After the move-in period ends, Imélie has the quiz bowl team meet in a room in the Lavin-Bernick Center, or LBC as people called it, for the first meeting of the team, to be held on the last night before orientation. Four freshmen are in the room alongside Imélie.
"Welcome to Tulane University, I am Imélie and I am the coach of the Green Wave quiz bowl team. This is my first year coaching collegiate quiz bowl so please be patient and I will be patient with you. Now, I must warn you that, in collegiate quiz bowl, player-coaches are more common than in high school, especially when you have graduate students as players. Such as myself. So could you please state your name as well as your quiz bowl specialty and any other background information you may wish to provide as it relates to quiz bowl?"
"Alyssa, I am more of a literature and fine arts player, I played for Boston Latin in two HSNCTs in a row, and I was the only girl playing for the Wolfpack at the HSNCT"
"Derek, I am a history and RPMSS player, I played for Permian High in Texas, my school qualified for the HSNCT for the first time this year, but I was the best player on a team that didn't do so hot"
"My name is Nolan, I am a generalist, I played for Walt Whitman High in Maryland"
"Finally, Xavier, I played as a M&S player for Jesuit High in this city, and we fell short of the HSNCT playoffs this year"
Imélie! I recognize her from her having reffed a game between the Majors and us at the state championship's playoff stage! We lost the bronze medal to the Majors in that game, but we qualified for the HSNCT by winning the LQBA Winter Invitational South. Xavier attempts to remember from where he recognizes her, knowing that he did.
"Before we continue, we need to coordinate our schedules so that we have a common time for quiz bowl practice. Now, let me make that clear: I expect you to study some outside of practice, and, if possible, to incorporate quiz bowl practice and studying for your regular courses. But individual studying can only take you so far; there are things such as buzzer speed that we need to drill on" Imélie tells her players.
Imélie then opens a Doodle page, where the team members put in their availabilities for practice, knowing that she can't hold practices during daytime because of her own job, and the students' own classes. Plus she needs to account for both of her own classes, which, for the PMBA, are held at night.
"Thank you. Now that we have determined a time for scheduling practice, we have several details to hash out. Please raise your hand if any of the following applies to you: did you score more than forty points per twenty toss-ups heard in the prelims of the HSNCT, or sixty points per game in the prelims of PACE NSC? Or were you the top scorer on a team that finished in the top-thirty at the HSNCT, or top-ten at the PACE NSC? Finally, did you finish in the top-twelve of the IPNCT?"
The other three restrictions on ACF Fall eligibility did not apply to the freshmen since none of them took part in college ACF tournaments, and all players from last season left the team. However, Imélie can't play in that tournament since she was the top scorer on a top-6 Venomous Agenda team during her second and final HSNCT participation.
As for the IPNCT, or Individual Player National Championship Tournament, none of the Tulane players took part in it, and even the highest scoring of the four in the prelims of the HSNCT, Alyssa, didn't score the required 40 PP20TUH in the prelims in either of her participations.
And none of Jesuit, Permian or Whitman made it to a top-30 at the HSNCT with Xavier, Derek and Nolan respectively, while Boston Latin was 15th this year, but Alyssa wasn't its highest scorer, narrowly edged out by one of her then-teammates as such. Therefore no one raised their hands, and the four recruits could then play at the ACF Fall together, just with Imélie coaching.
"Any reason why you are asking us this?" Nolan asks, not realizing anything.
"I was coming to our roadmap for the season. It's to determine who can participate at the ACF Fall since it's going to be one of our tournaments for the year. We will need to submit a half-packet for all three of the ACF tournaments we're entering. We will also participate in ACF Winter, as well as ACF Regionals, and SCT Division II. Just so you know, for ACF Regionals, I will not play in it either. In addition, we will play online games against other schools on an ongoing basis" Imélie exposes the preliminary roadmap.
"Why will you not play in ACF Regionals?" Derek asks the coach.
"Because I am not eligible to play in division II and I want to get the most out of our players for the university. You will get a much better experience of higher-level tournaments if it's more appropriate for your level of experience as players"
From what I heard about my predecessor as the coach of the team, he was an ego tripper, and he was also negligent with player development. Which was why Tulane was blown out at ACF Winter, Imélie reflects on what she believes she must do to get better results out of this team. Drills covering various areas of the game, training regimen, knowledge gaps and all that, while entering the team for ACF Fall and ACF Winter, as well as question-writing preferences for ACF Winter because she will be writing Tulane's questions for it.
"I'm a little confused by the half-packet requirement. This means we need to jointly write ten tossups and ten three-part bonuses, but what else goes into the question-writing process as it relates to the ACF?" Alyssa asks.
"Speaking of question writing, please be aware that you might need to go into the specific, but you will also need to determine what your strongest areas within your specialties are; the editors will likely assign you a sub-area to write a question for. At the easiest they should be state championship-level in high school for ACF Fall. For ACF Winter you can make them a little harder than HSNCT questions but don't go overboard. The big difference compared to NAQT tossups is that, for ACF, there is no power mark and therefore no five-point extra for answering correctly and early enough. Other than that, the core rules are mostly identical" Imélie explains to them.
