ottawa have won all of them. Many teams are strong this year, and some might be strong enough to defeat Lisgar and get the plaque out of Ottawa.

2016 champions pose with plaque, bunny, and active high-school player.

Comparing Stats for 2017-18

This post is copied from our new site, which we update more reliably now. We recommend you go there instead of here.

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I looked at the stats from Toronto Novice Tournament and Carleton Supermoon Tournament. Here is my attempt to measure the strongest teams in Canada.

(The stats might have errors in them, and lots of teams can always make the claim that they didn't play their full "A" lineup. So this isn't a perfect measurement of strongest teams, but it's good enough to work with.)

Bonus Rates

Here are the top teams in Ontario, ranked by points-per-bonus.



It looks like a small difference between Lisgar averaging 25 and Westmount averaging 21 on bonuses, but I prefer to measure the amount of bonus points missed. The top teams are around 5 points missed per bonus, or one part missed on every two bonuses. Other strong teams are closer to 9 points missed per bonus, which is a great result, but which is still close to double the "miss rate" of Lisgar A.

The average across all teams was 17.2 points per bonus. Colonel By missed the finals of their tournament, but their bonus rate was 3rd of 19 in Canada.

Power Rates

Here are the top teams in Ontario, ranked by frequency of 15-point powers.



UTS A powered 41% of the tossups they heard, and they converted 73% of the tossups they heard. So in an average round, they would have had 8 powers and 15 total correct buzzes. They were the only team with more powers than 10s.

UTS B had a really high power rate, but they had a pretty high rate of -5s to go with it. Colonel By had a high power rate but a more modest tossup rate.

The average team had a 42% tossup conversion rate, which means that 84% of tossups were answered correctly at Toronto Novice and Carleton Supermoon. So 16% of tossups went dead at those tournaments.

The Lisgar B team made finals of their tournament but didn't make either of the leaderboards above. Their low power rate might reflect conservative play, as their rate of -5s was the lowest of any team in either tournament.

Judgment

I think UTS is the strongest team right now. I think they're slight favourites to win quizbowl provincials and both the similar championships, assuming they enter teams.

I pick UTS over Lisgar because I think the power rates matter. Power stats are sensitive to random changes in play-style, but early buzzes usually show that a team can "scale up" and play well with stronger questions and stronger opponents. So since UTS has the higher power rate, they have the stronger team this fall.

Lisgar gains more from combining their top scorers into a "super-A" team. UTS A had five players with high scoring stats already, so adding the top scorer from the B team could improve them, but not by a huge amount. Whereas Lisgar A was only 3 players this time, so adding a strong player from the B (or C) team would be a big improvement.

It is unlikely that another team will surpass UTS and Lisgar this year, so I'm most interested now in seeing games between UTS and Lisgar. I'm also interested to see if another team can emerge as a clear 3rd-best and maybe get a game-win against one of the frontrunners.

My advice to dominant teams is to practice on harder questions.

Recap -- Carleton Supermoon Tournament

This post is copied over from our new site, which we update more reliably. We recommend you go there instead.

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I was very pleased with the Carleton Supermoon Tournament on Saturday. We had 7 teams and least 25 players, representing 5 different schools. Raw stats are here. Below are some highlights.

Lisgar has strong teams

Lisgar is a big magnet school that practices a lot of quizbowl. We are never surprised when they have strong players and teams, but we are still happy to celebrate their performances.

Lisgar's three teams went 11-1 against non-Lisgar teams on Saturday. Colin led the tournament in scoring stats, and his Lisgar A team (with Thomas and Olive) swept the tournament. Lisgar A was also very good at reminding the tournament director to hold a finals match.

Lisgar B (Matthew, Hannah, and Amy) made the finals with a close win over Colonel By. Lisgar C had a strong 19 points-per-bonus, and their players got most of the buzzes in my scrimmage room.

Lisgar might have been the only school who brought grade-nine players to the tournament. Their coach was pleased with the bravery and glad to see them build tournament experience.

