In the time it took for the LHSAA to decide on whether VA would, for the next two athletic seasons, play in 4A, rumors spread like wildfire in town, especially when Jabari began raising funds for the replacement of the old weight room equipment, whose bidding process was approved by Norman upon confirmation of the parish's parameters.
And crowdfunding especially since they expected some people to be sympathetic to how Jabari worded the project in the crowdfunding request. About how it's supposed to be about getting the necessary equipment to safely getting more kids to exercise. Finally, some attention is given to athletic equipment! A booster in town sighs in relief after making his donation towards the weight room project.
I sure hope that the process can be completed in time for the spring sports season, Jabari muses while he keeps an eye on the various bids on a Wednesday morning.
Norman is in his office, making his morning announcement, starting with the latest playoff math game. As per usual, these games were played in on weekdays because, unlike the VAs, their opponents didn't treat it as some show. "Last night, our math team won their second-round playoff game against the Illinois Math and Science Academy, thirty-nine to thirty-seven"
People at school who preferred to follow the academic teams over football cheer all over campus, Florence included, since the Math Madness is much wider in scope than football playoffs.
"For the first time since the pandemic, we made it into the football playoffs! We will be playing the Church Point Bears on the road" Norman continues, while he's reading the preliminary district plan, the kids oblivious to the maneuvering taking place behind the scenes. "And, for the next two seasons, we will remain in three-A!" an ecstatic Norman shouts in the PA system.
Flo, feeling like this deluge of news might have overwhelmed her as well as the students, just feels like she wants to blow off some steam. But because of the student interest in the redistricting drama, Leila comes to her with questions about redistricting, which was briefly covered in class.
"C'est quoi, ces histoires de districts sportifs? En Syrie, il n'y a pas de district sportif!" (What are these sports districts stories about? In Syria, there are no sports districts!) a confused Leila asks Flo for help, her hand raised, not understanding the purpose of sports districts.
"Un district sportif est un peu comme une ligue sportive, mais entre écoles" (Here, sports districts are much like sports leagues, but between schools) Flo explains to her.
Sylvie broke my ears for weeks about redistricting at swimming practices, and when I tutor her in French; hopefully, with VA still in 3A, she will shut up. I'm swimming the opening leg of the VAs' freestyle relay team because I'm the slowest, Leila now understands that redistricting is about what level of sports the VAs will play, and against whom, before the lecture resumes.
At the end of the lecture, Jabari meets with Flo, feeling like the quiz bowl team is not pulling its weight in fundraising for a replacement weight room.
"Flo, can you tell me what you plan on doing for the weight room? We already started raising funds last week and the quiz bowl team is sitting there doing nothing! Even the band and theater troupes are both doing a joint show! You're not pulling your weight!" Jabari scolds Flo about the quiz bowl team's inaction.
"The most effective fundraising methods, using quiz bowl, include hosting tournaments, but these take a while to organize" Flo retorts, wondering how she can run a quiz bowl tournament so that VA can replace its hazardous weight room equipment.
"In that case, what would you need for us to host a tournament? Other than a Saturday where we have sufficient space available?" Jabari asks her, in hopes that he can get moderators to work the tournament, as well as to quiz bowl practices if possible.
"Locals who are willing to read questions as well as keep score. I can take care of the questions and getting the field"
The easy part, to Flo, is to secure the questions. She only needs to look at Krasnaya Armiya's catalog because she knows by now the Russians sell question sets for a much lower price than NAQT. For 1500 rubles (a little more than US$18 at today's exchange rate), she can have an entire set of 12 packets of 20 questions, plus 250 rubles per team.
Then comes the pricing part, with $20 reduction for buzzers and moderators, and emailing the quiz bowl coaches at Hathaway and Kinder, as well as the principals at Iowa and Lacassine since these schools played quiz bowl in the past. And, of course, putting in an announcement on HS Quiz Bowl. This also means that she would need to keep track of who volunteers buzzers, moderators and all that, as well as locals willing to act as mods. The good news, for Flo, is that Warren seemed willing to act as a statistician for the tournament and other teachers as well.
