HSAPQ
Our Philosophy of Quizbowl
HSAPQ is a company that is dedicated to providing high-quality question sets for use at high school quizbowl tournaments.
We are committed to high-quality, academic, accessible high school quizbowl. By this we mean that we write questions using interesting and significant topics from a liberal arts canon. We do not emphasize "trivia" or the rote memorization of out-of-context facts, and we strictly limit the amount of pop culture content in our sets.
We also believe that our questions should be playable by teams of all skill and experience levels. We do not write any special "hard" or "easy" sets for different tournaments, but rather use pyramidal tossups (tossup questions on easier answers that most teams will know, but with harder clues at the start of the question to reward more advanced teams) and progressive-difficulty bonus questions (bonuses where the answers demonstrate a clear progression from easier to hard) so that all teams can have competitive, enjoyable games on the same packets.
We provide questions in three off-the-shelf formats (ACF-format, four quarter, and NSC-format) and we will also work on custom orders. Our belief is that there is no single game format that is appropriate for all regions. We seek to write the best possible questions within the diversity of existing high school quizbowl formats, rather than imposing one format on the whole country.
HSAPQ also encourages teams to become aware of the larger high school quizbowl community. The tournament announcements and other information exchanged at the Quizbowl Resource Center forums (www.hsquizbowl.org/forums) and the free practice questions available at the High School Quiz Bowl Packet Archive (http://quizbowlpackets.com/) are excellent resources for all teams, regardless of how active or how competitive.
HSAPQ does not currently sponsor a national championship tournament. We encourage teams to investigate two such championships run by groups that are unaffiliated with HSAPQ: the National Scholastics Championship run by the Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence (http://pace-nsc.org/) and the High School National Championship Tournament run by National Academic Quiz Tournaments (http://naqt.com/hsnct/2009/details.html).
At HSAPQ, we are passionate about making high school quizbowl an intellectually and competitively rewarding experience for all students. We know that coaches and tournament directors share that vision, and put in the time and effort necessary to keep this activity going. Please contact Shawn Pickrell if you have any questions about our principles and goals.