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Welcome!

QuizbowlLogo1Welcome to the home of the New Hampshire Quiz Bowl League. We are dedicated to promoting and providing academic competition for high school students throughout New Hampshire.

We’d love to have new members, so check out our page on joining up today!

League members can check out info on schedules and results through the links above. We’re also looking to fill in some gaps in our history, so if anyone has info on past champions, shoot us an email.

Though we are not associated with NHPTV’s Granite State Challenge program, many of us do participate in it, and we encourage everyone to check them out too! You can check them out on Facebook here!

We hope to see you at one our tournaments very soon!

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Today’s Fun!

Hi everyone!
Salem, Hanover and Merrimack all brought teams to the exhibition tournament at MHS today. We had six teams play in our “rookies and inexperienced players” showcase. It was a great time, and thanks to Sara and company for hosting us. I’m hoping we can make this an annual event in the future, particularly as it will help teams expose new players or players who may be stepping up the following year.
In any event, the future looks bright for Merrimack, as the Merrimack Middle School team took top honors of the day with a record of 7-3. Here’s how the rest of the teams fared:
Hanover 6-4
Merrimack B 6-4
Merrimack C 6-4
Merrimack A 4-6
Salem (Woodbury Middle) 1-9
That will pretty much wrap up the season for us, competitively speaking. Stay tuned for more info on NHGives! Look forward to seeing you all next fall!
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Hey all!

REMINDER: If you want to attend the “Rookie Players” exhibition tournament at Merrimack, remember to contact Sara (sara.campbell@sau26.org) as soon as possible!

We held our spring coaches meeting on Tuesday, and we tackled a number of important issues. You can link to the full meeting minutes HERE, but for those of you who just want the important stuff, here we go:

1) Finances: We have $10,682.65 in the NHQBL account. There’s an additional ~$1300 in the old account at Hanover High. We made a motion to officially request release of those funds so as to consolidate them.

2) Divisions: The plan had been to discuss whether we needed adjustments for the geographic regions, but what ended up happening was a decision to do away with them entirely. All tournaments next year will be played “at-large”, meaning whoever scores the best, wins the tournament, regardless of where they are from. If a team has the best record but has already won, the “winner” will be the second place team. These teams will still get automatic bids to the tournament, and we will still take the three top wild card teams. This eliminates the worry about about balanced regions. We also just want to remind folks that several years ago, we agreed that teams must play in at least 2 tournaments to qualify for the finals, even if they do win.

3) Tournament organization: We are going  to strongly encourage teams to please report to their hosts FIRM numbers by the Thursday before a tournament, to enable hosts to set up grids before Saturday morning, in an effort to get things started on time. Hosts are encouraged to work with the league to organize ahead of time. And a reminder to hosts to please acknowledge registration emails, so teams know you got their numbers.

4) Questions: We will be purchasing new questions for next year. What kind, we’re not 100% sure yet. We all took sample packets from a variety of companies, and we’re still gathering prices. We’re going to consult via email, and make a decision so they can be ordered before the end of the school year. We’re going to be considering cost and availablity as key factors, as well as style. No one really wants to change the essential style of the questions, (we’re not planning on switching to full NAQT pyramid, for example), but we want to consider cost and sustainability. No sense in contracting for question that will cost us 2 grand a pop, we can’t sustain that in the long term if we want to buy fresh every year.

5) 2019-2020 Schedule. Even though all tournaments will be at-large next year, we did make an effort to spread the tournaments around to at least one will be convenient for most people. We tried to avoid major conflicts, but we did have to make a choice between doing a holiday weekend in the fall and potentially conflicting with All-State Music auditions, and we decided to stay away from the holidays. Without further ado:

Sept. 28: Plymouth

Oct. 26: GHOST at Hanover

Nov. 23: Hanover

Dec. 14: Merrimack

Feb. 1: PCA

March 7: Kingswood

March 21: Potential date for snow reschedule.

  April 6(?) State finals

Jay and Troy will be looking at perhaps early September for their NAQT event a Plymouth, and we’ll keep you posted on that.

There were several other important topics we discussed, but those are the highlights for now. I encourage you to check out the rest of the minutes for more. You’ll be hearing from me about a few of the others in a little while, especially NH GIVES which is a statewide fundraising day for NH non-profits, and we’ll be trying to raise a little bit of extra cash, so stay tuned for that.