During quiz bowl practice, the first two school staffers arrive, willing to act as mods for the resulting tournament, the Venomous Agenda Classic, come to practice after school:
"Dear moderators-to-be, I will give you a brief overview of quiz bowl rules, as well as links to practice questions you should read" Flo explains to Steven and a substitute teacher (but not the one coaching the debate team).
"I owe you for Last Chance" Steven quips, before listening to the overview of the most important quiz bowl rules, such as scoring, tossups and bonuses.
After the overview is given, she has the players split into pairs for practice games. She also realizes that Lacassine has pledged a team and buzzer, as does Kinder; Hathaway confirms two teams, a moderator and a buzzer. Iowa, on the other hand, enters a team but no buzzer nor moderator. So, right now, the first eight teams are confirmed at the Venomous Agenda Classic; I'll have the middle schoolers play on these questions since Hathaway plans on doing the same, Flo looks at the current entrants before reading a set of questions to Cindy, Oleg and two more players.
So, while Steven seems to read questions at an appropriate pace and volume for modding a quiz bowl tournament, the substitute teacher, however, while the players could hear the questions loud and clear, was a little slow. Unsurprisingly, that subgroup finished latest.
"I plan on making the Venomous Agenda Classic held yearly, or perhaps even host the LQBA Fall or Winter Invitational South, with LQBA's permission, so please, I want this tournament to be done well" Flo warns the would-be moderators.
"Yeah, we hosted State once, but that was years and years ago. I didn't even mod games, but if we want to host State again, or even, as you said, LQBA Fall or Winter Invitational South, we need to be willing to train mods early in the season" Steven adds to this.
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In the week to follow, more teams, mostly from the Lafayette area as well as from Texas, have confirmed their plans for attendance, along with buzzers, but no moderators, which forces Flo to look elsewhere for more would-be moderators. Who are passionate enough about VA athletics to be wanting to spend a day to read questions to raise funds for it. And even set up a donations box at check-in.
And Jabari checks on Flo during practice, wanting to know how much money the quiz bowl team could be expected to contribute towards the weight room. I really hope that the quiz bowl team will be able to contribute its pro-rated share; the fewer parish dollars spent, the better, he muses, while Flo is busy training three would-be moderators at a practice, like Sylvie, before they can take to a practice game, played two-on-two.
"The estimated cost of the weight room is roughly one hundred fifty grand; I expect the quiz bowl team to contribute two grand or so" Jabari tells Flo about what he expects from the quiz bowl team.
"While we charged, on average, a little over one hundred dollars per team, I'll need to check against the field to make sure" Flo tries to reassure him while showing him a spreadsheet of which schools are charged how much.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
VA supplies one buzzer and seven mods. And bills its players accordingly. And the players' contributions amount to $370, even with the bulk discount for three or more teams.
Even though crowdfunding, run by the booster club, netted us about thirty grand at this point of the campaign, fingers crossed that our rapid elimination from the football playoffs will push a few boosters to pay up, but they didn't disclose their revenues yet. Barring that, I hope the mathletics team gets past the quarterfinals, since we won last night, Jabari leaves the room, while Sylvie is a little confused as to how she could improve as a moderator after she finishes her practice game with the middle schoolers.
