"All things considered, I don't think the Red Army coaching job is a good fit for me. It's too big of a scale change in pressure that I'm not ready to face" Imélie then tells Sun.
"I think you made the right decision" Sun nods.
She finally responds to the Russian general staff's offer, which she rejects, invoking the core reasons as to why she feels the Russian quiz bowl environment would be a poor fit for her.
But, somehow, just a few days later, For 10 points, fix this community publishes the ambitious Russian five-year plan for quiz bowl and how it would fit in growing the game around the world. If this plan comes to fruition, then the primary means to watch the MSNCT and HSNCT, and possibly ACF Nationals or ICT, will be on Russian TV, in which case nearly all the games carried would include at least one Russian team. Which could push US TV networks to carry these things in turn, Imélie starts daydreaming upon reading about the implications of foreign media covering quiz bowl tournaments held on American soil, even events that could possibly be construed as world championships to the outside world. And then, upon reading about who ends up coaching the Red Army collegiate team, or rather... Moscow State for the civilian collegiate portion: Sadie! I really hope that she's up to the task... the Russians won't take it kindly to her. But what will make or break Russia's quiz bowl circuit is more about whether their plan of holding regional championships on TV and with only M/HSNCT qualifiers being taped will actually drive schools to build their own teams.
But when the university's response to the budgetary request has arrived, Imélie starts thinking about how to prepare the returning players for the ACF Nationals and the ICT Division I, knowing that there is a mistake she will not repeat. I'm happy that the university gave us an appropriate budget for us to keep winning, even with 8 players rather than 5. However, for ACF Regionals I will not let my team hang out to dry as I did when we hosted it, Imélie keeps to herself, realizing that not playing at Regionals may have cost the Green Wave victory at ACF Regionals and therefore a Nationals berth.
And also the successes of the Green Wave, both for recruitment and with a buzzer, made Imélie face a different kind of problem. Patricia was a hidden gem of a player, but both ACF Fall and the ICT forced her hand, so for ACF Fall, she knows that she has no choice but to have Patricia play, and it would then be best to enter only one team for it next season. Since they won the ICT Division II, for the SCT, their rosters are set in stone. So even if Bethany somehow outplayed Derek, or likewise Patricia outplayed Alyssa, Alyssa and Derek are stuck playing in Division I. Not that she questions how good Alyssa is, nor whether they can, together, cover for Derek if necessary, but she knew that she needs to consider what's best for the whole program rather than just what's best for players individually. But for ACF Regionals or Nationals, she's free to move players between the A and B teams depending on who plays better than whom in their areas of specialty. Especially since she feels like Tulane will only be able to qualify one team to the ACF Nationals.
Because she knew that so many schools seem to act as if the high school quiz bowl pipeline to collegiate quiz bowl was too leaky, the end result was that, often, for schools like Baylor or New Mexico State, or even Tulane before she returned, the new recruits had no prior experience of the game, and she feels like scouting can make or break a collegiate quiz bowl program the way poor recruitment decisions can ruin a college's sports. But she also expects other schools to follow suit, such as Duke or Emory, so she knows that her window of opportunity for the Green Wave to win will close soon.
During the next team meeting, the week after the finals week, to which she invites everyone returning as well as the faculty liaison, the news arrive, since the latest issue of FTPFTC contains an announcement that's of interest to the team.
"The Women's Quiz Bowl World Cup is going to be held for the first time next year. We'll have a chance to beat the Russians at their own game and maybe even on their own turf..." Imélie comments about the FTPFTC announcement.
"At least the Russians were nice to give several months of lead time" Derek comments.
"The Russians aren't necessarily going to host the World Cup. They are fielding bids with the understanding that the host country is entitled to a free berth per division. However, as much as I would love Tulane to bid for it, we simply don't have the resources to host since it's clear that we don't have the staff to host all three divisions. Also, the host country is expected to supply the staff as well as buzzers. So whoever in the US is willing to host the World Cup, they must have a lot of staffers and buzzers ready"
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
"I can't fault the Russians for dreaming big" Alyssa adds off-hand.
