Yet, Derek seemed to be wanting to draw parallels about modern-day Russian women's quiz bowl with the dawn of the Soviet Union's women's sports.
"That's a troubling parallel, coach. The Soviet Union back then seemed to use both sports and academic competitions to show to the rest of the world that they achieved better gender balance, personally I'd say that today's Russian quiz bowl is approximately where the Soviet sports were in the late 1940s" Derek then makes his observations.
"But at the same time, by politicizing quiz bowl, if the Russians end up accomplishing what For ten points, fix this community and its predecessors couldn't, maybe it's not a completely bad thing after all!" Alyssa comments later. "You seemed to think that Russia is going to impact international quiz bowl negatively"
"All right, so I might be wondering how willing the booster club is to fund a Green Wave squad traveling to an international competition such as the World Cup. Maybe the faculty liaison would be our TD for the World Cup qualifiers, but as of right now there are no other schools willing to host them. That said the deadline for submitting a bid for World Cup qualifiers is the HSNCT's second day. But this sudden interest in quiz bowl and organizing the World Cup? It's as if they were using quiz bowl for political purposes! The Chinese may make a bigger deal of high school quiz bowl than of college quiz bowl, and same goes of the Koreans, so, if we qualify, the real threats we need to care about are Canada, Russia and the United Kingdom" Imélie then harangues her teammates.
"You seriously expect all six quiz bowl-playing countries to have a squad each for all three divisions?" Xavier asks, believing that some of the six may not even be able to enter a team for certain divisions.
Xavier's point is valid, since, in particular, Canada and the United Kingdom, on the international quiz bowl stage, both focus on the collegiate game, so they may need to scramble nation-wide for a squad to even enter the middle school division (and the high school division as well in the British case). However, China has been traditionally stronger in high school and South Korea, in middle school.
Meanwhile Imélie explains to the faculty liaison what's important about directing a quiz bowl tournament by email. She then proceeds to make the case for him to direct the Women's Quiz Bowl World Cup US Collegiate Qualifiers, or the US WWCCQ, and the case for Tulane to host them in mid-January.
But then comes the consideration of which questions to use. Correspondingly she would expect some other coed tournaments to be interested in mirroring the US WWCCQ, if a housewrite or a packet submission, and mirroring fees would then be charged, with the mirroring agreement including terms such as players that entered or staffed the WWCCQ are ineligible to play in WWCCQ mirrors. Because a Tulane bid for the US WWCCQ would have the male Green Wave players staff the tournament, Tulane would be unable to attend a WWCCQ mirror if they host it. Unless... the Russians will let us use their questions! For a fee perhaps, but if they allow us to hold the US WWCCQ as a mirror of the Russian one, it will save us big headaches. If I was in the RUQB's position, I would want the Russia WWCCQ set to be at the level of the ACF Nationals, and the World Cup as well. Because the bid form for hosting the US WWCCQ includes a section on the proposed question source, Imélie ponders while also asking the RUQB for permission to use the Russian set. Otherwise, this means, in her mind, saying that it's a housewrite on the level of ACF Nationals. As much as I feel like we would be playing right into the Russians' hands by hosting and playing the WWCCQ, it would reflect poorly on me, on the Green Wave quiz bowl program if we win the US WWCCQ hosting rights and subsequently botch it. For hosting the ACF Regionals we already had a lot to worry about, such as booking game rooms, billing, prize procurement, staffing, scheduling, buzzers, results reporting, rules compliance and advertising the tournament. There has been no real complaints about the ACF Regionals but we didn't need to worry about question sourcing. Hosting the US WWCCQ on housewrites would mean that we need to be concerned about question supply and editing on top of that. This means I can't edit the questions, nor write them, because I want to give Tulane the best chance of qualifying for the World Cup.
The Russians' quote for mirroring their WWCCQ set arrives with a price in rubles on a per-team basis. While we have permission to use the Russia WWCCQ set to host our own, buying the Russia WWCCQ set would run a few thousand rubles per team, is making our own housewrite of ACF Nationals-level questions, using the ACF Nationals distribution, worth the hassle? Even assuming that we could sell mirroring rights at the same rate the Russians have been selling theirs – the Russians appear to sell mirroring rights to college sets at roughly the same prices as the American housewrite vendors, at the lower end of it – will that be enough? She keeps obsessing about the bidding for the US WWCCQ, and how she wants that tournament to be well-run since, in her eyes, it will reflect on the entire American women's quiz bowl world.