As always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out!

Have a great April break!

 

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State Final Results!

Evening everyone!
State finals were held today at the Legislative Office Building. We got underway a little late due to some tardy college students, but we had a great afternoon of competition!
It’s been a great season, and I hope everyone has had a good time! I’m looking forward to the Coaches Meeting on April 16th, and next season as well. I love our league, and I hope we’ll keep it going for a long time! Thanks to Murph for all he does, and thanks to all you coaches who commit so much time to your students and the league!
Congratulations to Hanover, who went 7-0 to claim the 2019 Banner!
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Here are the rest of the (strangely mathematically satisfying results) (Individual scoresheets will follow tomorrow, when I can scan them)
Hanover 7-0
Merrimack 6-1
John Stark 5-2
Plymouth 4-3
PCA 3-4
Fall Mtn. 2-5
Kingswood 1-6
BG 0-7
Hope to see you at the coaches meeting, and if not, then see you next fall!
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Finals!

Hi everyone!
One more reminder that Sunday is our State Finals tournament. We will be gathering at the state legislative office building at 1:30 pm! Feel free to come and watch the final teams duke it out for our 2019 Banner!
Good luck to Hanover, John Stark, Merrimack, PCA, Plymouth, Fall Mtn., BG and Kingswood!
Also, our spring coaches meeting will be at the Hooksett Public Library at 4:00pm (or a little bit earlier, if we can manage it), on Tuesday, April 16th.
Hope to see you there!

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Two Reminders!

State finals will be held on Sunday, April 7th, at the State Legislative Office Building in Concord, NH at 1:30 pm! Spectators are welcome!

Annual Coaches’ Council Meeting will be held on April 16th, at the Hooksett Public Library, from 3:30 to 5 pm!

Current coaches are invited, and we especially encourage those who might be hoping to get a team in the future!

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At-Large Results!

A beautiful day on Saturday gives way rain, snow and slush today. Which gives me the perfect excuse to sit at the table and get this email out, as opposed, to say, doing any work outside!
Anyway, Pinkerton was a great host, to thanks to Peter, Deborah and their crew! We had a minor snafu with the buzzers, partly due to the fact that my brain wasn’t screwed on right and I had to go back to Salem, but despite the delay I think everyone had a good time.
Before I get to the important stuff, coaches, please watch your email in the next week or two. There will be three things coming to you. One, our end of year survey, in which we want your feedback! And, two, scheduling info for our annual spring coaches meeting, in which we will, among other things, discuss the schedule for next year, so if you think you might want to host, please let us know! Lastly, I’ll be sending out reminders about the “New Players” Jamboree at Merrimack on Star Wars Day. (May the Fourth be with you!)
Okay, that out of the way, here are the results. We had 11 schools on Saturday. Stevens volunteered to “play down”, to make an even 10 for the varsity bracket. And we had 14 teams in the j/v tournament. Some of us have really deep benches! Hopefully you’ll have lots of kids to call up to varsity when you graduate your seniors! This is our free-for all at large tournament, so whoever wins (if you haven’t already won a region) gets a bid to the state tourney. Two teams finished at 9-1, but Merrimack already has an invite by virtue of winning Div III, so Plymouth wins the final automatic bid to the tournament. Congrats to the Bobcats!
This was also the final shot for points, and here’s how the rest of the tournament went:
At-Large Tournament: Pinkerton 3/9/19
Varsity J/V
Pymouth* 9-1 Merrimack 9-1
Merrimack 9-1 Fall Mtn. 9-1
Kingswood 8-2 H-B 8-2
Fall Mtn. 6-4 BG 7-3
PCA 6-4 Kingswood 6-4
H-B 6-4 PCA 5-5
BG 3-7 Pinkerton 2-8
Coe-Brown 2-8 Stevens 1-9
Pinkerton 1-9
Salem 0-10
*Tournament Winner
The final standings look like this:
Overall Season At-Large Standings
Tournament Winners
Varsity Points standings
 J/V Points Standings
Div I Hanover Fall Mtn.* 26 Fall Mt. 40
Div II John Stark BG * 23 Merrimack 35
Div III Merrimack Kingswood* 21 BG 32
Div IV PCA Hollis-Brookline 13 PCA 20
At-Large Plymouth Salem 6 Plymouth 14
South 5 Hollis-Brookline 14
Stevens 4 Kingswood 10
Coe-Brown 2 Pinkerton 6
Pinkerton 1 Lisbon 4
Colebrook 0 Salem 3
Stevens 1
*At-Large Qualifiers
So, that means the final bids to the tourney go to Fall Mt., BG and Kingswood! Congrats all!
Fall Mt. claimed the trophy for year’s best J/V performance as well! Way to go!
The state tournament will be held at the Legislative Office Building in Concord on April 7th. As usual, that’s a Sunday. We have the rooms beginning at 1:30, so as soon as everyone has arrived and settled, we’ll begin. We may be looking for some readers, so if you’re a coach who’s team didn’t make it this year, and might be interested in reading at the tournament, reach out!
It’s been a great season, guys, and I hope everyone had a great year. I’m already looking forward to see what next year brings! New questions, for one, and hopefully some new teams as well!
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Division IV Tournament Results!