"But what we can do is host the US college qualifiers. I don't expect a whole lot of schools other than us to even have three or four female players on hand, like Chicago, NYU, maybe Harvard... and some countries, namely China and South Korea, may just want to pool their players together to compete in qualifiers. And I would expect some colleges that are close geographically to do the same. I will not be the TD for the US college qualifiers, though. Yet, I feel like we have a good chance to qualify even with Bethany and Patricia as rookies"
"Can countries hold qualifiers in separate sites for each division? Also, how many teams can a country enter?" Alyssa asks.
"Yes and each country can enter a maximum of one team per division. Even so, we shall not let the World Cup distract us from the other two tournaments we are aiming for: ACF Nationals and ICT" Imélie answers her teammate.
The Red Army will then face us head-on should we qualify for the World Cup. These Russians have already scheduled their World Cup qualifiers in Moscow for mid-January, we have to ensure that our own qualifiers don't interfere with the ACF Regionals or the SCT. Because we know that players on teams susceptible to qualify for it will play in at least one of these tournaments, so we may as well hold ours in mid-January too, Imélie reflects about the constraints that hosting the United States' collegiate World Cup qualifiers must meet.
"I say, we qualify for the World Cup, we will then crush the Russians there, on Russian soil if necessary! But, if we qualify we will need to fundraise because I don't expect the revenue from hosting the World Cup qualifiers in mid-January to cover the cost of attending the World Cup, the team's budget assumed we would not qualify" Imélie keeps talking.
"Who do you feel would have the greatest chance of hosting the World Cup?" Xavier asks.
"Russia, obviously. The World Cup is essentially a Russian vanity project, but if, for some reason Russia does not host the event this year, you can be sure that they will host it at a later date"
Meanwhile, upon her arrival in Moscow, Sadie wastes no time attempting to identify who, at Moscow State, would both have the English proficiency required to play at the ACF Nationals and the ICT, and the playing skills to do so. Because she knew that the practice packets were in English. And the competitions are conducted in English as well. And also start learning Russian with the players so identified.
Given the Kremlin's quotas, which mandated the Red Army collegiate quiz bowl program to field at least one player per gender per playing specialty, she needs to recruit two sets of players for the Red Army, which only needs to be separated for the World Cup, but the Kremlin have given her permission to move players between the "Red Army A" and the "Red Army B" as needed for coed tournaments, such as ACF Fall, so long as it's grounded purely in quiz bowl reasons. Speaking of which, she has all eight players in a small classroom inside the Lomonosov building:
"I'm familiar with how the West trains its quiz bowl players, but let's start with the basics: who here has never touched a buzzer?" Sadie asks, while installing Moscow State's brand-new buzzer system in the room for use in buzzer drills.
"Krasnaya Armiya! (Red Army!)" a player shouts after hearing the word buzzer, and obviously very enthusiastic about service to Russia. "Rossiya, Rossiya!" she shouts after grabbing her buzzer.
"Tossup number one..."
Sadie reads them a couple tossups on the level of invitational series sets, and she could sense they are a little uncomfortable on the buzzer but once they do buzz in, they mostly answer correctly. It's obvious they need some practice and some games against outside opposition for them to be ready to play in the [Women's] World Cup, ACF Nationals or even ICT Division II. But the exhibition games must be done in secret, without the opponent knowing our institutional affiliation – if the opposition is NOT Russian, the last bit was within the instructions the Kremlin gave me before I even set foot in Moscow, Sadie reflects on their observations of what is to become, to the eyes of the Kremlin, the "Senior" Red Army, with the general and secondary school (read: middle and high school) versions being codenamed "Baby" and "Junior" Red Armies respectively. To the eyes of the Kremlin, the World Cup appears to be more realistic than the ACF Nationals or the ICT for the Senior Red Army, and not simply because the World Cup is the Kremlin's creation. But as of right now I can pin down a specific team as a favorite to win the college division at the World Cup, in the event it's NOT a Russian team that wins: the Tulane Green Wave, for the United States. And that's assuming Bethany and Patricia both prove to be dairy queenies in college; FTPFTC's college recruiting column makes a passing mention to them.