Many nice people answered questions

The Colonel By team had a nice 4-2 record. They missed the finals, but they were a strong 2nd place by most stats, after their win at Lisgar Novice in November. They also did clapping exercises for about two minutes straight, which was very funny in context.

The Ashbury and Almonte teams had the worst records, but all reports said they knew plenty and were cool opponents. Ashbury had no grade 12s and was playing in its first "true quizbowl" tournament, after some visits to Reach and History Bee. Almonte were fun to see in my scrimmage room, where they ate up a lot of the science and sports questions. Their coach gave a pretty amazing report on some of the trivia fundraisers that happen in west Ottawa.

The Nepean team ("Team Ten") had strong stats, including 17 points-per-bonus. One of their players gave a memorable wrong answer on a lit question, which you should ask about if you see Nepean at a future event.

Best games

Round 1 -- Lisgar B vs Colonel By
Kevin was the only player who buzzed for Colonel By in this round, but he was enough to put them in a lead, 275-240, with three tossups left. They were two geography questions and one classical music question, and Matthew got all three of them to win the game for Lisgar. This round ended up deciding which of the two teams would make the finals.

Round 2 -- Lisgar A vs Lisgar B
This was the closest anyone came to beating Lisgar A. After 16 tossups, the score was 260-240, before Lisgar A finally pulled away by getting the next three tossups and 8 of the 9 bonus parts. The final score was 365-260, with almost all of the buzzes from Colin and Matthew. (When these teams played again in the finals, more different players answered more tossups, and they hit higher scores, 485-180.)

Round 5 -- Ashbury vs Almonte
Almonte got tossup 16 and 30'd the bonus to lead 145-85. William from Ashbury hadn't buzzed in all game, but he then buzzed on all the last four tossups -- a neg on tossup 17, then a 10 and and a power on a bio question to tie the game, and then another power to win on another bio question. From the stats, it looks like at seven different players buzzed on tossups in this round, including lots of 15s and -5s.

Round 7 -- Lisgar C vs Colonel By
After 16 tossups, Colonel By had a 255-110 lead in this game. Lisgar then got the next three tossups, including a power by grade-nine player Marin. But Lisgar only converted 3 of their 9 bonus parts, so Colonel By were able to coast to a win, 275-180.

Grand thanks to everyone who played and staffed Carleton Supermoon Tournament. We will have more posts coming up soon to release last weekend's Canada questions, to announce Provincials, and to crunch some stats from the tournaments this fall.

Announced: December HS Tournaments in Toronto and Ottawa

We have confirmed dates for high school tournaments in December! The Toronto and Ottawa events will take place on the same day and will use Canadian editions of the same NAQT set.

Toronto Novice

The annual Toronto Novice HS Tournament is back on December 2 and will be hosted at the University of Toronto St. George Campus. This event is open to beginners and experienced players alike, and we're excited to welcome several new teams to the mix this year!

Carleton Supermoon Tournament

The Ottawa winter tournament returns with a snazzy name this time, and will take place at Carleton University on December 2. It is likely that this will be the last Ottawa quizbowl event in the 2017-18 season.

Announced: November Novice in Hamilton and Ottawa

High school quizbowl is now beginning for the 2017-18 season!

MacIntro III

On November 11, McMaster is hosting their third MacIntro tournament. It's intended for new players and teams, but any high-schooler is eligible. The "king of quizzes" Peter Cordeiro will direct the event.

Last year's tournament went to the final tossup before ending with a victory by Westmount over Central Richmond Hill. Some of those players are back for this year's high-school season, so our "Intro" might have some powerful teams this time.

Lisgar Novice

On November 18, Lisgar Collegiate is hosting a novice tournament in Ottawa. They do have some eligibility restrictions, so it will be a gentler field, and top Lisgar players like Colin Veevers will be running the tournament instead of playing.

Last year's Lisgar Novice was dominated by Lisgar teams. Lisgar has a good novice class every year, but the other high schools in Ottawa have stayed strong at Reach and History Bowl. Some experienced players from other games could challenge for a quizbowl title.