"If so, will we be playing questions we wrote?" Xavier asks.
"They will be used in tournaments, just not word-for-word what you submit since the editors will usually make some changes. They will usually not make you play packets you wrote for. For any given team, each team would be lucky to even have two tossups and two bonuses apiece picked for the set. We shall get our question assignments very quickly and we shall select ten tossups and ten bonuses at our next meeting for ACF Fall"
She then prepares the university's buzzer system, a high-visibility buzzer system for eight players, with lights in front of the console, complete with a three-second light for the moderator to know when to reset the system. Before the first drill for the season begins, she assigns the players two buttons apiece as they are paired across the room, to ensure the buzzer system is working properly.
"One last thing before we start buzzer drills: please treat Alyssa with respect. She earned her spot here the same as all of you. I will not tolerate sexist behavior, understood?" Imélie asks the players.
"It's the first time I ever played quiz bowl with a female player on our side!" Xavier comments, especially since Jesuit is a unisex school, and even Permian or Whitman had at least one girl playing at the HSNCT. "How is it going to be different with girls on the team?"
"During the games themselves, you won't see the difference; it's more about the social aspect or the game, such as practices, travel and hotel stays that we can feel a difference" Alyssa then answers Xavier's question.
Permian had one good season and "Mojo quiz bowl" may as well be a one-hit wonder. I really hope that playing for Tulane will be different from life in West Texas. When you're not, like, TJHSST, Strake Jesuit, Wayzata, Detroit Catholic, or even Boston Latin or the Venomous Agendas, you cannot bank on being consistently good year after year, Derek muses, while the teammates he left behind seems to treat quiz bowl as mostly about word association. Which is one of the core reasons why some people that might be good quiz bowlers seem to dislike quiz bowl. Other reasons might include excessive background knowledge requirements.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
"Here's the first drill to be done in pairs: During the COVID-19 pandemic, this process led to the systematic shutdown of several economic sectors in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus. For ten points, name the process"
"Lockdown" Derek answers.
"Correct. This class of illnesses was often invoked in court battles against lockdown and vaccination mandates during the pandemic. For ten points, name the class of illnesses characterized by..."
"Auto-immune" Xavier answers.
I always heard, during my childhood, about how people fought for personal freedom in courts over lockdowns, masks and vaccines, but auto-immune diseases being invoked in these very legal battles? Is Imélie implying that some anti-vaxxers of the time, especially the most hardcore of them, actually used their own illnesses for political or legal gains? While HIPAA was of no protective use in court, media seemed to act as if everyone could get vaccinated until proven otherwise, and anti-vaxxers used HIPAA to protect their real motives from the media, believing it was less risky from a legal standpoint not to publicly disclose their contra-indications, if applicable, or otherwise less shameful to say that they are unwilling rather than unable to get shots, but it's when you had proof to the contrary that things got dicey, legally speaking, Alyssa thinks, while bogged down on this practice bonus question.
"Third part of the bonus: this law is frequently invoked in trials where either side invokes a medical condition..."
"HIPAA" Alyssa answers.
"Correct, but these questions were left behind by the previous coach; you know by now that quiz bowl bonuses, while their parts are related to each other, are about the same area; here, even though this bonus has a clear relationship between each part, they call upon different areas. That, along with avoiding to write misleading questions, and, on tossups, to make sure that the most obscure clues are early in the question, are things you guys need to make sure to take into consideration when you go around writing questions for the half-packet. And also that you put your name next to the answer line. I will write the half-packet for the ACF Winter, even though it's not actually held in the winter"
As well as respect certain length limits: 800 characters for a toss-up, 850 for a bonus, across all 3 parts, for ACF quiz bowl tournaments. And formatting constraints, and so on. They seem fast enough on the buzzer to amount to something. I think we might have a chance to win more games at ACF Fall than the Green Wave did last year, but it's not hard at all, especially considering that the Green Wave won a grand total of 1 game last year at ACF Fall, Imélie ponders, while she is reviewing Tulane's records from last season at the ACF Fall and Winter. After going through the rest of the packet the previous coach left behind, and presumably wrote on his own, she makes some comments on note taking.
"What has worked for me was to re-write class notes in TU or bonus formats, depending on how the concepts involved relate to each other. Do keep in mind the distribution of ACF topics when training for quiz bowl; while not identical to the NAQT one you guys are used to in high school, they overlap" she tells the group while sending the PDF file of it. "Also, while you should focus mostly on your specialty area, you may study other areas if it helps you better understand your area of expertise. Like history and RPMSS for art and literature, and vice versa"
"Thank you"
"Alyssa, there's something special I would like to discuss that's specific to you before we proceed with the next drill"
The two of them get out of the room, but with all the activities being held at LBC on the night prior to orientation, the two females can't seem to focus on what they may have to say.
"It's about the WNCC. I believe in you, I think you have what it takes to enter the tournament, and do well. So do I, albeit in different divisions. It's the women's national collegiate championship. But, if we are to enter it, we need to ensure that we are sufficiently well-rounded as players, and from my experience it's even harder than the ICT or ACF Nationals because of what solo tournaments imply. Now, the field isn't that large, but that's because of the size of the gender imbalance in collegiate quiz bowl" Imélie runs down the WNCC's basics to Alyssa.
