NCQBA and Jesuit High School are pleased to announce that the Sacramento Winter Tournament will be held on Saturday, January 11, 2014.

Location: This tournament will take place at Jesuit High School, 1200 Jacob Lane, Carmichael, California. Registration will begin at 9:30AM and we hope to start round 1 at 10:00AM. We will have a field cap of 12 teams.

Questions: This will be a mirror of the Ohio Fall Kickoff Tournament (FKT).

Eligibility: All high schools (public, private, charter, religious, homeschool, etc.) are eligible to play in this event.

Schools are encouraged to enter multiple teams, but please note that players must play for the same team throughout the tournament.

Fees:

Base fee: $65 per team

-$10 second or subsequent team from the same school

-$15 schools playing their first quizbowl tournament

-$10 working buzzer system (must accommodate at least eight players)

-$10 scorekeeper (We will hold a brief training session during check-in for those volunteers who have never kept score before.)

Payment will be taken at check-in on January 11. Please make checks out to Jeff Hoppes.

How to register: please contact the tournament director, Nicholas Karas (njsking (at) hotmail (dot) com), on or before Wednesday, January 8, 2014, indicating how many teams, buzzers, and staff your school plans to bring.

NCQBA and Mira Loma High School are pleased to announce that the Sacramento Fall Tournament will be held on Saturday, November 16, 2013.

Location: This tournament will take place at Mira Loma High School, 4000 Edison Avenue, Sacramento, California. Check-in will begin at 9:30AM and we hope to start round 1 at 10:00AM. We will have a field cap of 12 teams.

Questions: We will be using NAQT Invitational Series #127A.

The top 15% of teams will qualify for the 2014 NAQT High School National Championship Tournament, to be held in Chicago on May 30-June 1, 2014.

Eligibility: All high schools (public, private, charter, religious, homeschool, etc.) are eligible to play in this event.

Schools are encouraged to enter multiple teams, but please note that players must play for the same team throughout the tournament.

Fees:

Base fee: $65 per team

-$10 second or subsequent team from the same school

-$15 schools playing their first quizbowl tournament

-$10 working buzzer system (must accommodate at least eight players)

-$10 scorekeeper (We will hold a brief training session during check-in for those volunteers who have never kept score before.)

Payment will be taken at check-in on November 16. Please make checks out to Jeff Hoppes.

How to register: please contact the tournament director, Nicholas Karas (njsking (at) hotmail (dot) com), on or before Wednesday, November 13, 2013, indicating how many teams, buzzers, and staff your school plans to bring.

The UC Berkeley Quiz Bowl team is pleased to announce that we will be holding the second annual California Cup, a series of four tournaments. The third and fourth tournaments will be held on the UC Berkeley campus on Sunday, January 19 and Saturday, February 1, 2014. We hope to attract many teams from across the state and possibly elsewhere. We will guarantee teams a high number of games (8 or more) per tournament and will make provisions so that teams are able to play others of the same skill level after preliminary rounds.

We will be running these tournaments on high-quality question sets that have been vetted by the Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence (PACE). The sets that will be used are the Brookwood Invitational Scholars Bowl, NAQT Invitational Series #130, the Ladue Invitational Spring Tournament, and the Maggie Walker GSAC XXI. The top teams in each tournament will qualify for the 2014 PACE National Scholastics Championship (NSC), which will be held on May 24-25 at the Reston Hyatt in Reston, Virginia. Additionally, teams that perform well on NAQT sets during the California Cup will qualify for the 2014 High School National Championship Tournament (HSNCT), held May 31-June 1 at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare hotel near Chicago, Illinois.

There will be individual results for each tournament as well as a cumulative result. We will split the field into junior varsity and varsity divisions and evaluate each separately. After the cup results are tallied, we will crown a California Cup state champion! There will be book prizes and gift cards for the highest-performing teams and individual scorers at each tournament, and other prizes are in store for the top California Cup teams. When calculating final Cup standings, we will count the top three performances by each team, allowing teams to account for extenuating circumstances at one tournament. Teams that register for the entire series of tournaments will be eligible for prizes at the end. With four guaranteed tournaments and plenty of gameplay, this series will offer the best prizes, value, and national qualification opportunities available anywhere in the state!

Entry Fees:
Base fee per team for package of all four tournaments: $250
New team (first year of quiz bowl competition for the club): -$50
Buzzer discount: -$10 per tournament
Staff discount: -$10 per tournament (if needed)
Travel discount: -$25 per 75 miles one-way (determined by Google Maps)
Registering for a single tournament: $90

*Buzzers and staff discounts apply on an as-needed, first-come, first-serve basis. When registering, please detail how many staff and/or buzzers you may be able to bring. As the tournament approaches, we will let you know whether they are needed or not. Payment will be taken at registration on November 9; please make checks payable to Tanay Kothari.

We are setting a tentative field cap of 40 teams. There is no maximum to the number of teams each school may bring. We will likely be able to expand if there is enough interest, but until that point, we will accept teams on a first-come, first-serve basis. Fields can fill fast, so sign up soon to reserve your slot! To register, please send an email to californiacupquizbowl@gmail.com. Our website is http://californiacupquizbowl.wordpress.com/. The registration deadline for the first tournament, the Beartolt Brecht Invitational, is November 3. Please bring the cash or check for full payment of the series of tournaments to the first tournament and make it out to Tanay Kothari. You can still pay the base fee $250 for three tournaments if you register by the second tournament.