MacIntro and Lisgar Novice will both be played on the SCOP Novice questions. (Kristin Strey and SCOP should get credit for writing a good tournament every year, keeping their question fees low, and always making a Canadian edition. For reference: last year's SCOP Novice questions.)

Fall Schedule 2017

This is a re-post of the events page from our new website. We will be keeping both pages up to date.

High-School Tournaments -- Unofficial

Event	Likely Date	Location	Contact
UTS Reach	Oct. 28, 2017	UT Schools (Toronto)	Jonathan Bitidis
MacIntro	Nov. 11, 2017	McMaster U (Hamilton)	Peter Cordeiro
Lisgar Novice	Nov. 18, 2017	Lisgar CI (Ottawa)	Colin Veevers
Toronto Winter	Dec. 2, 2017	University of Toronto	Meghan Torchia
Ottawa QT	Dec. 2, 2017	University of Ottawa	Shervin Ghiami
Winter Reach	Feb. 10, 2018	Lisgar CI (Ottawa)	Ruth Crabtree

The November novice tournaments have official announcements and info in the links. Some of the other tournaments haven't been announced yet. We'll post more when they're confirmed and finalized. The UTS Reach event is confirmed, but it was announced by email, so there's no public post about it.

You can contact us if you need any help tracking down the organizers of these events.

University Tournaments

Event	Date	Location	Contact
EFT	Oct. 14, 2017	University of Toronto	Meghan Torchia
Penn Bowl	Oct. 21, 2017	Queens U (Kingston)	Dennis Beeby
ACF Fall*	Nov. 4, 2017	University of Ottawa	Shervin Ghiami
WAO	Nov. 18, 2017	University of Waterloo	Isaac Thiessen

There will be side events and trash on the weekend of ACF Fall.

Call for Members and New Board (Updated)

Update -- August 17, 2017:

As of August 2017, the ONQBA board is Peter Cordeiro, Sherry Li, and me. Peter is our acting president for 2017-18. We expect to work together with many members of the university and high-school quizbowl community. We intend to have board meetings every two months, and we intend for ONQBA to continue doing coordination and support work on high-school quizbowl tournaments.

We're glad to have Sherry joining our board, and we're glad for input we've received from Meghan Torchia and Joe Su, who both do lots of work coordinating university quizbowl in Canada. Not many fall tournament dates and sites have been announced yet, but they are being planned, and we'll have a schedule online as soon as these things are confirmed.

If you wish to join the ONQBA board mid-season, you can email me (secretary@onqba.ca). If you wish to join ONQBA as a member, you can still fill out the form linked below.


Original Post -- July 31, 2017:

As of July 2017, ONQBA is Peter Cordeiro and myself. This will change. You may wish to be involved. Per our constitution, ONQBA should have any number of members and a small board of directors.

Membership is available to anyone interested in promoting quizbowl in Ontario, as soon as they give an email and ask to join. We have no membership records, so we consider all our members to have lapsed. If you would now like to become a member of ONQBA, you can fill out this exciting form. We will contact you if/when there are matters on which to vote, and to invite you to relevant meetings.

The Board of Directors has historically been a body of 4+ people with a mandate to meet regularly, and to host and promote quizbowl tournaments in Ontario. The board consists of a President, Secretary, and other members. My plan is to continue as Secretary, and Peter's plan is to remain on the board. This leaves us needing at least two board members.

If you wish to serve on the board in any position, please indicate so on your membership form. If we get lots of candidates for board, or if someone wishes to displace me as secretary, then we will hold elections for our board seats. If we get no candidates for president, then Peter has offered to serve as interim president for 2017-18. 

(After we have a new board, we may wish update the constitution. ONQBA, in any era, has not functioned exactly as our constitution prescribes. I'd like to clean up the constitution, and also to get a new written consensus on how ONQBA works and what it does.)

Last year was not ONQBA's best, but there are terrific university and high-school quiz communities in Ontario. I look forward to renewing and reforming our work.