"As swimming captain, I accepted to do this because I believed in the benefits of the new weight room, but I struggle to find the right reading pace" Sylvie confides in Flo, even though the volume is not her problem. "There are some questions it seems to take a while for me to understand"
"Everyone!" Flo calls all attendees to attention. "Sylvie raises some issues that are relevant to all mods. Reading questions is not the end of the story as a moderator, and ideally you should refrain from talking between questions. And, to the uninitiated, the early clues tend to be jargon-heavy. However, if you want an idea of how fast you should be reading questions to finish a packet in thirty minutes..." She then shows a link to a video of last year's title game at quiz bowl-State between Bâton-Rouge Episcopal vs Hathaway. "I'd say, seventy-five seconds to read one tossup and a set of three bonus questions in full"
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Then comes the designated Saturday, late in November, where the townsfolk, not having seen a quiz bowl tournament being held in this region in years, come to see their favorites play at the Venomous Agenda Classic. And the town's "brains" supporters get another chance to donate money towards the weight room if they missed their chance to do so at the joint band-theater show earlier this month.
One of the Texan players immediately notices the donations box for the weight room and confronts Sylvie, who's keeping watch over the duly labeled donations box, about it:
"Qué pobrecitos!" (Poor things!) the Texan player exclaims, upon seeing the box.
"It appears that we neglected athletics post-pandemic, and we're paying the price for it" Sylvie comments on the fundraiser. "We're using equipment that's falling apart!" Sylvie then shows that player the pictures of the worn-out weight room. "Do you play for a school whose administration is ready to leave it to rot just so it can field a football team?"
"The kind of school you're describing exists, it just doesn't describe ours! And they don't usually play quiz bowl!" the Texan player then proceeds to pitch in ten dollars.
Florence, having overheard about the convo about the VAs' weight room, leaves Warren to take care of the check-in, billing and then the donations box, kept separate from the fees teams pay to play this tournament. She then herds Sylvie into the moderator meeting:
"Sylvie, you will have your chance to discuss the place of the weight room in the future of Venomous Agenda athletics after the prelims end. And maybe even guide our guests to it. But for now, time for the moderator meeting!" Flo reminds Sylvie while the opening ceremony is about to begin.
Speaking of which, all the players as well as the coaches (aside from Marianne since Marianne is Hathaway's declared mod) are assembled in the auditorium, but must not mention the weight room. In the meantime, Warren takes the boxes to the tournament's control room.
"On behalf of Venomous Agendas' quiz bowl team, I welcome teams who came here from Louisiana and Texas to attend the first edition of the Venomous Agenda Classic! This tournament uses NAQT rules; however, since it doesn't use NAQT questions..." Flo starts introducing the tournament.
"This means it only qualifies for the PACE NSC and only the top two teams qualify for it" a Texan player interrupts her.
"Who here is new to quiz bowl?" Flo asks the attendees, but she knows that Iowa and Lacassine didn't attend a quiz bowl tournament in years and, for this reason, she gives an overview of quiz bowl rules.
Not that we ever wanted to attend PACE NSC, or the National Scholastic Championship, organized by the Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence, but we could only afford one between the HSNCT and PACE NSC. Also, the administration prioritizes the MSNCT over it even though it costs roughly the same, Flo's mind starts wandering when one of the two Texan teams mentions the criteria for a tournament to be a PACE NSC qualifier.
The tournament begins and... wow. Sylvie's first game as a moderator pits Hathaway B (i.e. its middle school team) vs Iowa, with the bottle of sports drink she uses at swimming practices.
"Tossup one..." Sylvie starts the quiz bowl game without being fully mentally present, and not simply because she has the same amount of butterflies in her stomach as she did at the State Swim Meet.
After State, I gave my all in academics as well as in learning more about quiz bowl, I sure hope that it helps, Sylvie, going into the game, seemed to believe that Iowa would be better than Hathaway B mostly because she expected 4A schools to have a deeper talent pool to choose from.
However, by the end of the game, she is bewildered by how fast a game can go if people neg, or tossups go dead. Flo might have told all mods for the tournament to prepare for games to go the distance, but Sylvie's had about four minutes to spare.
"Final score, Hathaway B two hundred fifty, Iowa ninety-five. Have I been too fast? It is my first game as a quiz bowl moderator, after all" she asks the players in that game.
"No, but the questions are so hard we often feel the need to wait until the For ten points cue" the Iowa player tells her.