The second California Cup tournament will take place on Saturday, November 23; dates for the two spring-semester tournaments in the series are Sunday, January 19 and Saturday, February 1.

Thank you for your interest, and please spread the word to other high schools that are interested in quiz bowl or are heavily involved in other academic events like debate or Science Bowl. We look forward to an exciting year of academic competition!

The UC Berkeley Quiz Bowl Club is a student group acting independently of the University of California. The student organization is the host of the California Cup and takes full responsibility for the guests.

Cross-posting on behalf of Jerry Li:

Amador Valley High School will be hosting Fall Kickoff Tournament 2013 on Saturday, October 26th.

Location: Amador Valley High School, 1155 Santa Rita Rd, Pleasanton, CA
Tournament time: Registration will begin at 8:30 AM and the tournament will run from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM.
Registration due by: Saturday, October 19th

Base Price: $10 per person (no discounts)

Food: We will be selling pizza at the competition ($5.00 for 2 slices and a drink). There are also restaurants and other food options within a short walk.
Prizes: There will be book prizes for top teams and gift cards for top individuals.
Rules: ACF (20 tossups, 3 bonuses for tossups [10 pts each], no bouncebacks on bonuses). We will guarentee 8 rounds of play, most likely more.
Field Cap: 20 teams
Registration Fees: Please pay by cash on the day of the tournament.
To register contact: jerrylinew [at] gmail [dot] com, with your team’s roster.

We’re pleased to announce that HSAPQ‘s new state championship program will have two northern California sites. Stanford University (Bay Area) and Rio Americano High School (Sacramento) will host on March 1, 2014. The top two teams from each site will qualify for the state championship (April 5, 2014, site TBD) pitting them against the best teams southern California has to offer. Registration is now open and full details are here.

Cross-posting on behalf of Jonchee Kao of Bellarmine:

Bellarmine College Prep and the NCQBA are  pleased to announce BELLArmine’s Fall Original Novice Tournament Extraordinaire (BELLAFONTE), which will be held on October 12, 2013 in San Jose, California. This tournament is aimed towards introducing to quiz bowl as many schools and players from the Northern California quiz bowl circuit as possible.

We will be using the 2013-14 SCOP Novice set. This particular set of questions is intentionally geared towards newer teams. For similar questions, please see the 2012–13, 2011–12 and 2010–11 SCOP sets.

For teams newer to quiz bowl, please read this introduction to quiz bowl and this digestible Powerpoint about the basics of the game. We heavily urge all teams to familiarize themselves with the game’s structure before arriving at the tournament, as we will not set aside time to explain anything more than the particular format we are adopting.

The initial field cap will be 72 teams, with possible expansion, dependent on the number of staffers and buzzers we have available. Teams are also restricted to six players each. Please break up any larger teams into two or more teams. There is no limit to the number of teams that can come from any single school. We urge all teams attending to bring buzzers and staffers, as we need those to run a tournament this large, and after a certain number of teams register, we may even require them. (Please read the first entry of NCQBA’s FAQ here for why schools new to quiz bowl should buy buzzers.)

The tentative tournament structure will be 6-team preliminary brackets with 5 games of round robin preliminary play followed by a rebracketing into playoff rounds, the structure of which will be determined by the number of teams who register for this event. We anticipate that rounds will go from 9:00 until approximately 4:30, followed by an awards ceremony. The exact round timings and other logistical information will be emailed to teams approximately a week before the tournament. Please do not plan to leave early without telling us beforehand.

Eligibility
All teams of high schoolers from the same school are eligible to play in this event, although players who have competed at the NAQT High School National Championship Tournament or the PACE National Scholastic Championship in the past two years must have received special permission from the tournament director. All middle schoolers are welcome as well, but they should be aware that they will be competing against high school teams.

Fees

• base fee: $50 per team
• –$5 for second or subsequent team from the same school
• –$25 for teams composed entirely of students that have not competed at a pyramidal high school quiz bowl tournament prior to the 2013–14 school year: “pyramidal quiz bowl” does not encompass other academic/trivia competitions like Science Bowl or Quiz Kids
• –$10 per working buzzer (please do not bring buzzers that are not in good working condition)
• –$10 per staffer
  We will have a brief meeting for all staffers before the start of the tournament. We will also give a discount of $5 for half-day staffers (those who can staff from Round 1 until lunch or from lunch until the conclusion of the day). All staffers, including half-day staffers, will also receive lunch.
• –$10 per 75 miles driving, one way, rounded down
• –$5 for payment before Saturday, October 05, 2013 (Details about pre-payment will come later.)
• The minimum fee after all discounts have been added is $0.

To register: please email Jonchee Kao (jonchee.kao15@bcp.org) by Saturday, October 05, 2013, indicating how many teams, buzzers and staffers that your school will bring as well as the contact person (and cell phone number) for your team. Also include the first names (and distinguishing last initials if necessary) of the members of each team. If you wish to change any of your team rosters before the tournament, please email us ahead of time. All teams will be emailed statistical data about the tournament.
Registered teams will be provided with more detailed information before the tournament. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me or Chris Fleitas (cfleitas@bcp.org). We hope to see your team there!