Top Players for 2016-17

We had a quiet year for quizbowl in Canada, so we aren't doing full awards. We still wish to recognize the best high-school quiz players in Ontario.

Sheena Li (Lisgar)
Sheena scored 27 powers while leading her team to 22nd place at a US Nationals this year. She wasn't mentioned on the HSQBRank all-world lists, but her stats were comparable to lots of players who were. She will be a strong college player next year.

Colin Veevers (Lisgar)
Lisgar had amazing bounce-back stats at PACE this year, probably thanks to Colin's top science play. He outscored Sheena at OQT last year, and he was an MVP on the Lisgar team that won Reach Nationals. He will probably be best-in-Canada if he plays next year.

Gareth Thorlakson (UTS)
Gareth won National History Bee and led UTS to wins at History Bowl and Ontario Reach Provincials, all by defeating the top Lisgar players. UTS subs out their A-team a lot, but it's still obvious who the best player is when it's the player wearing a ninja-turtle bandana.

Ryan Hamilton (Royal St. George)
Ryan didn't win any history nationals, but his team led History Bee in points-per-game, and his Bee scores were exactly 1 point behind the eventual winner.

Tim He (Westmount)
Tim led his team to a win at MacIntro, and he lead the field in scoring at Toronto Novice. It probably gives him a training edge that he plays summer open tournaments against college players and elders.

Daniel Petrov (Central RH)
Andrew Bi (White Oaks)
I don't know anything about these players, but it looks like they were the best players at Toronto Novice -- they scored high powers and led their teams to first and second place.

I probably missed some people from this list. If you think your friend or teammate was a top player, you can comment or post about it somewhere. If you think you were a top player, then you should prove it by studying a bunch and becoming an even more dominant player next year.

All Results 2016-17

Quizbowl

Tournament	Date	Champions	2nd Place	Results?	Recap?
Lisgar Novice	October 22, 2016	Lisgar Jr	Lisgar Jr B	results
MacIntro II	October 22, 2016	Westmount	"Central RH"	results	recap
Ottawa QT 12	December 3, 2016	Lisgar	Lisgar B	results	recap
Toronto Novice	December 3, 2016	"Central RH"	White Oaks	results

Lisgar, Westmount, and "Central Richmond Hill" are the teams that won events this year.

Lisgar travelled to the US for two tournaments -- they came 2nd and scored top PPG at Ithaca Brainbusters, and they came 22nd at the big PACE NSC. This sets a Canadian record for highest nationals finish, depending how you measure things.

History Bee and Bowl

IHBB still has a really nice results page. UTS won 5 of their 6 national titles, and Lisgar won the other. Royal St George's, Westmount, and Merivale players all won titles at their Ontario Regionals.

Reach for the Top

The Reach Scores blog and attached wiki keeps good stats for Reach events in Ontario.

Tournament	Date	1st	2nd	Results	Recap
Lisgar Independent	Feb 2017	UTS	Lisgar	results	recap, audio
Ottawa Regionals	Winter 2017	Lisgar	Merivale	results	recap
Hamilton Regionals	Winter 2017	Westmount	Hillfield Strathallan	results	post
Etobicoke Regionals	Winter 2017	Martingrove	Power-St. Joseph	results	post
Windsor-Essex Regionals	Winter 2017	St. Joseph's	Assumption	records	post
Ontario Provincials	May 2017	UTS	Lisgar	results	recap
Reach Nationals	May 2017	Lisgar	UTS	results	recap, finals video

See also: our results from 2016, 2005-14

Check-in for Spring 2017

News and notes for spring 2017.

1. There won't be an Ontario Quizbowl Provincials for 2016-17. We were unable to properly schedule and book this a championship this year -- we apologize for the screw-up. For the teams disappointed, we hope you are making do with other HS quiz activities, and we promise to have some great tournaments next year.

When we have high-school quizbowl ready for 2017-18, we'll make sure the events are posted on this site, on our Twitter and Facebook, and on the general Ontario Quizbowl Facebook page.

