Hi all!

Welcome back to the school year! We’ve got some exciting things going on for NHQBL this year, so I thought I’d take a minute or two and jot down some info for you.

First and foremost, here is a reminder of our tournament schedule for this year:

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 

Also, as a reminder, this year, each tournament’s winner (who hasn’t already won a tournament), will qualify for the state tournament, regardless of geography. So, Jay will be hosting our first tournament, so stay tuned for registration announcements for that.

So, here are some other updates:

1. Recruitment- Over the summer I took the initiative of preparing a postcard mailing on behalf of the league. Leveraging my connections with NHPBS, I got a copy of their mailing list for all NH high schools. I had a postcard printed, and made labels. The postcards have a blank spot for the next tournament date which can also be filled with a sticker label, so the plan is to use them for several years. (Thanks to my wife for that brilliant suggestion!)  Those postcards will be mailed out next Monday. Most of you won’t see them (I think I skipped most schools already on the email list to save on postage, but a few of you might see one). Hopefully, this will at least get us some exposure in areas where there hasn’t been in a long time, and maybe a few new faces will join us. 

1. Questions: Our new questions are in process and will be here before our season starts. We are purchasing fresh, pristine questions from QuizBowlQuestions.com, an outfit out of Oklahoma. They are nice and current, and will come to us automatically divided into rounds. They will feature a standard distribution of topics in each round. We will be sequestering these questions after each tournament (questions will be collected, and not distributed). The reason for this is that we will reuse them 4 years from now as J/V questions, at that point, they will be released. In the meantime, we will continue to use Academic Hallmarks for j/v rounds, though that database has been updated as of this year. That’s the plan, anyway. 

1. Dues-Always voluntary, but please pay them if you can. We are currently doing fine for cash, given our donation from the Byrne foundation last year, but if we continue to purchase fresh questions every year, that will run out rather quicker than we want. Let’s put it this way, if we have 12 teams participate this year, and all 12 pay dues, it will cover the pristine questions. (The A-H database was another expense, but we will not be repeating that cost again. We’ll use this database until we can begin recycling our pristine questions.)

1. Tournaments: I hope to be a little more hands on this year helping people prep for tournaments. I’m going to be using Google Forms for registration, which I can share with tournament hosts. The reason for this is to try and tighten up our schedules ahead of time, so we can start closer to 10am. I know that late starts are an NHQBL tradition, but it’s one I think we’d all like to phase out. If you’re hosting this year, I’ll be in touch with you well ahead of time to set things up. 

1. On a related topic, but not really: Some of you know that I’ve been working with NHPBS to do some research on Granite State Challenge. The early fruits of that labor have been compiled at www.gscconnection.com. I’m still looking for information regarding the 1993-1994 and the 1995-1996 season, so if for any reason, you may have memory of, or know someone who does have memory of either of those seasons, reach out to me, please! 

That’s it, if you made it this far. Thanks for being a part of our group, and as always, let me know if there’s someone else I should be contacting about NHQBL. Look forward to seeing you all soon!