Meanwhile, the bill from ACF comes for both ACF Fall and ACF Winter, weeks after they processed the half-packets submitted, and Imélie declared, when she entered Tulane into both, that it would bring the university's buzzer system to both. Because the team submitted its half-packets early – after all, they wrote all their questions during orientation nights in their dorm rooms, except for Xavier, who commutes since he lives within 50 miles of campus – along with the buzzer discount, the Green Wave participates in ACF Fall at half-cost but pays two-thirds of the regular price for ACF Winter.
At the following practice that night, Imélie asks the new players what they find hard about the transition to undergrad, while keeping in mind that school was in session for only two weeks.
"I wonder if you find the academic and social transition to college hard. In high school you were at the top tier of the class, but here everyone is on your level. They always say during orientation that the first half of the first semester is crucial to ensure later success. It may be a little early to ask about the academic aspect, though since critical notions from high school are reviewed early on" Imélie asks her players.
"While my new friends are partying, I tend to study other things that could pique my interest and that could be of use in quiz bowl games" Nolan answers.
"For years I was in a boys-only environment and now I have to learn more about women in a social setting, let alone dating. And Tulane has girls in abundance" Xavier comments, realizing that he's behind his male teammates when it comes to dating.
"Speaking of dating, at Permian I didn't have a whole lot of success with girls. Here I have it better because, as the coach said, everyone is on my intellectual level here, and I can live much more comfortably, socially speaking, because of that fact" Derek comments with a mental image of before-after flashing in his mind. Also academically my old high school didn't expect nearly as much as Tulane does.
"When you attend a magnet school with some of the brightest kids of the city, and I think the same could be said of Nolan, you have less of a culture shock when you arrive to a highly selective college like Tulane" Alyssa confides to the rest of the team.
"Thank you, I trust you kept studying what you could for quiz bowl. But enjoy what precious time you have left for quiz bowl study while you can before new material ramps up" Imélie warns her players.
My previous coach at Boston Latin didn't actually care about what was going on outside of quiz bowl, while Imélie seemed well aware of the traps awaiting new college students. That's a change of scenery, while intense, it's something I can handle, Alyssa reflects also on the before-after life as it relates to quiz bowl.
"Before we start drilling on other areas of the game, can you please make a rundown of what you guys focused on learning specifically for quiz bowl since we last met?" Imélie asks the players before preparing the buzzer system.
Meanwhile, at the University of Texas at Austin, a graduate student on the home stretch of his English literature PhD, and also a player-coach like Imélie, is in for a major surprise when he starts reviewing the field for ACF Fall. While, of course, the usual suspects of the South Central region also entered one team apiece, he was surprised to see Tulane entering it again especially after the disastrous performance of the Green Wave last year. Tulane. Last year they went 1-9 in fall, good for last place, and they were blown out in the winter. You would think years of mediocrity would force the university to intervene to close it down! Bruce scoffs at Tulane's entry into ACF Fall, not realizing what the roster is made of, nor who coaches the Green Wave going into the competition. He still thinks the team is somehow mostly of the same caliber as last time.
In addition, ACF has finally chosen a host for the South Central ACF Fall, Rice. So while they are reading questions to each other after the presentation, she starts making travel arrangements for the tournament with the faculty liaison, which is the only role she can actually trust him for. His answer is that, since Houston is a six-hour drive from New Orleans, the team could simply drive there, rent an electric van (unless either Xavier or Imélie themselves have one available), and then sleep overnight in a local motel. Not the best road trip in the world, but it was the cheapest option on the table for them.
"The ACF Fall hosts are announced; we're going to Houston to play that tournament at Rice. On October the thirteenth, we must be ready to leave by five-thirty PM, we will meet at the resident hall parking lot, and then we are going to sleep in a yet-to-be-determined motel, but we need to be up at six-thirty AM to eat breakfast before the tournament. Assuming the field of eight fills up, we will then play ten games total" Imélie tells the players.
Now that Imélie sees them power through more tossups on practice sets of the level of the ACF Winter and the Division II SCT during practices, she feels like she has hopes for both a successful transition to college out of her players and, to her, a successful season as a coach. Or, at the very least, a successful ACF Fall tournament. She even joins in on some of these drills even though she feels her role as a coach means she won't be able to play as much as she would have liked.
"I didn't tell you this before, but I am a coach only on an interim basis. The ACF Fall is my trial by fire as a coach, after which the University will either confirm me as a coach or I am on the hot seat, and so will the rest of the team"
In the unlikely event we win the ACF Fall, we will need an additional player next year so that we can play keep going at that tournament next year on a full four-player roster. Personally I think it's best to have new players come in every year so that we don't ride a single set of players, especially if players transfer out, drop out and stuff like that. But I feel we might have a chance, Imélie starts planning for what this year's ACF Fall would imply for next year, knowing that winning it would mean the highest-scoring player won't be able to play in it next year.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
"Huh? I never thought college quiz bowl coaches would be facing the same level of scrutiny at the institutional level as their football or basketball counterparts!" Derek comments, questioning Imélie's statement.