2. Reach has completed its local leagues and has their provincial championships coming up soon. Their website and social accounts have been quiet this year, but all their circuits are active. There have also been independent Reach tournaments at Lisgar, McMaster, and possibly a few other schools.

Ben Smith has been doing some Reach coverage and compiling stats at his Reach Scores blog. He has audio recordings of games from the Lisgar tournament in February, plus scores and strength-of-schedule comparisons for four of the Ontario leagues.

3. History Bee and Bowl just held their Canadian championship in Ottawa. They'll eventually have stats up at their results page, which currently has all the stats for their local tournaments. Joe Su posted a rough list of all their medal-winners.

Gareth Thorlaksen and his UTS team won the varsity tournaments, well ahead of the top Lisgar players. Ben now says UTS is the best team in Ontario. When I saw the finals, I was really impressed with Gareth's knowledge -- he first-lined a ton of questions, especially on military and "pure history" topics. UTS also had very strong players in the middle school division.

4. The US championships are still coming up. Lisgar is the only school we know to be playing in any of those. At last ranking, they were 81st in the world, but they hit that rank without playing a full A-team for quizbowl yet.

5. There is still an active university quizbowl circuit in Canada. McGill and U of T had great finishes at the US Nationals this year. Tournaments in Canada usually draw teams from those schools plus McMaster, Waterloo, and Ottawa. There are also busy clubs at Queen's and Carleton.

(A disproportionate number of top university players are former Lisgar and UTS students.)

Ottawa QT XII Recap

Powerful building full of ringers.

We got six teams yesterday, all from Lisgar and Colonel By, so it was a field full of sharks. Every player got a power in this tournament (even the ones who missed some rounds), and 5 of the 6 teams scored over 20 points-per-bonus.

Sheena and Colin were the Lisgar A team and went 7-0. They were also the top two scorers in the field. Together they got 51 powers and only one neg -- which might have been Sheena buzzing early on Asian history.

The other top-bracket teams were two more Lisgar teams. Gareth, Patrick, and Gabriel went 0-2 against the champions but 5-0 against every other team. Their job got easier when Nadia arrived at noon to answer some science for them.

The Lisgar B team was William, Matija, Felipe, and Jon. They easily led the field in negs and in talking over the questions, but they also got 25 powers in seven rounds. They scraped into top bracket by having 5 more PPG than Colonel By A. Once they were in top bracket, they lost more games, but the great singer Josh showed up and got them some history buzzes.

The Colonel By teams were great at competing with their teammates and at arriving on time for the tournament. Captain Jonathan led them with 41 tossups, and senior player Adam helped out with 4 negs and some basketball knowledge. Both Kevin Lees got a lot of questions. The Colonel By players also snuck onto a uOttawa computer to play ProtoBowl.

The Lisgar junior team ended at 3-4, but were one question away from making top bracket. They tied one of their senior teams in the morning, 365-365, and then they lost the three-question tiebreaker on the final question. Thomas got 10 powers for that team, and Olive actually knew some lit questions yesterday, which most other players didn't.

People seemed to like the questions, even though they weren't trash. My Canada questions all played well, especially a bonus about Christmas, but except for a hose where a Joe Clark tossup sounded like a Kim Campbell tossup. The America questions we left in the tournament all played pretty well. Colonel By players seemed to know American history from the news, and Lisgar players all seemed to know it from Hamilton.

This tournament was bailed out by coach Ruth Crabtree and scorekeeper Audrey, who emerged at the last minute when it became clear I needed more staff. The tournament was also carried by volunteer legend Ben Smith, who heroically read well past his bedtime without any scorekeeper.

Here are round robin stats and final stats from Ottawa Quizbowl Tournament yesterday. Here are the Canada questions I swapped in for anything that seemed "too American."

Leftover prizes. Prize-winners picked the Koran, Master and
Margarita, and Brief History of Time over these.