The Iowa team had about three minutes to get to the control room, voice their complaints and then go back to their game room. Sylvie guides them through the campus:
"The invite said that teams of all levels are welcome; these questions are way too hard for a tournament billed as such" the Iowa coach complains to Flo.
"On the other hand, you now have a better idea of what quiz bowl-State will feel like. That, even though quiz bowl-State runs on NAQT questions as opposed to Red Army ones" Flo gives the entire Iowa team some advice.
"The Red Army? What the hell the Red Army is doing in quiz bowl?" a confused player asks her upon hearing about the question source.
Did the Kremlin believe that the Red Army's poor education was a serious enough problem for them to use quiz bowl questions for training conscripts? The same confused player has questions surface in his mind when leaving the control room for his next game.
Then, after the prelims end, Sylvie, a little thirsty from modding seven quiz bowl games, invites a few of the attendees to visit the VAs' weight room, about the size of two classrooms, in its current state. Be it locals or out-of-town people.
"As I told him earlier, we're using equipment that's falling apart in our weight room!" Sylvie points at cracked racks, torn bench cushions, exercise bikes that show signs of overuse, and so on, as she lets people into the weight room.
"As much as non-Texans often joke about how we would let a school fall prey to mold if it means we can actually field a football team, you guys are doing the opposite: you're letting your athletic practice facilities go to ruin!" the Texan player deadpans Sylvie, with Flo behind him.
I never set foot in the weight room ever since I taught here, but man has it been neglected over the years, Flo, aghast in the consequences of decades of pursuit of academic glory by VA, realizes that it came at a price. The damage sustained by decades of heavy use by the student body is all too clear.
"When I was principal of this place, before I transferred to Hathaway, the parish rebuffed requests for money to replace the weight room's aging equipment! And same when I was Wattpad High's principal, too!" Marianne comments on her tenure as VA's principal.
"Wattpad High? This place is nothing more than a codename for some other school that has serious issues!" Flo confronts her former boss.
"I'm so ashamed of where I first worked as a principal that I took to using this codename, but perhaps for the wrong reasons. So many of the student body's issues at Wattpad High were caused by factors the school couldn't address!" Marianne rants about earlier stages in her career.
"Kherson number thirty-four's weight room is way smaller than yours, so why did you guys see fit to have a commercial gym in there, if you can't maintain it properly?" a puzzled Arkady admonishes the hosts.
"We're raising funds in town to get its equipment replaced! Also, we were, last month, in the discussion to move up to four-A because of the actions of my swimming teammates, and their friends over in cross-country, doing track, too!" Sylvie explains to them.
"What do you mean, you hold your teammates responsible for VA being in the discussion to move up to four-A? You kept breaking Leila's ears about what three-A vs four-A would mean for Venomous Agenda athletics last month!" Flo scolds Sylvie. "You know LHSAA administrative procedures way better than I do! I deal mostly with the academic aspect of eligibility!"
"I hold responsible for this two swimmers who played last year in either seventh or eighth grade respectively. And they were the second and third legs in the freestyle relays!" Sylvie keeps rambling over their friends, with mentions of cross-country runners, also in seventh and eighth grades as of last season. "I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused"
"Even then, I know the real impact of moving up or down a division will be felt mostly in team sports, and most acutely in football" Flo then leaves the weight room and eats in the control room.
What's clear, going into the playoff rounds, is that, while the two middle school teams entered (Hathaway B and VA C) aren't going to win the tournament, the clear favorites are Hathaway A and VA A, with the local crowd following any of the three VA teams into it whenever the game room the A team is playing in gets too crowded.
At the end of the tournament, which sees VA narrowly edge Hathaway once again, Sylvie starts counting the money inside the donation box, and it turns out there is enough money to pay in there for what Jabari deemed to be the swimming team's share of the weight room. And the quiz bowl team's share is covered by the entry fees of the various teams at the Venomous Agenda Classic.