"From what I've seen, the last coach drove the program into the ground, he left us with a shiny new buzzer system, some training packets, but no returning players, and last year's squad only won one game total in two tournaments, before abandoning any further tournaments"
"Ohhhh... now I understand better why the university has quiz bowl on a short leash" a LED bulb flashes in Derek's mind.
As the season goes on, at some of the larger quiz bowl programs, such as Chicago, Harvard or Stanford, start making cuts, especially at the end of ACF Fall and Winter, and, at the end of each tournament, they shuffle players around the various teams depending on how they perform at that tournament. But, if we win the ACF Fall, and the resulting recruit then ends up scoring more than 40 points in the HSNCT prelims, being the top-scorer on a top-30 team there, or being on the top-12 at IPNCT, while it's undoubtedly a boost to the Green Wave, we're back to square one, and we'll need to scout internally, in which case we need to expand to 8 roster slots, Imélie keeps thinking about the implications of winning the ACF Fall for next year and the needs for scouting, knowing that, if it did happen, the priority would then be the area of specialty of the top scorer at that tournament.
And she will also announce it during the LQBA Fall Invitational lunch break, believing that a Louisiana resident would stand a better chance to come to Tulane given the auto-admit policy in effect should a Louisiana resident apply under early decision. In her experience, quiz bowlers willing to keep playing as undergraduates and attend a school like Tulane to do so would meet all the criteria of Louisiana auto-admission provided they are, well, Louisiana residents. They might have an academic weakness or two outside of their area of quiz bowl specialty, however. I hated it when people imagine quiz bowlers and especially those drawn from math teams, as people who would excel all-around academically, when, in reality, you can only assume a quiz bowler, high school or collegiate, to excel in their areas of specialty. While their ability to answer questions in bursts of speed would undoubtedly help them do well on the SAT or ACT, the question format difference might hurt. As with their overall academic performance, we can only make assumptions on half the test based on their quiz bowl specialties! That is, a literature player can safely be assumed to be good in the language half of these tests, and a M&S player on the math half, especially a mathlete. A history or a fine arts player would usually do better on the language half than the math half, Imélie keeps thinking about how a high school quiz bowling specialty would affect their performance on the SAT or the ACT.
"I assume you have a better idea of what you need to study for, and study past collegiate packets is the closest to what you need. Just don't blank out on in actual games or on practice questions until you hear the "For ten points" cue, or else you won't get a whole lot out of playing, nor when reading from past sets" Imélie warns her players.
"Of course not. How else could we all power through so many questions at the HSNCT then?" Alyssa asks.
"One enzyme that catalyzes the transfer of this chemical group contains a Replication of Foci Targeting Sequence domain that plays an autoinhibitory role in that enzyme. Pseudouridine modified with one of these groups increases translational capacity when incorporated into mRNA and was utilized in mRNA vaccines" Nolan reads a toss-up from one of these packets used for practicing.
"Methylation" Xavier answers.
"Fifteen" Nolan then rules on the answer Xavier gave.
"Before you continue practicing, here's the deal: asking practice questions like this might well be necessary, they're not sufficient to make good practice. That is why I made you play designate bowl, and also why I ask you to read packets from past collegiate tournaments. While answering questions early is a good thing in a game situation, if you keep powering questions like this in practice, you don't get a feel for how questions are written. While I have great hopes for this season to be better than the last, I feel like you need to appreciate every key element of this game that makes this game more than just about answering knowledge questions at lightning speed for them to materialize. This is what truly sets apart good collegiate quiz bowlers from bad ones. However, you can't bank on faking a buzzer in collegiate quiz bowl, since the risk is much higher that you would then give free points to the opponent" Imélie lectures her players.
Oh God, faking buzzers. Florence fell victim to a buzzer fake and caused us to lose a key game and us to finish 24th at my first HSNCT! The game against Stuyvesant before that is a very good example of what happens when faking a buzzer fails; Marcia subsequently powered the question to win, Imélie reminisces about how a buzzer fake can sink a team in a tournament, successful or not. She then realizes that there is something she has yet to take advantage of and that she might be able to use to her advantage so that the cost of operating the quiz bowl team might be partially shouldered by her employer. Speaking of faking, maybe, maybe I can, for either ACF Winter, Regionals or the SCT get my employer to reimburse my travel expenses and the university will pay for the travel expenses of the undergraduate players only! That I can always try to claim under the guise of client development, or networking, so I can have my employer partially bankroll the team's travel expenses. The hotel expenses, as well as my own tickets, or in this case, the driving expenses if I tried to do so for ACF Fall. Oh and have all the team's meal expenses for a given meal on the same bill.
She then starts thinking about SWOT, with strengths and weaknesses coming from the internal environment of a business, and opportunities and threats coming from the external environment of a business. And about VRIO, which is about what makes something a competitive advantage and what it implies about its market position. For example, if an asset is rare and valuable but, in the long run, might become easier to imitate, then the competitive advantage that stems from it is not expected to last.
"We all learned a lot about how to play quiz bowl better even though it's mostly about the non-academic portion of the game" Derek adds after a few more practice rounds.