MacIntro II Recap - Stepping Up to the Buzzer

As teams unpack their buzzers and open up their brains, quizbowl season has begun once again. Early tournaments spring up and offer a fun and competitive environment for highschoolers to see what they have learned and maybe to compare themselves to the competition.

McMaster Introductory Tournament (MacIntro) II

The Scene

As teams slowly made their way up the stairs and onto the second floor of the McMaster University Student Centre, a sense of suspense and intrigue had seemed to permeate the hearts and minds of these quizbowlers that had ventured quite a bit to come here. MacIntro had become larger and appeared more important; the field had almost doubled (from 5 to 9) compared to the previous year, with older teams such as East Scarborough and Waterloo CI, as well newer teams such as Central Richmond Hill and White Oaks joining the fray (there was even a mysterious team from Upstate New York).

As the games started, most teams held their own, but soon a couple teams broke free from the rest. After six games and a bye, Westmount A led the field at 6-0, with Central RH A and East Scarborough nipping at their heels on 5-1 each.

East Scarborough, showing us all how scary they can really be.

Central RH and East Scarborough faced off in round 8, and it seemed like a close game before Scarborough's top player Fayaz got set back with a few negs. That helped CRH's players such as Sherry and Kelvin to capitalize and put the game well out of reach.

Central Richmond Hill won their next round to get up to 7-1. East Scarborough lost their last round to the masked Americans, falling to 5-3. Westmount A, led by star player Tim H., was undefeated at 8-0 and got to play an advantaged final against Central RH.

It seemed like a simple enough task, Westmount must have been thinking; simply win a match and win the tournament. But then in the first final, Sherry started off strong and got 7 tossups for Richmond Hill. Westmount were stunned, 380 to 100, and looked devastated. A second final would be winner-take-all for the tournament.

Central RH coming to support their A team.

The teams parried back and forth, with a few tossups going to either side. Tim got 8 tossups for Westmount, but Richmond Hill's team was consistent and had better bonus conversion. The game was essentially tied before the final tossup.

The question sounded mathematical, and Kelvin buzzed in early with an answer for Richmond Hill. The room went quiet for a moment as the moderator looked down. He then uttered a minus-five as Central RH looked on, despondent, before Westmount waited for the question to finish and answered correctly. After completing their bonuses, Westmount walked away as champions.

Westmount celebrating after winning a tournament.

An Overview

Overall, the teams had fun and people enjoyed the tournament. Except for a courageous C team, everyone averaged over 230 points-per-game and 17 points-per-bonus.

Despite their tough loss in the finals, CRH took it in stride -- Sherry, Kelvin, and Daniel had all played their hearts out and each had scored more than 25 points per game. Joel from White Oaks and Nathan from Waterloo CI were both newcomers who finished with high tossup scores. Fayaz led Scarborough to a comfortable third place position and with 57.5 PPG. While Tim from Westmount was the top scorer with over 70 points per game, their less experienced B team also did well, with Andy leading that team with 50 PPG. F Society played well on the Canadian question sets -- Vivek and Elliot both scored over 50 points per game while representing their New York school.

The scoring numbers at this site were quite strong, even compared to the mighty Lisgar teams at the Ottawa site. Here are the bonus conversions for all teams that played these questions:

Upcoming High School Quizbowl Schedule

Quizbowl is back for 2016-17 in Ottawa and south Ontario. These tournaments have been arranged and scheduled.

Date	Tournament	Location	Contact
Oct 22, 2016	MacIntro II @ McMaster	Hamilton, ON	Peter Cordeiro
Oct 22, 2016	Lisgar Novice	Ottawa, ON	Ruth Crabtree
Dec 3, 2016	12th Ottawa QT	Ottawa, ON	Brendan McKendy
Dec 3, 2016	Toronto "Novice"	Toronto, ON	Meghan Torchia

All these tournaments will use Canadian editions of the question sets. The three novice tournaments should be wide-open fields for new or returning players. The OQT in December is likely to be won by Lisgar A but should see good matches between all other teams.

You may also want to see our list of upcoming university quizbowl tournaments in Ontario.