"Thank you for your faith. I now have a better idea of what to expect" Alyssa remarks.
"While it goes without saying that history and RPMSS help in one's understanding of literature and fine arts, I wonder about how you feel about M&S"
"At the same time... people at BLS who dreamed of attending Ivies, or even Tulane and other schools of this caliber, were seemingly made to take as many as four M&S AP courses, or else their collegiate dreams were dead in the water. And obviously do well on these things"
"You could say the same of everyone at Tulane nowadays that attends from out-of-state and isn't in sports. That doesn't prevent students from having their own strengths and weaknesses. Like I'm a little weak in literature and fine arts"
In the meantime, the male players started writing some bonuses intended for use in the half-packet the Green Wave submits as a pre-condition to enter ACF Fall. Once their little talk is over, they go back to their little practice session, where they continue with a new drill, the designate bowl.
"The aim of designate bowl is to get a feel for what your teammates know and what they don't. Unlike traditional quiz bowl, under designate bowl, here, if you buzz, your partner must answer within five seconds, and no communication is allowed within a pairing. After ten tossups, the pairings are changed and another round continues so that, once the drill ends, you will have a much better idea of what your teammates know and what they don't: poor teamwork can sink even a talented team"
"Why do this for tossups only?" Derek asks.
"Under ACF rules, bonuses can be conferred upon as a team the same as under NAQT. You can always gesticulate in actual games to signal to your teammates either you know the answer, or you don't, so long as you don't accidentally buzz in when faking it, drop a buzzer or slap the table. And both of these things can make a world of difference in a tournament, especially at ACF Winter and later"
While they are going at this drill, after which the first practice under the new coach ends, and they will exchange contact information as well as social media contacts, the tournament director of the LQBA Fall Invitational South contacts her about reffing that tournament without realizing that she is now Tulane's coach. But she can't reply to the email from the LQBA Fall Invitational South's TD until the drill ends.
Once the drill ends, she reads the email with the details of the tournament, that is, time and place, and also a call for more buzzers. Of which she could only commit one to any tournament.
"A week after ACF Fall, we're going to moderate a local tournament, the LQBA Fall Invitational South. It will take place at Jesuit" Imélie announces the players.
"How is moderating a tournament going to help us going forward with ACF Winter or Regionals?" Nolan asks.
"It will allow us to see both sides of the coin; you'd be surprised knowing what moderators have to do in games first-hand as opposed to knowing about it second-hand can make in playing at higher-level tournaments, even though the LQBA Fall Invitational South, as Xavier knows, is a tournament running on a lower level than even the ACF Fall"
"What other benefits are there to modding a tournament?" Xavier asks, while a little skeptical of Imélie's claims.
"Also, as I told Alyssa several months ago, reffing a tournament also forces you to read questions and clues in ways you can be tempted to skip otherwise especially when you know what your teammates know and what they don't know, in addition to your own knowledge base. Plus it's easier to get a feel for reading your opponents; in college, especially between somewhat evenly-matched teams, quiz bowl has an added dimension of poker faces and reading opponents. Bottom line is: quiz bowl in college is nothing like quiz bowl in high school; it's no longer just a game of knowledge, despite playing by the same rules"
Right now I feel like I learned more about the non-academic portion of quiz bowl here than I did at Permian! Derek reflects on the lessons he learned from Imélie tonight, while the academic portion of quiz bowl is more self-directed at this point.
The guy running the LQBA Fall Invitational South was a guy I lost a shot at the LQBA Board to. It seems that LQBA Board members are often one of the following: experienced tournament moderators, tournament directors or coaches, and I am none of these, Imélie reflects far too late on her loss at the LQBA Board elections, especially since the LQBA's outgoing president endorsed her candidacy that she completely neglected. That said, sitting on the Board didn't actually mean a whole lot for me. On top of that Jesuit's coach was a well-respected name in Louisianan high school quiz bowl circuit, with several state titles under his belt, the earliest one dating from the pre-pandemic days.
"While tonight's practice was about the more non-academic portion of playing quiz bowl, I urge you not to neglect your studies, or the knowledge portion of the game. After all, quiz bowl must remain a fun and engaging way to supplement your learning, and, since you're all in college now, you still need to study and all that to graduate and move on with your lives, all the while following your academic passions" Imélie harangues her players, and then beams over as to how happy she seems to be with where the team is going, and what may very well be the best Green Wave quiz bowl recruiting class since, well, the pandemic.
To think that I actually am undertaking the same stage of rebuilding a team twice! The pandemic-induced loss of interest forced Tulane to close its quiz bowl program for years, and when it reopened in 2025, it was in tatters for the next three years, cycling through players year in, year out. But now that the coach of that era is no longer coaching the Green Wave quiz bowl, I could fix what he did wrong last time, Imélie realizes when a comparative image flashes in her mind of it, as to her time through these very halls as an undergraduate vs what she expects of her coursework as of now.
"Now, roll on, Tulane! May this season bring a Helluva Hullabaloo for the Green Wave quiz bowl!"