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"I have several options regarding the question supply of our bid for the US WWCCQ: while we could always try NAQT, for such a small tournament it may be a little expensive. My other option would be to place a pre-order for the Russia WWCCQ set, which is cheaper than NAQT, but we'll be taking the same risks as we would have any other housewrite. Finally, write our own housewrite for the tournament and then sell our own mirroring rights"
"The Russians are already talking about taking pre-orders for an ACF Nationals-level set? That's very fast for a nascent circuit!" Xavier comments.
"I agree, I believe the Russian offer has a chance of being fake. Which leaves us with NAQT or a housewrite. I must warn you: if you guys pick the housewrite option then you would need to do..." Imélie's face turns red.
"What?" Derek asks.
"We'll ask each team to submit three packets. That said, it's a packet submission and not a true housewrite unless we are guaranteed a World Cup berth because we are hosting it" Xavier suggests to his teammates.
"That's not going to fly!" Alyssa protests that option. "We don't have the resources to edit three packets per team; why not buy mirroring rights to another housewrite?"
"It dawned on me that if we buy mirroring rights from, say, Penn Bowl or mRNA Vaccine's editors, and for the latter I am not sure that they would want to playtest the set at the WWCCQ. Some potential participants will have played in other mirrors of these, so we need a pristine question set. But, maybe, we could host two tournaments this year rather than one: the US WWCCQ and a coed tournament, which will be a mirror of the Russia WWCCQ without it being advertised as such. Unless someone else in the US somehow mirrors it before we do" Imélie then makes the grim realization.
"I agree, it's a bad idea of making our own housewrite just for saving on questions" Derek adds, upon realizing what writing their own set means for the US WWCCQ.
On top of that, the best housewrites, such as Penn Bowl or mRNA Vaccine, may not be at an appropriate difficulty level for use in a qualifying tournament for an event such as the World Cup. Which, given their vision, was to be equally difficult vis-à-vis the ACF Nationals or D1 ICT.
"Looks like the Russian military is clueless about what question writing and editing implies about hosting a tournament on housewrites" Alyssa comments based on how Imélie seemingly implied the Russia WWCCQ would be run on housewrites.
"So we'll need to adjust our pricing based on the usage of a NAQT set at the level of ICT Division I, and this is going to cost us. And we'll need to raise the entry fees by the difference between the Russia WWCCQ set and the NAQT D-I set! This would mean we would be pricing ourselves on the level of the ACF Regionals or higher, and they expect to play at least as many meaningful games as in the ACF Regionals if they're going to pay that kind of money. Each school will be authorized to enter a maximum of four players, but teams made of players from multiple schools are permitted. And all players must be eligible for ACF Division I play"
It also dawns on me that, while I can't run away from my past, I also can't keep reliving my past glories by playing quiz bowl, nor keep living in the expectation of future glories. I can always enjoy trivia-related activities once I graduate in other forms, and even moderate, write for, or edit quiz bowl tournaments if I want to, Imélie reflects on this roller coaster of a season and what a roller coaster it promises to the new recruits, especially to Bethany and Patricia, who will be expected to be part of Tulane's squad going into the Women's Quiz Bowl World Cup qualifiersand maybe at the World Cup proper.
"It's obvious you care a lot about women's quiz bowl competitions. That you care a lot about developing female players. But you never told us why you cared so much about women's quiz bowl, beyond your own gender, coach" Alyssa asks a question that's very personal to the Green Wave's coach.
"I wonder why the Russians went through all the trouble to field bids internationally for hosting their brainchild event, the Women's World Cup. What would the Russians hope to achieve by organizing it?" Xavier asks. "Would it risk stigmatizing female players?"
"There's a reason why the Russians market their WWCCQ set as an ACF Nationals difficulty set, and write it as such" Derek points out.
"While you can argue all day about the merits of hosting high-level unisex competitions, such as the EGMO in high school mathletics, or the WNCC and soon, the World Cup, in quiz bowl, what cannot be argued is the need for an adequate support system, with readily accessible role models. I'm sure I would not have kept playing in college without another female in the program. Or, at least not at the level I was shown to play at this season" Alyssa remarks on Xavier's comments.
"Which made her a major contributor to what made this Green Wave quiz bowl season exceptional. But let me tell you this much: you must not live solely for the future, and neither should I. And please, do not give in to the temptation to bask in past glories, especially given what we accomplished this season!" Imélie warns her players.
"Yes!" the players shout in unison.
"On to the next season, to the World Cup, to the ACF Nationals, to the ICT! For next season, we shall crush the Russians on the buzzer, using Russian sets and on Russian soil if necessary!"