Upcoming University Quizbowl Schedule

ONQBA has a mandate to develop high-school quizbowl. This university schedule is posted purely for the sake of scope creep.

There is a pretty full calendar of university tournaments in Ontario this fall. Please attend these tournaments and win them so foreign schools like McGill don't bring us to shame.

Date	Tournament	Location	Contact
Oct 15, 2016	EFT @ Ottawa	Ottawa, ON	Chris Johnston
Oct 16, 2016	Side Trash @ Carleton	Ottawa, ON	Joe Su
Oct 29, 2016	Penn Bowl @ Toronto	Toronto, ON	Meghan Torchia
Oct 30, 2016	CO Trash @ Toronto	Toronto, ON	Aaron Dos Remedios
Nov 5, 2016	ACF Fall @ Waterloo	Waterloo, ON	Isaac Thiessen
Nov 26, 2016	Terrapin @ McMaster	Hamilton, ON	Mac Quizbowl
Nov 27, 2016	Delta Burke @ McMaster	Hamilton, ON	Mac Quizbowl

The table above should list all upcoming university or open-level quizbowl tournaments in Ontario. You may also want to see our listing of upcoming high school quizbowl tournaments in Ontario and abroad.

Announced: SCOP Novice 7 in Ottawa -- Oct. 22

Lisgar Collegiate Institute in Otttawa.

Re-posting Colin's HSQB announcement:

Lisgar in Ottawa, ON will be hosting a mirror of the SCOP Novice 7 set on October 22nd, 2016. We are hoping to welcome new players and perhaps even schools into the Ottawa Quizbowl scene, so don't hesitate to sign up! (We promise to be nice.)

As this is a novice tournament, there will be restrictions on eligibility in order to create an even playing field.
1. All grade 9 and 10 players will be allowed to play.
2. Grade 11 players will be allowed to play if it is their first year playing quizbowl or if they have never achieved a ppg of 20 or higher on a set difficulty IS-A or higher.
3. Grade 12 players will be allowed to play only if it is their first year playing quizbowl.

Our base fee will be $10 per player. Moderator and buzzer discounts TBD, if they are needed. We won't need payment until the day of the tournament.

We do not have a field cap at the moment, so don't hesitate to sign up.

To sign up, don't hesitate to email ruth_crabtree@hotmail.com with your school name and the number of teams.

Hope to see everyone there!

Our note: This tournament will be played on a Canadian edition questions set created by the SCOP organization. This set will also be used at MacIntro.

Announced: MacIntro II in Hamilton -- Oct. 22

The McMaster University Student Centre in Hamilton.

Re-posting Raymond's HSQB announcement:

McMaster is pleased to announce the return of our high school tournament MacIntro on Oct. 22, 2016.

Continuing the tradition of last year, this tournament is intended to be an introduction for new players and teams in the region to the format of Quizbowl. We will be using the SCOP Novice 7 set. We are hoping for at least 5 or 6 teams, obviously the more the merrier.

Logistics
Location: McMaster University Student Centre (MUSC)

Cost: The base fee for this tournament is set at $40 per team.

Discounts: To lower the costs of potentially cash-strapped teams and to encourage teams to invest in a buzzer system, we are offering a $10 discount per appropriate, working buzzer set (Note: This is a first come first serve discount. If we already have buzzers provided by other teams and do not use the one provided by your school, you are not eligible for the discount). We are also offering a $5 discount per shorthanded player (i.e. if you have a two player team, your team will pay only $30).

Timing: Please arrive at McMaster by 8:45am, we are hoping for a 9:15am start. Depending on the size of the field, the tournament should likely be done by 4pm.

Lunch: Please either pack your own lunch, or bring money to buy lunch on campus. There are numerous options available for food nearby which a McMaster quizbowl member will be happy to direct you towards.

For registration and additional information, please contact the TD, Peter Cordeiro (peterjamescordeiro@gmail.com), myself (raymond_chen_@hotmail.com), or the McMaster Quizbowl Club (macquizbowl@gmail.com). We hope to see you there!