Hello all!
First, I want to thank everyone who came down to Salem on Saturday for the Division IV tournament. I hope everyone had a great time! Before I get to the results, let me just highlight a couple of important items.
First! Our FINAL regular season tournament of the year will be held on March 9th at Pinkerton Academy. This is our annual AT-LARGE tournament, which means that the winner of the tournament, (if you haven’t won one already), REGARDLESS of geographic region, will get a berth in the state tournament. Personally, I feel that this change we made a few years back makes this one of the most exciting tournaments of the year! It’s also your last chance to get those all important at large points to try and make the top 3 and qualify for the state finals. So, I hope to see a great turnout! Please contact Peter Crowell (PCrowell@pinkertonacademy.org) if you are planning to attend!
Second! It’s not too early to start thinking about the annual spring coaches meeting. The last several years we’ve done it at the meeting room at the Hooksett Public Library (relatively centrally located, and free), but if anyone has an alternative suggestion, I’m open to possibilities. We will have several important items on the agenda, including but not limited to: the purchase of pristine questions for next year’s tournaments; public relations and membership expansion and development plans; the annual reevaluation of our geographic regions and more. Some suggested dates will be provided soon, so start thinking about what works best for you. The meeting will also be preceded by a membership feedback survey, which we will examine at the meeting.
Okay! On to the results. We had 13 varsity teams sign up this time, which is AWESOME, and we had a first time team in Nashua South, which is also AWESOME. We had to juggle some numbers to make the grids come out even, and Pinkerton played down out of the varsity bracket into J/V, so ultimately we had 12 teams on each side, with 8 schools providing the 12 J/V teams.
There were two teams from Division IV competing for the division plaque and the auto-bid to the tourney, Salem and PCA. PCA ran a record of 7-3 and won the day, so congratulations to them! Here’s how the rest shook out:
Divison IV Tournament: Salem 2/2/19
Varsity J/V
Merrimack 9-1 Merrimack 10-0
Hanover 8-2 PCA 8-2
PCA* 7-3 BG 8-2
John Stark 7-3 Fall Mtn 8-2
BG 7-3 Pinkerton 4-6
Plymouth 6-4 Plymouth 3-7
South 5-5 Kingswood 1-9
Kingswood 3-7 Stevens 0-10
Stevens 3-7
Salem 2-8
Fall Mtn 2-8
Hollis-Brookline 1-9
*Division Winner
And here are the updated overall standings:
Overall Season At-Large Standings
Tournament Winners
Varsity Points standings
 J/V Points Standings
Div I Hanover Plymouth 34 Fall Mt. 31
Div II John Stark Fall Mtn. 20 Merrimack 26
Div III Merrimack BG 20 BG 25
Div IV PCA Kingswood 13 PCA 15
At-Large Hollis-Brookline 7 Plymouth 14
Salem 6 Hollis-Brookline 6
South 5 Lisbon 4
Stevens 4 Kingswood 4
Colebrook 0 Pinkerton 4
Pinkerton 0 Salem 3
Stevens 0
*At-Large Qualifiers
So it looks like there will be a bit of a horse-race going into the final tournament! Look forward to seeing you all in March!
GO PATS!