HSAPQ
High School Academic Pyramid Questions
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HSAPQ will be producing six 15-packet tournament sets in 2009-2010 in 20 tossup, 20 bonus format with power marks. Hosts can choose how to value the power marks, or choose to ignore them; hosts can also choose whether or not to use bouncebacks on the bonuses. Thus, any of our sets can be run according to the rules of any major national format. The cost to license one of these sets for a traditional invitational tournament is $16 per team in attendance. Contact Shawn Pickrell at shawnpickrell@hsapq.com to order. These sets will be similar to the "ACF-format" sets from last year, which may be viewed at http://www.hsapq.com/sample.html.HSAPQ is accepting applications for new writers. If you wish to write for HSAPQ, please go to this page for details.
HSAPQ announces that Dwight Wynne, will serve as Tournament Director for the 2010 National All-Star Academic Tournament, in which capacity he will be ably assisted by Ted Gioia.
HSAPQ would like to remind all potential participants and selection committees that any group of up to six students who are each enrolled during the 2009-2010 school year in the 9th through 12th grades in schools physically located in the same state may apply to be selected by HSAPQ as their state's representatives. It is encouraged, but not necessary, that the group of students be drawn from at least two schools.
All bids must be received by 5 PM Pacific time on Thursday, March 18. Selected teams will receive notification of their bid acceptance no later than Thursday, April 1, on which date a sample packet representative of the distribution, length, and difficulty of the tournament will be posted on this website. Official bids should be e-mailed to the tournament director at dwightwynne@hsapq.com with the subject line "NASAT Bid - [your state]" and contain the name, year in school, and school affiliation of each team member, as well as the name and school affiliation, if any, of the head coach or chaperone. Additional details about each player's quizbowl-related accomplishments and areas of specialization are encouraged, but not necessary. GPA, test scores, and other non-quizbowl-related resume details should not be submitted, as they will not be considered in our analysis of team strength.
HSAPQ reminds prospective teams that this tournament will be more difficult than any current regular season or national tournament; as such, we are truly looking for each state to be represented by the strongest possible team. We reiterate that it is up to each state to determine how that strongest possible team is selected, and welcome multiple bids from any state. We will give slight preference to bids submitted by official state organizations, but may select a competing bid if we believe the team to be stronger than that selected by the governing organization. To that end, we encourage governing organizations to select students who display exceptional ability and knowledge, as demonstrated through year-round performance on pyramidal questions, in complementary academic areas; we believe that a team selected using this criterion will almost always be stronger than a team consisting of players who score highly at a single qualifying tournament. Of course, teams in states without governing organizations and teams whose state governing organizations do not submit official bids are encouraged to submit bids as well, and encouraged to use the same major criterion when selecting their team members.
If you have any questions or comments about the National All-Star Academic Tournament, please contact either Dwight Wynne at dwightwynne@hsapq.com or Shawn Pickrell at shawnpickrell@hsapq.com.
HSAPQ will also offer three four-quarter format sets in 2009-2010, which are likewise available for tournament use at a cost of $16 per team. Contact Shawn Pickrell at shawnpickrell@hsapq.com to order. These sets will be similar to the "four-quarter format" sets from last year, which may be viewed at http://www.hsapq.com/sample.html.
HSAPQ will be offering sets for use in league play in 2009-2010. The cost to license the entire league set is $70 per team participating. The league set contains 32 packets and can be formatted in any of the following ways:
- 32 VHSL-format packets
- 32 four-quarter format packets
- 28 20-tossup, 20-bonus packets with optional-use power marks
HSAPQ is pleased to announce the first HSAPQ National All-Star Academic Tournament taking place on on June 12-13, 2010. Details about this tournament can be found here.
Beginning with tournaments hosted after January 1, 2009, the price for licensing an HSAPQ tournament set is reduced to $16 per team in attendance. This is a decrease of $2 per team in attendance.
We have made all 15 rounds of the second ACF-style set available under the sample questions link to the left.
HSAPQ announces the addition of Andy Watkins and Fred Morlan as dedicated proofreaders for future HSAPQ sets.