Our note: This tournament will be played on a Canadian edition questions set created by the SCOP organization. This set will also be used at the SCOP Novice 7 mirror in Ottawa.

ONQBA Awards for 2015-16

Since the season has long since wrapped up and voting has now completed, the following are our awards for 2015-16. We weighted these mostly towards quizbowl, but we did look at results from other competitive formats.

Powerful school full of ringers.

Best Player -- Sheena Li (Lisgar)

Sheena won the national History Bee this year, but she probably could have won a Bee for most subjects. She led Lisgar through Provincial Champs with 21 powers and only 2 minus-fives.

Also got votes: Jacky Li (Woburn)

Most Improved Player -- Sherry Li (Bayview)

Sherry improved from 1 power at Toronto Novice in December to 9 powers at Provincials in March. She is believed to be good at history and to know all the British monarchs.

Also got votes: Gareth Adamson (Lisgar), Kelly Yu (Bayview)

Best Junior -- Colin Veevers (Lisgar)

Colin is a top player at the "foundation" categories -- general, current events, and geography -- and he's emerged with strong science and math knowledge this year. He also won Lisgar Novice playing solo in the fall.

Unanimous.

Community Leader -- Ben Smith

Working with uOttawa and Merivale, Ben founded high school quizbowl in Canada, and he's run tournaments steadily for the last ten years. He's always been thorough, professional, and responsible. In the early years of the ONQBA, he single-handedly ran the organization.

All-Star Ontario First Team

Josh Lane (Lisgar)
Jacky Li (Woburn)
Sheena Li (Lisgar)
Colin Veevers (Lisgar)
Kelly Yu (Bayview)

Also got votes: Aleem Damji (White Oaks), George Lu (Waterloo CI), Thilini Herath (Merivale)

Update: I originally wrote that Ben Smith was associated with Lisgar. Ben has since made clear to me that he has had no official Lisgar connection. This has now been changed.

All Results 2015-16

Quizbowl

Tournament	Date	Champions	2nd Place	Results?	Recap?
Lisgar Novice	October 17, 2015	Lisgar Colin	Colonel By	results	recap
MacIntro	October 24, 2015	Woburn	Waterloo CI	results
Ottawa QT 11	November 21, 2015	Lisgar	Lisgar B	results	recap
Toronto Novice	December 5, 2015	Woburn	White Oaks	results
Stegosaurus Bowl	December 5, 2015	Lisgar Dragons	ambiguous	results
Ontario Provincials	March 26, 2016	Lisgar A	Merivale	results	recap

That's Lisgar winning four tournaments and Woburn winning two -- though they played those events as "East Scarborough."

White Oaks also played at PACE NSC (a U.S. national championship -- results).


History Bee and Bowl

IHBB has a sweet results page, now updated with all their 2016 events. Their Ontario winners were from Colonel By, Lisgar, Merivale, Royal St. George's, and Turnbull. Ontario teams won all the events at their Nationals, and it looks like a Royal St. George's player even won their Montreal bee event.


Reach for the Top

Reach posts most of their results on their Facebook page.

For their Ontario champs, they posted these prelim stats and Joe posted scoreboard photos on his Facebook. Their playoff used the top 10 teams, where Lisgar, London Central, Martingrove, Upper Canada College, and Waterloo CI all won to make top 5. It ended with Martingrove beating Upper Canada College in the finals.

For their nationals, they posted these prelim stats, with Ontario teams #1, 5, and 6 in the standings. From there, the top 12 teams made their playoffs. Martingrove and London Central won top 8 and lost in top 8. Lisgar got a bye to top 8, won to top 4, and then lost their semifinal. The finals were Kennebecasis Valley (NB) beating Eric Hamber (BC).

There were house-reach tournament this season at Lisgar and UTS. I don't think stats or results were posted from those. I'm pretty sure they were won UTS teams or visiting Kennebecasis teams.


See also: our quizbowl results from 2005-14.