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.
